THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : These Days, It’s Difficult Staying on Top

Farewell for a while: Among the Lakers’ less remarked-upon but more remarkable feats is one about to pass into history courtesy of the Portland Trail Blazers: Their nine division titles in a row.

Only the Celtics of 1957-66 did it before.

No one may do it again.

“I think it was really an amazing streak,” said Jerry Reynolds, general manager of the Sacramento Kings. “It’s going to be harder and harder for pro teams to do that. I would really doubt we’d see it again.

“There are more good teams. Of course, we’re not one of them. . . . But you’ve got five, six teams really good enough to win the NBA championship. I think if you go back 10 years, it would have been hard to say that.”

Ask Blake Carrington, it isn’t easy maintaining dynasties.

Only Bill Russell and Tom Heinsohn, Celtic rookies in 1957, lasted through ’66. Meanwhile, Red Auerbach used his last pick in the first round to draft little-regarded John Havlicek and Sam Jones, and got K.C. Jones with a No. 2 choice to replace Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Frank Ramsey.

Do these names sound familiar: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Jamaal Wilkes, Norm Nixon, Michael Cooper, Bob McAdoo, Kurt Rambis, Mitch Kupchak, Mark Landsberger, Jim Brewer, Eddie Jordan?

How about rookie coach Pat Riley, who succeeded Paul Westhead after 11 games and a famous cry of anguish?

Only Johnson and assistant coach Bill Bertka remain from 1982.

“I have a lot of faith in Bertka,” Reynolds said, laughing, “but I think Magic was really the key.

Like the Celtics, the Lakers rebuilt on the fly. General Manager Bill Sharman swapped an elongated beach boy named Don Ford with Cleveland’s Ted Stepien for the pick that became James Worthy. Jerry West traded an aging Nixon for the young Byron Scott in a move that long outlived its controversy, and used low No. 1s for A.C. Green and Vlade Divac.

Voila! The ‘80s belonged to the Lakers.

The ‘90s don’t belong to anyone yet and may not.

Nobody’s favorite: Remember when the cliche was “Houston is the team no one wants to meet in the playoffs?”

Meet the Trail Blazers, whom no one wants to meet anywhere.

They have just won 12 games in a row and became the first team since Boston in 1987 to go 3-0 in Texas. Teams had gone 0-43 trying for Lone Star sweeps.

Said the Rockets’ Don Chaney: “I thought they might have a few problems with complacency, but the road to the finals definitely leads through Portland.”

Said Magic Johnson: “We all knew if you’re going to get out of there, you have to get through them one way or the other. They just alerted everybody they’re for real.”

Lost Generation: Dallas’ Reunion Yuppies, who made basketball a hotter ticket than the Cowboys in football-mad Texas, are deserting as the Mavericks sort their options in the wake of the latest arrest, suspension and trial of Roy Tarpley.

Here are the Maverick choices, whether they like it or not:

(a) Start over.

(b) Pretend you’re a contender and waste another year before starting over.

However, rebuilding is no guarantee of anything but a long project. Tarpley has negligible market value. This draft is wading-pool shallow. The Mavericks are danged if they do and danged if they don’t, but that’s where leadership comes in, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, Dallas gnashes its teeth. When James Donaldson, referring to Tarpley, said, “We’re built on sand,” he was greeted with the wrath due a man speaking an unpalatable truth.

Wrote the Dallas Times-Herald’s Skip Bayless to Donaldson: “Who do you want to rebuild around, you ?”

The end is near: It won’t be long until the Minnesota Timberwolves pull the plug on Bill Musselman, who is no longer feuding with his players but with his owners.

“I’ve got one guy (co-owner Marvin Wolfensen) who thinks the world of me,” Musselman said. “I’ve got one guy (President Robert Stein) who hates my guts. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Musselman’s usual average is, out of two owners, both hate his guts.

Musselman said nobody could prove he had said any such thing.

This was an unfortunate choice of denials since he’d been taped.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Wolfensen and Stein for hiring a martinet, then undermining him by letting players walk upstairs to complain about him.

NBA Notes

Hurt me once, shame on you, hurt me twice, shame on me: Atlanta Hawks assistant Kevin Loughery, an ex-player, scout, broadcaster and coach, has been mentioned as a Timberwolf candidate but wants none of it. Says Loughery: “Being a head coach is the only tough job in the NBA. Win or lose (now), I go back to my hotel room, light a cigar and watch SportsCenter. I know my phone isn’t going to ring. The GM isn’t going to call me. The player personnel director isn’t going to call me. I know they’re going to call the coach instead. It’s almost like stealing money. I love it.”

Latest Bull: After Chicago’s upset loss to Philadelphia, the 76ers’ Charles Barkley ripped buddy Michael Jordan, saying: “I don’t like it when people disrespect another team. Their best player goes out and plays golf at 7 o’clock when he’s got a 2:30 game. I would have gotten killed for that.” . . . Four days later, Jordan explained that the Bulls slowed the pace against the Indiana Pacers because Bill Cartwright is “kind of old” and “some of us have tired legs.” . . . The Bulls have lost five in a row to winning teams. Also, management renewed its pursuit of Yugoslavia’s Toni Kukoc but refused to negotiate with upcoming unrestricted free agent John Paxson, who put his house up for sale.

Detroit went 1-3 with inspirational leader Isiah Thomas back from wrist surgery against his surgeon’s recommendation. Fumed Thomas: “We’re addicted to losing. Nobody seems to care whether we win or lose--the players or the coaches. It doesn’t even hurt when we lose. Nobody gives a . . . “ The Pistons suggest privately it may be advantageous to finish behind the Milwaukee Bucks, so they can meet the Bulls, whom they have dominated, in the second round. Can you spell r-a-t-i-o-n-a-l-i-z-a-t-i-o-n?

You could rap Benoit Benjamin for his juvenile display of obscene gestures in response to the booing at the Sports Arena but what’s the point? Ben is what he always was--overmatched by the world around him. The NBA fined him $1,500. The SuperSonics fined him an undisclosed amount and ordered him to apologize.. . . Mad Max, the Rude Warrior: Houston’s Vern Maxwell, who just threatened to walk out if his contract wasn’t renegotiated, protested a technical foul by spitting 20 feet across the court. All three referees missed it, and Maxwell didn’t hit anyone or he’d have been whisked off to Commissioner David Stern’s office for the Barkley lecture.

Staying too long at the fair: Sacramento charmer Dick Motta, railing at press inquiries about the Kings’ record-tying 34th road loss in a row: “It’s your subject. You’ll make up the comments. You always do. We lose because the other teams score more points than we do. That’s why.” If that was all there was to it, the Kings wouldn’t have to pay Motta $400,000 a year. . . . More from Motta, whose list of dislikes extends to players-only meetings: “I don’t know what they do in those team meetings. But it’s the fashionable thing to do. You put on your earring and have a meeting.” . . . The question is not what Motta is doing in this business but how he lasted so long.