Perkins Proving a Perfect Laker Fit : Pro basketball: Forward-turned-center because of injury to Divac becomes much more than a complementary player.

There was the flight to Houston, when the Laker charter flew into a storm and turned into a bucking bronco that had half his teammates bug-eyed with fear.

And Sam Perkins?

“To tell you the truth,” he says with a little, embarrassed smile, “I slept through it.”

This is the Perkins you read about, insofar as you read about him at all. He once fell asleep on a date. If he were any mellower, he would be taking nourishment by transfusion. He keeps blending in until you forget he’s there.

Who’s this next to Vlade in the team picture?

This, however, is not the Perkins the Lakers know.

Without him, they wouldn’t have made the NBA finals last season and might have disappeared off the radar screen during this one.

Signed as a power forward, he has spent half a season as a 6-foot-9 center.

In Dallas, he also started at small forward, uncommon versatility that might have earned more respect with better luck.

Before Perkins, “complementary” used to be a compliment, denoting a team player who could accept a role.

Perkins had the misfortune to be chosen No. 4 in the 1984 draft--ahead of Charles Barkley. In Dallas, it took a long time to begin to appreciate Perkins. When the Mavericks did, it was too late.

For his part, Perkins’ frame of reference was North Carolina, rooming with James Worthy, playing with Michael Jordan and Brad Daugherty, winning an NCAA title.

“I thought, once I got to the pros, that was how it was going to be,” Perkins says. “That wasn’t the case at all.

“Dallas was like trying to pull teeth when you didn’t have a cavity. We had good teams, but we just couldn’t get over the hump. It was personalities with everybody. Some guy didn’t like you. Another guy wouldn’t like you because he was his buddy. It was just a deal where coaches and players never clicked. . . . It was hard to go out and play together because you knew where everybody was coming from. They were out for themselves.”

Perkins and the franchise shared an albatross, Roy Tarpley.

The franchise kept hitching itself to its troubled superstar, who kept falling off the wagon.

Perkins, promoted or demoted, depending on whether Tarpley was coming or going, tired of this Texas two-step.

During the ‘89-90 season, with Tarpley gone again, Coach Richie Adubato decided to feature Perkins.

They worked on his post game, which improved dramatically.

Tarpley made it back for the playoffs. Perkins was shifted to small forward, into a mismatch with Portland’s Jerome Kersey. The Trail Blazers beat the Mavericks in three games.

After that, Perkins was a free agent.

The Mavericks offered him $3 million per year, but wouldn’t match the Lakers’ $3.2 million.

A new Laker was born.

“Not to depreciate his skills, and I really wanted to sign him,” said Maverick General Manager Norm Sonju at the time, “but we thought he was the fourth-best player on our team.”

The Lakers had turned to Perkins only after striking out on Cleveland’s Hot Rod Williams.

Perkins’ signing elicited a couple of headlines and polite silence.

It was only after he arrived and showed what he could do--basically everything--that everyone fell in love with him. Starting with Magic Johnson, they said the same thing: “I never knew he was this good.”

So Perkins arrived in the fast lane, sort of.

“I can’t believe it,” he says. “Someone will recognize you from the back of your head. You’re bending down putting something in the garbage or tying your shoe and they will recognize you. This kind of thing happens in L.A. I’m kind of shocked because it never really happened in Dallas. It’s fun, but at times it’s crazy.

“It’s a good life. Great? I mean, I couldn’t imagine anywhere else I would be. You hear people going to a nine-to-five job saying, ‘I would like to be like you.’ But I would trade some of their life for mine because we miss out on a lot. We play games. We’re here on a Sunday and we miss church. You’re always on the go. If I was married and had a family, you would never see them. If I had a newborn like some guys do, it seems like you would miss them a lot.”

Perkins was born in Brooklyn, raised by his mother and grandmother and introduced early to the notion of duty.

Even if he had to be reintroduced.

As a teen-ager, he was into truancy, spending days riding city buses wherever they might take him. A community basketball coach became his legal guardian, moved him into his home and insisted he apply himself in school.

After that, Perkins flowered.

Now rich and famous, he thinks about starting a family--and wonders if he is ready.

“It’s not because I’m doing a lot in my single life,” Perkins says. “It’s just I’m not ready. I’m not dating every girl I see. I want to be happy before I can make someone else happy. I’m content. There are some things I’d like to straighten out, as far as religion and family.

“I would like to be a perfect father, perfect husband--just to really take care of the hands that take care of me.”

In the meantime, he has enough professional challenges to keep him busy.

“I mean, we rant and rave at each other,” Perkins says. “We get on each other’s case, get mad at each other, but we’re all in the same frame of mind. Even though we lose, we lose together. When we win, we win together. There’s no fighting for the ball. In Dallas, you needed four or five.”

On the other hand, there aren’t as many Lakers as there used to be.

“You can just look at the shooting percentages,” Perkins says. A career 48% shooter, he is now at 45%, down along with every other Laker starter.

“We’ve been cruising with Magic for so many years. . . . Without him, it’s been a lot of work.”