The Vise Closed This Time

And so, we will be returning to Oregon, where the wonderful if slightly impertinent fans of the Portland Trail Blazers wave Magicbuster hand fans with red diagonal slashes across Earvin Johnson’s face and sing parody songs such as “I Hate L.A.” and do other outrageous stuff in support of a basketball team that is so good it doesn’t need much outside help.

How will L.A. counter? What will be waiting for the Trail Blazers when they wing down to Inglewood this weekend for Games 3 and 4? How will the Lakers and their fans respond? I mean, they can’t sing “I Hate Portland,” since there is no such song, to our knowledge, as “I Love Portland.”

The Lakers have a war on their hands, so all’s fair and anything goes. It became increasingly clear during their 109-98 loss here Tuesday night that they are going to have to wage all-out combat to survive against this Portland team, which San Antonio center David Robinson, back in December, described as “as close to a perfect team as anybody can be.”

The Trail Blazers are certainly beatable, as we all saw last Saturday, and it has been so long since their last championship that it is surprising how confident (cocky?) they and their fans can sometimes be. But they are good, and they know it. And everybody else knows it, the Lakers included.

They outrebounded and pounded the Lakers on the boards and put a vise on timid Vlade Divac and threw their beef around in Tuesday’s game. Buck Williams and Kevin Duckworth were particularly rough and ready around the basket, and Buck and Duck is exactly what they were doing to Divac, bumping up against him or going underneath him.

“They were much more physical today than they were in the first game,” Laker Coach Mike Dunleavy noticed.

And then there was Terry Porter, the guard who goes to the basket like nobody’s business. They say Porter is hurt, that his rotator cuff has some damage, but if this is how Terry plays when he is hurting, how the heck must he play when he is healthy? Porter was sensational in Game 2, sinking 12 of 15 shots and driving the lane a whole lot faster than anybody on any California freeway, that’s for sure.

The Trail Blazers believe in themselves, and have every justification to do so. When Duckworth heard that former Laker coach Pat Riley had leaned toward an NBA final between the Lakers and Detroit, it galled him enough that he said: “Wake up! I don’t know what it takes to prove to people we’re a solid team.”

To which teammate Jerome Kersey seconded: “I think they (the Lakers) are more scared of us than we are of them.”

The last time anybody ever saw the Lakers scared, they played in Minneapolis. But we know what Kersey means. Portland is still the team to beat, as far as many NBA people are concerned, no matter how many titles the Lakers or Pistons have won, or no matter that both of those franchises remain among this season’s Final Four. And the Blazers have no objections to being treated like favorites.

There were times in the first two games of this series that you swore they were outplaying L.A. all over the floor, only to look up and see a different story on the scoreboard. The Trail Blazers blew a 14-point lead in Game 1--or rather the Lakers made them blow it--and vivid memories of Tuesday’s game include Magic Johnson traveling and James Worthy throwing air-passes or dribbling off his shoe or Divac being poked in the face more often than anybody since Moe and Curly Howard.

Magic made eight turnovers, for heaven’s sake. There’s something that happens every century or so. Just the other day, the Lakers committed fewer turnovers than any team ever had against Portland in a playoff game, a nice record to have. Alas, their 28 rebounds were the fewest ever gotten against Portland in a playoff game.

And yet, the Lakers continue to be like Dracula, difficult to kill. They came back in the last game against Golden State and first game against Portland and they threatened to do so again Tuesday, making charge after charge. Byron Scott kept shooting shots that went thwick, thwick, snapping the bottom of the net. And Sam Perkins was very tough inside, on a night when Buck Williams really came to hunt big game.

But the bottom line was that the Trail Blazers had their act together, and when they do that, they are the best team in this league. That doesn’t mean they are going to win the NBA championship or even win this series, but it does mean that if the Lakers truly love L.A., they had better win every one of those games there.