Now Lakers Won’t Stop Their Presses : Pro basketball: Reserves’ play sparks second easy victory in a row.

Sunday it was a spark.

Tuesday it was an ember.

Tonight the Lakers take their flickering hope to San Antonio to see if it can withstand a hurricane named David Robinson, but for the moment, there is joy again in purple and gold.

Their new, pressing No. 2 unit broke open another game Tuesday night, holding the Dallas Mavericks scoreless for almost half the second quarter in a 104-80 romp.

It was their biggest victory of the season. The team that failed to score 100 points for seven games, and 90 in five of those, has now won back-to-back blowouts by 12 and 24.

Of course, their opponents were the road-weary Heat and the near rigor mortis Mavericks.

Ask Coach Mike Dunleavy if he cares.

“That’s the look we have to have to compete at high levels,” he said.

The look is somewhat familiar, if not in the Forum. It’s more like Golden State, with a small lineup pressing, trapping and scrambling to keep bigger opponents from pounding them into the floor.

Not surprisingly, one of the stars has been former Warrior Terry Teagle, a forward on the pressing team, with Tony Smith taking his old spot at No. 2 guard.

Tuesday night, the 6-5 Teagle lined up against 6-9, 225-pound Doug Smith, a mismatch that worked both ways.

Except the Mavericks never got organized enough to exploit their way.

The Lakers harried them into 13 consecutive misses to start the quarter, turning a first-quarter, perimeter-shooting, 24-24 yawner into a Laker walk-over.

The second quarter was eight seconds away from its midpoint when Rolando Blackman sank a 19-footer for the first Dallas points.

By then, the Lakers led, 35-24, and they never looked back.

Teagle went eight for 14 and finished with 19 points.

In two games, he has made 14 of 21 shots and scored 35 points.

“I’ve played against guys a lot bigger than him,” Teagle said. “Doug Smith is a good player, but the main thing is, you have to make a big guy worry about you. If you can put it in his mind that he’s going to have to chase you from one end of the floor to the other, that starts taking away from his offense.”

In Teagle’s heyday with the Warriors, Don Nelson matched him against Karl Malone and Charles Barkley, macho men who didn’t mind telling the tyke what they intended to do to him.

Except . . .

“It’s hard to to talk when you’re huffing and puffing,” Teagle said.

Midway through the fourth quarter, the Laker lead was 32. With a rare chance to rest his starters, Dunleavy had emptied his bench.

“We’re not as predictable,” James Worthy said later. “It used to be teams knew we were going to post up Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) for the sky hook, post up Magic (Johnson) to draw the double-team. Now teams aren’t sure what we’ll do.”

If the truth were to be told, the Lakers aren’t sure, either.

But they’ll find out soon enough.

Laker Notes

Laker General Manager Jerry West, insisting he was merely on a college scouting trip, broke a longstanding self-imposed ban on attending road games. “Frankly, I’m not here to check up on our team,” he said. And West on his declaration after the Lakers were routed by Indiana last week that he would entertain trade offers for any player on the roster: “That statement was made because our fans were booing our team. Frankly, when they’re booing, they’re telling you something--that they don’t think you’re playing hard enough. When you’re sitting upstairs and you share that assessment, you’ve got to say something. We’ve lowered our goals. There’s no question we’ve lowered our goals. But we still think we can be competitive if our players can physically play to their ability.” . . . This is West’s second trip that has enabled him to see a Maverick game. Speculation persists he’s checking out Derek Harper.

Tony Smith scored 15 points, giving him 29 in two games. Mike Dunleavy says Smith is starting to look like the player he was in camp. . . . Losing coaches always claim their team missed good shots but in the Mavericks’ case, it was true. “We got 16 offensive rebounds in the first half and never got one deuce (basket),” Coach Richie Adubato said. “That’s somekind of record. Our goal is to get 16 offensive rebounds in a game. . . . We missed 17 layups for the game. This is an NBA team. We practice layups every day.”