Pfund to Become Lakers’ Coach : Pro basketball: Seven-year assistant expected to take over for departed Dunleavy today.

The Lakers have called a news conference today to announce the hiring of Randy Pfund as coach.

Pfund, 40, will succeed Mike Dunleavy, who left last week to coach the Milwaukee Bucks.

Pfund has been a Laker assistant since joining then-coach Pat Riley’s staff in 1985. When Riley became coach of the New York Knicks last summer, he tried to recruit Pfund, offering him a $125,000-plus salary that would have made him the NBA’s highest-paid assistant. However, the Lakers increased Pfund’s salary to more than $100,000, and he remained with the team.

Pfund’s hiring ends a selection process that lasted only six days. The only other candidates reportedly were Kansas Coach Roy Williams and former Buck Coach Del Harris.

Williams, who coached Lakers James Worthy and Sam Perkins at North Carolina, has long insisted he doesn’t want to coach in the NBA. He was contacted during the weekend, but said he wasn’t interested in the Laker job.

Laker General Manager Jerry West also talked to Harris, whom he has long held in high regard. Insiders say West wasn’t sure the 54-year-old Harris was right for his club.

Pfund grew up in Wheaton, Ill., and played basketball for his father, Lee, the coach at Wheaton College.

To get his first college coaching job, he talked his way into an unpaid assistantship at Santa Barbara’s Westmont College and stayed there for eight years.

While living in Santa Barbara, he met Laker assistant Bill Bertka, who recommended him to Riley when Dave Wohl left to become coach of the New Jersey Nets.

Pfund takes over a Laker team emerging from a season during which it lost Magic Johnson, Vlade Divac for three months, Worthy for the last six weeks and Perkins for the last threeweeks.

Perkins, who had a sore shoulder, and Worthy, who underwent arthroscopic knee surgery, are expected back next season. Johnson has talked about trying a comeback; he says he will decide after the Olympics.

West, trying to reinforce his team, will have the No. 15 pick in the June 24 draft.

He also has a $1.25-million slot, left by Johnson’s retirement, into which he might fit a free agent.