Lakers Pull Away From the Warriors : Pro basketball: Two Golden State players ejected. Worthy has 21 points in his return.

This is the wrong arena to tell your sad stories, but the Golden State Warriors had one.

Missing five injured players, they went to overtime Tuesday before an appearance Wednesday night in the Forum, where they lost two more players by order of the referees and fell to the Lakers, 112-99.

The Warriors started the night without Sarunas Marciulionis, Rod Higgins, Alton Lister, Tom Tolbert and Jud Buechler.

They finished without Tim Hardaway and Vincent Askew, who were ejected. In all, the Warriors had five technical fouls, having obviously forgotten their party manners.

For good measure, Billy Owens and Jaren Jackson fouled out, leaving Coach Don Nelson with a one-man bench at game’s end.

The Warriors attributed their hostilities to bruising Laker play, a compliment rarely paid to this team recently.

“I don’t want to say they intimidated us,” Nelson said. “They just manhandled us. I give them credit, if they can get away with it. We’re small. We have a lot of injuries. We played last night. They did what they were supposed to do, took it to us.”

Said Laker Coach Mike Dunleavy, once Nelson’s assistant and protege: “Shoot, that’s just Nelly. He’s going to put a bug in the ear of the officials.

“He can say what he wants, but he’s got the most physical team in the league. . . . Golden State is usually more subtle than they were tonight. It’s like David and Goliath. People look at them and everybody says, ‘Poor little small guys.’ But they’re probably the toughest guys in the league.”

The Warriors lurched into the evening off the overtime loss to Portland.

Chris Mullin and Tim Hardaway went all 53 minutes. The other three starters played more than 40.

“I’m worried about this one,” Nelson said before the game. “I don’t know how much they’re going to have.

“I knew if I had a chance to win the Portland game, I was going to burn ‘em out.”

The Warriors led, 66-65, early in the third period when Sedale Threatt stripped the ball from Mullin, who was going in for a fast-break layup. Mullin was called for a technical foul for complaining and after that, the quarter collapsed under a deluge of technicals.

Later in the third period, Hardaway exchanged shoves with Byron Scott, had words with James Worthy, who returned after missing three games and scored 21 points; went chest-to-chest with A.C. Green and was finally given the rest of the night off after throwing an elbow at Green.

“It was something like that,” Hardaway said. “You could say that.”

The referees did say that.