Lakers Miss Magic in Fourth Quarter : Basketball: Smith rattled by SuperSonics, who win, 96-88, while Johnson stays home.

If you wondered how long that Laker roll without Magic Johnson would last, they got it into Tuesday night’s fourth quarter before the SuperSonics shot out the tires.

The Sonics jumped rookie point guard Tony Smith with a full-court press, forced turnovers on the first five Laker possessions of the quarter and rallied from a nine-point third-period deficit to win, 96-88.

Johnson stayed home in Los Angeles because of a jammed right middle finger. He is to be re-examined this morning to see if he can play tonight against Utah.

“I would think, probably not,” Coach Mike Dunleavy said. “But I don’t know.”

The Lakers routed Golden State Sunday without Johnson and got another good performance from his backups Tuesday, or three-quarters of a good performance.

Larry Drew and Smith combined for 14 points and four assists in the first half as the Lakers rubbed out an early nine-point deficit and grabbed a 54-51 lead. They opened it to 66-57 in the third period behind Byron Scott, who made two of his four three-pointers in succession.

Then . . .

“We had a nice lead,” Dunleavy said, “then basically gave it away. Turned soft defensively. Gave up easy shots. Basically just got pounded on the boards.”

The Lakers didn’t score a field goal in the last 5:20 of the third period, but still made it into the fourth with a 68-66 lead.

This is how the first five Laker possessions of the final quarter went:

--Smith is double-teamed in the backcourt and turns the ball over. Seattle’s Derrick McKey scores on the breakaway to tie the score at 68-68.

--A.C. Green travels.

--The ball is batted away from Smith in the backcourt but it’s the Lakers’ ball out of bounds. Dunleavy passes up a chance to put the veteran Drew back in. Smith is trapped by a double-team behind the time line for a 10-second violation.

--Sedale Threatt steals the ball on the dribble from Smith and takes it in for a dunk, putting Seattle ahead, 70-68, and to stay.

--For good measure, Vlade Divac comes back to help against the press, but travels.

“I wanted to see if he (Smith) could get through it,” Dunleavy said. “Then I was going to put Larry back in.”

Smith made it through, all right. The Sonics turned him inside-out, but he is more experienced than he used to be.

“It was kind of our fault out there,” Scott said. “We kind of left him out there by himself. We didn’t have a safety man back there like we did in the first half.

“I was just hoping he would keep his composure. Once he got taken the first time, it just compounded it. Tony’s a competitor. He was so overly aggressive, he made mistakes. You feel for a kid in that situation.”

The kid accepted it calmly enough.

“They started getting real aggressive in the traps,” Smith said. “We got in trouble, holding the ball a little too long.

“Definitely, it’s embarrassing. You don’t like to lose. You’re always thinking about what you did, if you lost over what you did.”

More Lakers than Smith contributed. Trailing, 70-68, the Lakers allowed the Sonics to score on 13 of their last 16 possessions.

The season got another game older and Tony Smith got another day wiser. Tonight he might try John Stockton. The NBA is nothing, if not educational.

Laker Notes

Byron Scott has made nine of 12 three-point tries in three games. “The last four or five days, I’ve really had a good stroke going,” he said. “I’m just trying to get some shots off without forcing them.” . . . The Lakers had won five of six before Tuesday. They had also won 10 in a row against Seattle, including playoff games.

Anomalies: through three periods, Seattle got two baskets from guards Dale Ellis, Gary Payton, Nate McMillan and Sedale Threatt. Ellis, who had missed his first seven shots, scored 12 points in the fourth quarter. The Lakers got 23 rebounds; the NBA record low is 21.