Don’t Count Lakers Out Just Yet

Break up the Lakers. Shake up the Lakers. That’s what I keep hearing. That’s what people keep suggesting. Trade this guy. Sign that guy. Give up James Worthy. Get Charles Barkley. Oh, the old team ain’t what she used to be. Oh, the golden era is gone forever.

Hey, no kidding.

Only one thing wrong with that: The Lakers are doing great. In fact, they might still be the most amazing team in the NBA today.

For what they’ve done with what they have, basketball lovers ought to be talking about the Lakers with awe.

They are the defending conference champions. Only a powerhouse Chicago team kept the Lakers from winning the whole thing. Then they permanently lost their greatest player, lost their starting center for most of the season to date and yet still have a record better than 18 of the league’s remaining 26 teams.

They might be doing it with mirrors, but the fact is, the Lakers do have some leftover magic.

Even so, someone from the East Coast just called to commiserate over how terribly the poor old Lakers are playing. He had seen the final score from Portland, where the Lakers had lost by 39 points.

I had to ask if he was joking. But he was perfectly serious. The Lakers are washed up, he said. It will take years for them to recover, he said.

My ears couldn’t believe what they were hearing.

“They played without Magic Johnson, without Vlade Divac and without James Worthy at Portland and you can’t believe they lost? “ I asked.

“By 39 points,” he said.

“One lousy game?”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” he said.

Yes, I do. There is a perception out there that the Lakers are in desperate trouble. That there is no way as presently constituted that they can be a championship team. That the Lakers simply don’t scare anybody anymore. That they are going nowhere.

I understand. I am not totally oblivious to the team’s shortcomings. I can get two eyes open. They don’t fast break like before. They don’t rebound like before. They don’t dazzle you like before.

To which I say:

So?

They still win a lot more often than they lose, don’t they? They still will qualify for the playoffs, won’t they? They eventually will get their center back, won’t they? They weren’t expected to win in the playoffs last year, either, were they?

Mike Dunleavy is using paste and glue and spit. The young coach doesn’t mean to demean the quality level of some of his remaining players, but he isn’t afraid to admit: “We don’t have as much talent as many of the teams in the league.”

What he counts on is hard work. He has turned the Lakers into a pressing defensive team. He needed a motivating force and found one in A.C. Green, who is playing some of the best basketball of his life. He also needs to keep motivating Sedale Threatt, one of those rare basketball players who needs to be reminded to shoot.

With virtually a patchwork lineup and a thin bench, the Lakers continue to be a contending team.

But that’s not enough for everybody. The Lakers are accustomed to being something more than simply in contention. And it wouldn’t be surprising if Jerry West did do something daring to break up or at least shake up the Lakers, because even if the general manager is not an impatient man, neither is he a complacent one. To West, fourth place is losing, not winning.

And, knowing how much he likes to win, no wonder rumor-starters are going hog wild. There was at least one published report last week that once again had Worthy going home to North Carolina to play for Charlotte, with the Hornets sending something or somebody to Philadelphia and the 76ers sending You Know Who to the Lakers to take Worthy’s place.

I don’t know if the Lakers need the built-in ability, instability or box office of Sir Charles Barkley, but it sure would be a dramatic change of scenery. The first thing Charlie would have to do is surrender his number, 32. The second thing he would have to do is make us adjust our eyes to a Laker team without Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Johnson or Worthy, which would make it resemble a bunch of Laker impersonators.

The Lakers recently had their first losing month in a long, long time. How long?

“I know how long,” Dunleavy said. “It’s before we had Magic.”

Among the voids Magic’s disappearing act left was the need for a leader. For as well as Threatt has been playing, Dunleavy still finds himself with an almost timid team.

“Sedale’s very quiet. Most of the guys we have now are very quiet,” Dunleavy said. “We need somebody to take charge. Not from the standpoint of some rah-rah cheerleader kind of leadership. I mean somebody calling out plays, taking command out there. That’s one thing we’re still missing.”

They might not be the Lakers of old, but before anybody counts them out, remember one thing: They haven’t even had a bad season yet. Let’s at least wait and see where this one goes.