THE NBA : Uphill Climb Just Got Steeper for the Lakers

Mikey, we hardly knew ye.

Whether the Lakers understand (they do) or blame him (they don’t), losing Mike Dunleavy was a catastrophe, second among their string of misfortunes only to losing Magic Johnson.

Last season’s wounded will be back in October but not Dunleavy, who held the program together.

He leaves for Milwaukee, revered as never before. He followed a legend, Pat Riley, and won no championships, the popular standard for Laker coaches.

Within the Laker front office, however, his standing was sky-high.

Brash but low-key, Dunleavy was popular with the little people, doted on by Jerry West, and admired by Jerry Buss, who wanted to extend his contract through 1996 and raise him to $750,000 before Milwaukee ever called.

OK, did Dunleavy leave a sinking ship?

Are we reduced to that plaintive bleat? This is Los Angeles. We may have social unrest, smog, traffic and a declining defense industry, not to mention a declining Laker dynasty, but we have nothing to fear from the free market. Over the years, the Lakers have profited immensely from immigrants who opted to come here, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who bailed out of Milwaukee. If someone gets a better deal somewhere else, it’s all right. This is still a place more people want to move to.

Did he leave because his wife, Emily, didn’t like it here?

That rumor made its way into print, but insiders say definitely not. Emily had the usual new arrival’s reaction to local housing prices--disbelief--but the Dunleavys bought a home in Santa Monica last summer and settled in. Emily is said to have actually argued against going back.

Will this hurt the Lakers?

Has to. Even if they can find someone as good as Dunleavy--no cinch, to say the least--they will have a period of transition, their second in three years.

Or to quote an interested party, Doc Rivers: “There will be a lot of changes. It’s great to be in Los Angeles and to be a Clipper.”

RILES: HE’S IN A NEW YORK FRAME OF MIND

The New York Knicks and Chicago ,Bulls are proving one thing: Basketball may have emerged from the swamp but will never get far away as long as there are playoffs.

On the other hand, you could never say this arch-intense series hasn’t been great, as long as you don’t have to participate.

When the flagrant-foul-per-half Knicks jumped his Bulls, Chicago Coach Phil Jackson not only complained about their tactics but suggested a Knick-NBA conspiracy.

Quoth Jackson, burning after his Game 4 ejection:

“I think they’re licking their chops on 5th Avenue (NBA headquarters). . . . I don’t like orchestration, it sounds fishy, but (NBA officials) do control who sends the referees. If it goes seven games, everybody will be really happy. Everybody will get the TV revenue and ratings they want.”

There was irony everywhere you looked.

Jackson, the Eastern-conspiracy theorist, is a former Knick and Madison Square Garden favorite.

Riley, the Beastmaster, is practically the founding father of Showtime. As Laker coach, he complained about thuggery annually.

Riley was read Jackson’s lament a day later. Gaunt, unshaven--in other words, looking as he always does at this time of year--Riley thought it over before the TV cameras, pondering how to turn it to his advantage. You could almost see the wheels turning under the slicked-back hair.

“He’s insulting us, basically,” Riley said, opting for confrontation.

“I was part of six championship teams. I’ve been to the finals 13 times and I know what championship demeanor is all about. The fact that he’s whining and whimpering about the officiating is an insult to how hard our guys are playing.

“He’s not respecting the fact that this team is playing with as much heart as any team has ever played with. What championship teams are all about, they’ve got to take on all comers. They don’t whine about it.”

Except for that and a dozen other incidents, it hasn’t gotten personal.

Knick President Dave Checketts formally protested Jackson’s remarks.

Robin Ficker, the Washington-based fan from hell, sat behind the Chicago bench in Madison Square Garden and harangued the Bulls through Game 4.

Bull General Manager Jerry Krause filed a protest against Ficker personally, cornering Checketts and screaming at him.

Ficker said he got the seat from a friend: Patrick Ewing.

When the Knicks’ Mark Jackson asked for a foul call, Phil Jackson (no relation) snarled from the bench: “Shut the . . . up and play!”

Said the Knicks’ Xavier McDaniel after a game, “ . . . Phil! . . . Scottie (Pippen)! Scottie’s going to the officials all the time. Hey, just . . . play!”

X also said they could lock him in a room with all 12 Bulls and he’d be the one who walked out.

Of course, reporters were sucked in.

It may be part of a writer’s job to criticize the team he covers, but there’s nothing more infuriating than seeing outsiders rip the same team.

Thus even the staid New York Times was moved to observe before Game 6:

“The most common (story line) now being circulated through Chicago by a segment of its disbelieving news media is that Knick brutality is the reason its basketball team has been dragged through turbulent airspace en route to a championship it is owed by virtue of having the prettiest players. . . . There would be much corporate wrist-slashing if the Knicks were somehow to emerge from this series. (Michael) Jordan is the show, the ratings-grabber. . . . Believe this: the NBA will be thrilled if the Bulls put an end to this series tonight.”

OK, now we’re even in conspiracy theories, 1-1.

May the better team win, without loss of life, limb or credibility of our national institutions.

RILES: CONGRATULATIONS

Tactics notwithstanding, Riley has done a job that rates with any he did with the Lakers.

His regular-season accomplishments were fine but despite appearances, the deck was stacked in his favor. Knick players are far better than popularly thought, a result of three awful seasons amid administrative chaos.

His postseason success is something else. He did the improbable, reviving his swooning bricklayers who blew a five-game lead to Boston in the last two weeks to fall to second place.

He nursed Mark Jackson, McDaniel and Gerald Wilkins back to their former selves. He calmed excitable rookie Greg Anthony to the point where he was occasionally usable.

“I think the measure of a coach is the playoffs,” says Riley’s former boss, West.

“You watch this series and he has gotten those guys to play at an incredibly high level and that is not a team without some holes in it. I think the job he has done with the Knicks is fantastic.”

CLEAR THE TRACK, HERE COMES SHAQ?

Is Shaquille O’Neal, center of the 1990s, L.A.-bound?

Not without a struggle.

O’Neal and his agent, Leonard Armato are considering whether to try to force a trade to the Lakers or Clippers. More data arrives today when they find out who draws his draft rights.

But there is nothing that says O’Neal is bound by the lottery. Along with the contractual sit-out-and-negate-the-draft escape clause extended to all rookies, he holds unprecedented leverage. Arriving in the post-Magic/Bird era, with Jordan commercially booked up, Shaq can already command $5 million a year in endorsement money.

In a major market, his commercial appeal would be multiplied. Moreover, he has fallen in love with L.A. Given his druthers, he’d be a Laker.

However, in this life no one gives you your druthers. You have to fight for them.

Say the Minnesota Timberwolves draw O’Neal. They would not accept the entire Laker franchise and the Forum, too, in trade for him. If they did, they’d be run out of Minneapolis. They would only make a deal if they were actually under the gun--if it were a year from now, their rights were about to expire and Shaq was holding firm.

To do this, O’Neal has to sit out a season--which is not the reason a young man leaves school early--and endure a year of controversy to boot. If it were easy, more people would do it.

On the other hand, he’s a young man who calls his own tune. The world thought he would leave school after his sophomore year, but he stayed. Dale Brown begged him to return for his senior year but he marched.

Stay tuned . . . for a while.

FACTS AND FIGURES

The league is reaping revenue at every turn in the Bulls-Knicks series. It fined Phil Jackson $2,500 for his remarks and hit John Starks for $5,000 for hog-tying Pippen in Game 6.. . . I didn’t think the Boston Celtics could re-integrate Larry Bird and beat the Cleveland Cavaliers at the same time, but they have a chance to pull it off today. Credit for the balancing act goes to Coach Chris Ford. . . . The Celtic faithful were faked out, too. When their team lost its first two games with Bird back, talk-show callers screamed for his immediate retirement. “The reason I have a bad back is trying to make them happy,” Bird said after his 16-point, 14-assist Game 6. “Now I don’t know whether it’s worth it or not.”

Indiana General Manager Donnie Walsh on what O’Neal can expect to make: “I think it’ll probably be a commitment of $50 million. It’s just a question of how many years it takes you to get there.”. . . The rookie record is Larry Johnson’s $20-million, six-year contract. . . . Send someone else: Minnesota owner Marv Wolfenson has a bowl of 66 balls on his desk and dips in occasionally to see if can pull out one of the Timberwolves’ 11. At last count, he had made 80 drawings--without choosing Minnesota’s ball. “Paul Giel (former University of Minnesota football star) was in the other day,” Wolfenson said, “and he pulled Houston, which just had one ball.”

Orlando General Manager Pat Williams on undergraduates who declare for the draft: “They’d better go in the lottery if they come out or they’ve made a mistake. The classic example is (Magic forward) Sean Higgins. He came out two years ago, was the last pick on the second round, didn’t get a guaranteed contract and now he’s doing everything he can to keep his career alive. If he had stayed one more year at Michigan, he probably would have led the Big Ten in scoring, been a first-rounder and gotten a five-year contract. He made a bad mistake.”

The top of the draft according to a Philadelphia Inquirer survey: 1. O’Neal. 2. Alonzo Mourning. 3. Christian Laettner. 4. Jim Jackson. 5. Walt Williams. 6. Harold Miner. 7. Adam Keefe. 8. Todd Day. 9. Tracy Murray. 10. Tom Gugliotta. 11. Bryant Stith. 12. LaPhonso Ellis. 13. Byron Houston. 14. Clarence Weatherspoon. This would leave the Lakers and Clippers, picking No. 15 and 16, respectively, to choose from Don McLean, Doug Christie, Anthony Peeler, Malik Sealy and Robert Horry.