NBA FINALS : LAKERS vs. CHICAGO BULLS : Lakers Need to Find Their Missing Man : Game 4: Scott hasn’t been scoring while concentrating on defense, but Dunleavy says his job is to do both.

Flying high in May, shot down in June, Byron Scott knows where it went.

What he would like to know is how to get it back.

In exploring his options, Scott has a large press corps for company, which may not be a consolation. After missing all eight of his shots in Friday night’s loss to the Bulls, he beat a hasty exit without comment.

Saturday as the Lakers practiced for Game 4, Scott talked, smiled and even joked, asking which toe Michael Jordan sprained so he could step on it.

“About 6 o’clock this morning,” Scott said, “I woke up and said, ‘OK, that’s over. You’re disappointed and understandably so. It’s over with. Get it out of your head. Start getting ready for Sunday.’

“I think I’ve let myself get lulled into this situation of knowing the way they were going to play me (shadowing him everywhere with John Paxson) and accepting it, telling myself, ‘Just be sure you play good defense.’

“It’s working against me. I have to get more aggressive.

“I think we need an extra gun out there.”

Put that down as understatement.

With Scott taken away and their bench doing almost nothing, the Lakers are down to their front line and Magic Johnson for production. The big four have scored 85% of the Lakers’ points.

Posting up may lie at the heart of Laker success, but without Scott’s shooting, summer vacation would already be at least one week old.

He started the finals shooting 53% in the postseason and even better--58%--on three-pointers.

Golden State Coach Don Nelson called him the hottest Laker. After Scott went 17 for 24 in Games 1 and 2 of the Western finals, Portland’s Rick Adelman decided to let someone else beat him. Scott was held to 38 shots in the last four games--of which he made 20.

Emerging from film study, Chicago Coach Phil Jackson put Scott near the top of his agenda.

Jackson had one advantage: There are few good defensive matches for Magic Johnson but he had two, Jordan and Scottie Pippen. The Bulls don’t have to double-team Johnson and hand Scott an open shot.

“We respect the fact that Byron is a great three-point shooter,” Jackson says. “We just don’t leave him.”

Scott got four shots in Game 1, none after the first quarter.

In Game 2, he hit a three-pointer and a dunk, his only attempts.

He came out firing in Game 3 but nothing dropped.

Laker Coach Mike Dunleavy wants him to come out firing again today, even if Scott has to play Jordan, too.

“It’s not unreasonable,” Dunleavy said. “That’s his job. That’s what he does. He defends well and he’s a good shooter.

“Our strategy may be hurting him a little bit. We’re saying, ‘OK, Byron’s going to be the guy we sacrifice to set up our post-up game.’ They’re staying with him and we’re getting the spacing we want and we’re getting a lot of easy shots.

“But the other side of it, because he’s gone a couple of games without getting any shots, he loses some of his rhythm. Then when he does get shots like (Friday) night, he misses them and maybe rushes them a little bit.

“The first thing, which we talked about today, he’s got to have confidence in himself and I think he does. I told him I have a lot of confidence in him. I think every shot he shoots is going to go in the basket. I think the next shot he shoots is going in the basket.

“That’s how he has to feel about it, too. If he does, that’s the main thing. The ball will go into the basket.”

In the NBA finals, little slumps become issues and big ones reputation-wreckers.

Scott has been to the finals six times, has been critiqued once or twice and understands.

“I’ve been here eight years,” he said, cheerfully. “The finger’s always pointing at me. It’s almost like I got used to it.

“It’s too early to be pointing fingers. I don’t let that stuff bother me.”

For perspective, he has his life.

He never met his father, Allan Holmes, once a promising college basketball player, until he grew up.

A brother, Jeff, served time in prison for burglary, was recently released from a halfway house and is now training to be a fireman.

Both live in Utah. Scott has improved relationships with each.

“If you’ve been with me, I think you’d say I was very, very tough mentally. Basketball is way down the line as far as what I’ve been through. I look at this as a challenge, nothing more, nothing less.”