Magic’s Pass Hits Target: Thin Air

Greatest pass Magic Johnson ever threw--and it went to nobody.

Leave it to Earvin to win a championship with a pass. Leave it to Earvin to concoct a pass that runs out the clock. Magic didn’t hit the open man; he hit the open floor . And the Lakers, Trail Blazers, coaches, trainers, scorekeepers, clock operators, Laker Girls, photographers, ushers, scalpers and 17,505 customers followed the bouncing ball all the way to Chicago.

L.A. 91, Portland 90.

Rip City, R.I.P.

Rest in peace, Portland, knowing that your basketball team did everything in its power to pull this thing out. I don’t know what Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Cliff Robinson and the others should be more proud of--the season they played, the rally they made or the patient way they handled some of the uncommonly stupid questions they were asked after this gut-churning night, including: “How much are you looking forward to seeing Magic Johnson vs. Michael Jordan?”

Not much, dumbbell.

But oh, is the rest of America up for it. Break out the M.J. hammers. Bring on the University of North Carolina alumni game. Jordan, James Worthy, Sam Perkins--Dean Smith, come on down. Show us how you taught them the four-corner stall.

No delay tactic ever invented could have worked any better than the one Magic Johnson pulled out of his hat. On a night so upside-down that Vlade Divac actually seemed cooler under pressure than Earvin, the NBA Western Conference championship was decided by a missed game-set-and-match shot by Portland’s Porter that was confiscated by Johnson, then air-mailed to Nobody, Inglewood, CA 90306.

It was a 10-hopper to the unoccupied side of the gym. Three seconds remaining . The Blazers gave chase. Two-and-a-half seconds . Forum time-keeper Robin Mahkorn mistakenly stopped the clock. 2.2 seconds . Half a second was wasted as the ball went boink, boink, boink toward the baseline. One second . It rolled, it rolled, it rolled--out of bounds!

0:00.1.

What can one do in one-tenth of a second? For the state of Oregon, it must have been The Moment The Earth Stood Still. A while before, their heroes were 15 points behind. A while later, they were fighting heroically, tying the score, tying the Lakers’ stomachs in knots, rattling the home team into a couple of crazy turnovers that had “Game 7 in Portland” written all over them.

Everything up until then went L.A.’s way. The calls. The rebounds. The electro-charged ankle of James Worthy. The electro-charged play of A.C. Green. The dominance around the hoop of Perkins, the unofficial series MVP. The disqualification on fouls of Duckworth, the unofficial series LVP. Even the four-on-one fast break in the final minute that Robinson fumbled at the goal line.

And still the Blazers kept coming, which was only proper, because that’s the kind of team they are. Excuse me, were.

And go figure, Magic Johnson missing all those free throws and messing up those passes, even after dragging himself out onto the Forum floor three hours before tipoff, by himself, to practice, practice, practice after a disappointing day at the line in Game 5. Go figure, the Lakers nearly giving away this game that way.

Dr. Jerry Buss nearly needed a doctor. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t breathe.

“I kept walking out of the building, into the building, out of the building,” the Laker owner said. “I spent most of the last three minutes of the game outside.”

Doing what?

“Praying,” he said. “Praying, praying, praying, praying.”

Never fear, Magic Johnson’s here. He says he lives for moments like this. He says he knew when Porter’s shot went short that the rebound was going long. Well, maybe. Truth or dare. Whatever we choose to believe or not to believe of Magic, the fact remains that he had the foresight to retrieve the ball, then the eyesight to heave the ball where it could do the Lakers no harm.

Some things (Johnson, Worthy, Green, Byron Scott, Jerry West, Buss) never change. Some things (Perkins, Vlade Divac, Terry Teagle, Elden Campbell, Mike Dunleavy) do change. Beat L.A.? Beat L.A.? Beat L.A.? Sometimes, you do. Usually, you don’t.