Can Divac Rebound Again? : Western Conference finals: Lakers need help on the boards from their starting center in Game 3.

Desperately seeking Vlade: Call home. Your teammates miss you. All may be forgiven.

The Lakers worked out for tonight’s Game 3 of the NBA Western Conference finals, intent on keeping the Portland Trail Blazers from another 51-28 rebounding wipeout . . . their thoughts turning to Vlade Divac.

Collective though the guilt may be--Sam Perkins and Magic Johnson combined for 17 rebounds, eight Lakers split the other 11--Divac’s teammates were struck by Vlade’s total in Game 2 (two), in Game 1 (two) and in the Warrior series (an average of five a game).

Johnson, Divac’s personal trainer, gave him a pep talk in the locker room after Game 2.

The master didn’t sugarcoat it for his grasshopper, either.

Johnson said to reporters: “You’re lucky you weren’t up in here.”

If this sounds familiar, it is the Houston series all over again. Hakeem Olajuwon was supposed to destroy Divac, who did make a stand.

Thursday, Divac’s teammates drew a line on the Forum floor for him.

“I can’t really say how he (Divac) is thinking,” Byron Scott said, “but watching the game, (Kevin) Duckworth and Buck Williams are taking privileges over him.

“It seems like he has to do one of two things. That’s either sit on the bench by Mike (Dunleavy) and let somebody else play or just go out there and stand up for yourself.”

Said Perkins: “I don’t think he’s intimidated. I just think he hasn’t prepared himself for the kind of battle this is going to be.”

Now he’s prepared.

Divac, ever amiable, agreed that he had been soft and declared he was now angry.

Of course, he was laughing during his remarks rather than clenching his teeth, so some of the effect was lost.

“They play much more physical in the second game,” Divac said. “They surprise me. They push. They hit us every time. I am now really mad for this.”

Really?

“It’s not really mad,” Divac conceded. “It’s mad at myself because I play soft. Now I have to play really physical. That’s what mad means for me.”

And his postgame talk with Johnson?

“Magic told me, ‘Now you know. They did everything they wanted to do.’ ”

Divac said Johnson hadn’t been angry and that, as always, he appreciated the advice.

Dunleavy, the diplomat of the group, refused to single out Divac--”Everybody who hasn’t been rebounding for us knows who they are”--but staked out a path for his young center against the larger Trail Blazers.

“You can’t ask a whole lot more from someone than what he already is,” Dunleavy said. “We know what kind of a player Vlade is. He’s more of a finesse player. But he’s a fundamentally sound player.

“I can’t ask him to go out and be a Duckworth or a Buck Williams and knock somebody’s head off. But we want to make sure he doesn’t let them do that to him. He’s got to protect himself. He can’t rely on the referees.

“He’s got to put his body on them first, initiate the contact, box them out, make them come through him.”

These, for Dunleavy, were general instructions for all Lakers. His predicament in Game 2 was underlined when the Lakers were outrebounded by 22 in the first half, then started the second half by letting Jerome Kersey fly over the top of two of them, who were in better position, for a rebound basket and a three-point play.

The two in this case were the Laker rebounding stars, Johnson and Perkins, each thinking the other had it.

“That’s a perfect case in point,” Dunleavy said. “You can’t leave it up to the next guy to do it for you. You’ve got to go out and do it yourself.”

Laker Notes

The game is at 7 p.m. for TNT. . . . With the series tied, 1-1, Games 3 and 4 will test the Lakers’ acquired home-court advantage that Coach Mike Dunleavy said he doesn’t have a lot of faith in. . . . The Trail Blazers won two of three games at the Forum during the regular season. In the first meeting, they erased a six-point deficit in the last 1:40 of overtime and won. In the last, they erased a 21-point third-quarter deficit in less than 11 minutes and won. . . . Dunleavy said A.C. Green, used sparingly in the first two games, will get more playing time.

The James Worthy-to-Charlotte rumor has taken on a life of its own. Wednesday, the Charlotte Observer spent the evening checking out an eyewitness report that the Lakers’ Jerry West, Worthy and Elden Campbell were in North Carolina, the two players having been rumored in USA Today to be going to the Hornets. The Observer called off the search upon learning that Campbell was on live TV in Los Angeles Wednesday. Said the newspaper’s Rick Bonnell: “This has taken the place of Elvis sightings here.” . . . In Game 2, Buck Williams led the Trail Blazers’ first-quarter turnaround by leaving Sam Perkins to double-team Magic Johnson--which wasn’t Coach Rick Adelman’s plan. “At halftime, Coach told me to be a little more selective,” Williams said. “He told me to cool it.”