This Show Still Needs Watching

Network TV programmer: “But what about Magic vs. Michael?”

Network TV employee: “Well, the Lakers still haven’t eliminated Portland.”

Programmer: “But our sponsors want Magic and Michael.”

Employee: “Sorry, boss. Portland did have the NBA’s best record, you know.”

Programmer: “But you promised me Magic and Michael!”

Employee: “Yes, but . . .’ ‘

Programmer: “READ MY LIPS! I WANT MAGIC AND MICHAEL!!!”

We interrupt this program, America’s Favorite Home Basketball Players, to bring you this important message: The Portland Trail Blazers are still on the air. (And in the air.) They have not been canceled. Don’t touch that dial.

If the Trail Blazers are going to go out, they are going to go out blazing. Looking forward to another Forum fight Thursday night, after a 95-84 face-saver over the Lakers here Tuesday, Portland forward Jerome Kersey said: “If you’re going to go down, you want to go down hard.

“We know we can win there.”

The Blazers believe in being believers. They don’t want to go out whipped and whining, the way the Detroit Pistons did. They put on their serious game faces Tuesday while their fans put on their happy Joker faces. They put up a brave front and a brawny front line. For one more night, at least, that was enough.

What Portland needed most was a change of strategy. When you compile the NBA’s best record, you are naturally reluctant to change. And Rick Adelman is so hypersensitive to second-guessing of his coaching--yeah, what does that media nobody Bill Walton know about playing basketball, anyhow?--that for four games about the only thing he changed was his shirt.

This time, the Trail Blazers came armed with a plan. Permit the Magic Man to get his points. Let the fresh prince of Bel-Air launch those three-point set shots and double-pump those jumpers and uncork those roundhouse hooks. Stop those other purple people. Put a Portland paw in every shooter’s face.

Well, it worked. Except for three more illegal-defense violations, bringing Portland’s total for the series to approximately 13,000, the Trail Blazers applied such a clamp that Johnson, with his 29, ended up scoring more points than Sam Perkins, Byron Scott, A.C. Green and Terry Teagle combined.

“We went ahead and let Magic score, and if you let Magic score, the other players do not get involved,” post-game color analyst Clyde Drexler said.

(Tomorrow, be expecting a comment from Adelman expressing disappointment over Drexler commenting on his strategy.)

Another adjustment made by Portland, in the nick of time, involved the baskets themselves. Before the game, Terry Porter noticed that one of the hoops was about an inch too high. Officiating chief Jake O’Donnell measured and, sure enough. Then the other rim was measured and it, too, was too high, by half an inch, confirming Terry Porter as a human with the vision of the Terminator.

Porter’s assist meant quite a lot to Portland’s success, although the baskets will need to be lowered another six or seven feet before Kevin Duckworth can put the ball in one.

Then there was the not-so-little matter of James Worthy’s ankle injury, which kept Big Game James out of nearly half of this big game. Laker trainer Gary Vitti taped Worthy, re-taped Worthy, iced Worthy, electro-therapied Worthy, did everything but freeze-dry Worthy, but was unable to make him game-worthy. This is no time for the Lakers to be losing that man. Home, James.

Can Portland take Game 6 from the golden state’s greatest warriors? They certainly do think so, and, as Earvin Johnson observed: “It’s gut-check time.” Professor Magic intends to sit down all his pupils and tell them the once-upon-a-time tale of the baseball team from Anaheim that won three of the first four playoff games against the big, bad Boston Red Sox.

If nothing else, Oregonians feel a little better about everything today. At the airport gift shop Monday, a salesperson sorting “Rip City” souvenir T-shirts told the woman behind the cash register: “What’s the difference? We wouldn’t beat Chicago, anyway.”

Sometimes it isn’t easy to be of good cheer. But if the Trail Blazers should win Game 6, nobody up here is going to need a Joker mask to keep smiling, and somebody inside a New York network television office is going to be prying open a window, checking out the ledge.