NBA FINALS : LAKERS vs. CHICAGO BULLS : Making a Name for Himself at Last : Bulls: John Paxson, once only quietly dependable, escapes his brother’s shadow with outside shooting against the Lakers.

Once merely known as “the other Paxson,” and more recently merely as the other starting guard for the Chicago Bulls, John Paxson has been anything but anonymous in the NBA finals, thanks to 66.7% shooting.

He already had become unglamorously dependable, having missed only five games the previous five seasons. He was equally inconspicuous, never having averaged more than 11.3 points in a season.

Now this. People noticing.

“Any time we were forced to leave him or we gave him an opening, he has taken advantage of it,” Laker Coach Mike Dunleavy said.

Paxson insists that he hasn’t yet considered what all of this will do to the shadow that has trailed him since youth, when older brother Jim, destined for an 11-year career with the Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Celtics, got the early spotlight.

He is averaging only 11.8 points against the Lakers--fourth-best among the Bulls behind Michael Jordan at 31.5, Scottie Pippen at 18, and Horace Grant at 15.5--but Paxson is impossible to miss.

In fact, it sometimes seems it is impossible for him to miss. He made eight of eight shots in Game 2 as the Bulls set a finals record by shooting 61.7%. And he was seven for 11 in Game 4, usually making the defense pay for keying on Jordan and Pippen.

That is Paxson’s real role, even though it says point guard on his business card. He is the designated jump shooter, the Bull who provides cover fire for his more recognized teammates.

Paxson, whose father also played in the NBA, for two seasons in the late 1950s, understands the role that comes with playing alongside Jordan, the shooting guard. He is an atypical point guard.

“But you’re not going to find a typical point guard to play with Michael Jordan,” he said. “That’s not going to happen. We have had a few guys the last couple of years who were supposedly typical point guards, and that didn’t mesh.

“You have to learn how to play with Michael. You have to be willing to accept the role. It’s been easy for me. It’s probably showcased what I do well, anyway, . . . shooting the spot-up jump shots. If I had to create all the time, that wouldn’t be my normal game.”

The Bulls don’t play the typical NBA offense, either. Besides the triple-post offense, they will also use a two-guard front near the top of the key. Instead of the point man starting the play, Chicago puts two guards outside, the way football running backs line up in a pro-set formation.

“John is a point guard in the sense that he does initiate the offense,” Coach Phil Jackson said. “He’s the guy we think about when the plan is to get the ball to Bill (Cartwright) or Horace (Grant). If we want to settle down, we get the ball back in his hands. He’s a stabilizing force.”

Otherwise, everything revolves around Jordan. That’s when Paxson, who shot 54.8% during the regular season and finished 10th in the league in shooting accuracy, becomes under-used. He had only nine shots in three first-round games against New York, 11 in five games against Philadelphia, 10 in four games of the Eastern Conference finals against Detroit.

So when it came to the finals, after 30 shots in the previous 12 games, Paxson needed to jump-start his jump shooting. He got seven in Game 1 at Chicago Stadium, and although only three went in, that seemed to help. Starting with Game 2, he had one stretch of 10 consecutive baskets.

“We just don’t find him,” Jackson said. “Sometimes, we’re too headstrong. We forget . . . that we have a dependable jump shooter out there.”

Even the way the Bulls got Paxson, now completing his eighth season, was subtle. When they signed him in October of 1985 as a free agent from San Antonio, Chicago erased a $200,000 debt due from the Artis Gilmore trade years earlier because the Spurs had agreed not to match the Bulls’ offer to Paxson.