NBA FINALS : LAKERS VS. CHICAGO BULLS : Cliff-Hanger Has Become a Fairy Tale

The Cliff notes:

Played previous six seasons with Atlanta Hawks. . . . The Hawks offered him $1.1 million over four seasons to return. . . . Became a free agent instead and signed with the Chicago Bulls. . . . Was excited about joining his new team. . . . His play went down the drain around the middle of the season. . . . So did the euphoria. . . . Re-emerged in the playoffs. . . . Lakers are sorry he didn’t stay down.

“It’s been like a fairy tale,” Cliff Levingston said. “The beginning was all sweet and everything. Then I had the tragedy in the middle. Then, ever so sweet at the end. That’s what it is. A fairy tale.”

The story isn’t over, even if Chicago wins the NBA championship tonight at the Forum. The epilogue: Do the Bulls want him back after a regular season of four points and 2.9 rebounds a night, or will they exercise an option in his contract and buy him out for $400,000, rather than pay $1.3 million for 1991-92?

Levingston, who reportedly made $780,000 this season, doesn’t know if he will return, although he would like to. The one thing the 6-foot-8, 210-pound forward is sure of is that his hard-hat play in the finals has been worth valuable prime-time exposure to possible future employers.

The tragedy in the middle, as he refers to it, was a disaster in the basketball sense only. But that was enough. That it occurred after he had drawn emotional support from the Chicago fans and the attention of the media as the newcomer made the fall that much more dramatic.

He kept falling until his excitement for the season was buried. Somewhere in 94 feet of wood, he got lost when the Bulls put him at small forward. He had played there before withAtlanta, but there he was still more of a low-post player who didn’t need as much quickness as the constant passing and moving the Bulls require. In Chicago, he was asked to become a perimeter player.

Phil Jackson, the Bulls’ coach, looks back at the switch as an attempt to expand Levingston’s game. Sensing that didn’t work, Jackson made an adjustment and brought him closer to the free-throw line in offensive formations.

“We combined what we hope he can do with what we know he can do,” Jackson said.

Levingston’s confidence wasn’t all the way back until the playoffs. The turning point occurred in a two-game stretch--the finale of the Philadelphia series, when he defended against Charles Barkley, and the opener of the Eastern Conference finals against Detroit. The impact of the bench as a whole was the story as the Bulls started the four-game sweep of the Pistons, but Levingston, building off what Jackson’s adjustment helped him attain, had the biggest role.

He had eight points in that Game 1, but what stuck out was the way Levingston played defense against Mark Aguirre. Jackson saw that as exactly what the Bulls needed, then and all of the time, four- or five-minute stretches of rebounding and defense. “That may not seem like much but in a playoff situation, everything is magnified because each possession is so critical,” Jackson said.

That’s why Levingston’s numbers are not overwhelming in the playoffs--2.8 points, 2.4 rebounds, 11.5 minutes--but his contributions are.

“Career-wise, if anything, this has put another year on my career,” he said. “By them sitting me down, they saved my legs.”