NBA CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES : Lakers May Kiss Their Reign Goodby

Well, here we are back for another chapter of the “Kiss And Tell” playoffs, the NBA’s answer to “From Here To Eternity.” You’ll remember last year at this time when Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas set a kind and gentle tone for the NBA finals by exchanging pecks on the cheek. (There’s a custom in international basketball of players giving each other gifts before the game, but it’s usually a banner or a T-shirt. If it were kissing, you might hear something like this at the jump-ball circle: “Not tonight, Arvidas, I’ve got a headache.”) They did it for all seven games, breaking the record for kisses in a championship series previously held by Brigitte Nielsen and a variety of partners.

Now, we add a new wrinkle, Mark Aguirre, the third leg of the triangle, for years a prisoner of unrequited love in Dallas. Aguirre says he and Magic and he and Isiah used to kiss, too--the trouble was Mavericks games weren’t on national TV, so no one knew. Serendipitously, Aguirre has joined the Pistons with Isiah, and all three best friends are in the finals. So we get a menage a trois . (It’s French for “Letting fly from 3, Jacques.”)

Who’ll kiss whom?

In what order?

Will it get contagious? (And if it gets contagious, will the officials wear surgical masks?) Seriously, who’d kiss Rodman?

When the kissing starts, who’ll be smart enough to forget about players and head straight for Dyan Cannon?

And what if Laimbeer and Mahorn decide to get involved? I can just imagine Mahorn ambling over to Kareem and cooing, “Yo, Gramps, let me show you how a Bad Boy smooches,” then elbowing him upside the head.

Who would Riley kiss? Himself, probably. Same with Daly. That could be the best matchup in the whole series: Pat “Have Your Tailor Fax My Tailor” Riley, and Chuck “Of Course It’s Imported, You Think Anyone Stocks This On The Rack In Flint” Daly. The key factor in the matchup may be hair. Daly has an impressive blow-dried 1950s Vinnie Terranova pompadour, the kind the bowling alley romeos wore. But I’m inclined toward Riley’s sculpted Hollywood polyurethane doo; you laminate it once in the morning and forget about it all day.

Hardly anybody wants Detroit to win. They’re hoping for a “Three-peat” and a fitting farewell for Kareem. A lot of it attaches to the Pistons’ image as thugs. Like the NFL’s Raiders, the Pistons are a cult team; goonery doesn’t sound a sympathetic chord among the masses.

As a result L.A. is a sentimental favorite. Yes, L.A., home to millions of vapid, narcissistic steel-bellied airheads with day-glo leather futons. All that ritzy, glitzy, flashy, trashy stuff. They think they’re so hot. Who the hell cares about tofu (freeways, Cher, smog, Valley Girls, bodies by Jake, sprouts, Jack Nicholson, call waiting on your car phone--choose one, or as many as you like) anyway?

People hate the Celtics. People hate the Yankees.

How come no one hates the Lakers?

Loving Magic is understandable, he’s got joie de vivre (that’s French, too, for a high-five). But loving Kareem, who for so long was so standoffish? Loving a team of billionaires from a city where the most common greeting isn’t “hello,” but, “Do you validate parking?”

Loving a dynasty?

The Pistons embody everything the pollsters say this country respects: They work hard. They’re not pretentious. (Well, okay, whoever named it The Palace At Auburn Hills is a schlemeil.) They do it with defense. They do it without valet parking. But they are so hateful that the American public would rather root for a dynasty, a team that’s already won five championships in the last nine years.

Bad Boys? Bad to the bone.

The Lakers have been a resourceful, indomitable playoff team. More than all other NBA teams they understand the qualitative differences between the regular season and the playoffs. They have, in Magic Johnson, the heir to Bill Russell, Last year, when everyone thought they could be overtaken, they went seven games with Utah, Dallas and Detroit. This year, when everyone predicted they would be overtaken, they’ve swept Portland, Seattle and Phoenix. Incredibly, just as the anchor of their half court set, Kareem, washed out to sea, they’ve come up with a dependable set-up offense.

But the team L.A. feared most in the West was Utah, because monstrous Mark Eaton gives the Jazz the ability to control the defensive tempo. He is big and bruising. The Lakers prefer a dainty game. They don’t like a team to slow them down and bump them around. Detroit can do that. The Bad Boys have 15 free fouls at center. Welcome to the NFL.

As lubricated as the Lakers’ offense has been, Detroit has not yet conceded 100 points in any playoff game--15 and counting. Detroit can play comfortably in the 80s, L.A. can’t. True, Magic presents the most perplexing matchup problem. Detroit has no guard big enough to distract him, and if you double him, he will thread the needle quicker than Betsy Ross. But in the fourth period Detroit can put Dennis Rodman on Magic, and John Salley on James Worthy, and then, if L.A. has to turn elsewhere, who will respond? A.C. Green, career 9.2 playoff scorer? Fair-weather streak-shooter Byron Scott, who’s never been their go-to guy, especially when they’re behind, and who just came up with a strained hamstring? Orlando Woolridge, who’d been in seven playoff games in seven seasons prior to this one?

Since the Celtics dynasty, only four teams have faced each other in the finals in successive years. Every time the loser avenged itself. Detroit finds itself in that historically auspicious position. So, the time has come in this column to, as they say in Hollywood, cut to the chase.

Detroit, in seven.