Time for Trailing Blazers to Get Serious : NBA finals: Bulls can all but clinch another championship with a victory in Game 4 tonight.

If the Trail Blazers want the laughter to stop, they will have to stop doing comic impressions in prime time.

Is it coincidence that Nike painted its downtown mural of Jerome Kersey on a brick wall?

What about the “Uncle Cliffie,” the dance craze Cliff Robinson invented after the Utah series--it looks like a tourist in a hula class at Hilton Hawaiian Village--that was instantly commercialized in video and shown on the scoreboard before Game 3?

Isn’t there something more Uncle Cliffie can do to revive his game than switching from a red headband to a white one, a black one, a four-color one or none at all?

They will answer these and other questions during tonight’s Game 4. The Chicago Bulls lead, 2-1, so it’s win or else for the Trail Blazers.

“I really believe it’s a desperate situation for them,” Chicago’s Michael Jordan said Tuesday. “We’ll play three more games, two in Chicago. We’d think that if we were in their situation.

“I think it’s must-win for them, especially the way the media and the fans have been on them.”

For the Trail Blazers, the bad news is that they missed a window of opportunity. The Bulls were tired and far from home. Erratic Scottie Pippen had gone six for 19 in Game 2. If the Trail Blazers could have snuffed out what remained of his confidence, it would have been them against Jordan.

And Portland might have been down, 3-0, if the Bulls hadn’t blown a 10-point lead with 4:25 left in Game 2.

With two days off for endless inquiry--and to let NBC program the game into its preferred slot--questions centered on Portland’s moribund offense. Offense gets the headlines, and 95% of the text, but for both teams defense wins games.

Running teams such as the Trail Blazers start their offense at the defensive end.

Portland Coach Rick Adelman still has nightmares about giving up 34 points during the first quarter of Game 3, with Jordan hanging back and Horace Grant tripping through the lane by himself while Buck Williams helped out and teammates neglected to help Williams out. Grant scored 11 points during the quarter without taking a shot longer than a layup.

For the Bulls, lacking size and depth, defense is everything.

With Jordan, a first-team all-defensive player, and Pippen, a second-teamer, and Grant, who leads this series in rebounds and blocks, the Bulls have three players as quick at their positions as any in the NBA. They overplay and deny the first option. The Trail Blazers have been slow to find the second, such as Terry Porter, who was held to seven shots during Game 3.

“This is the best defensive team we’ve played,” Adelman said. “Utah was good, but they didn’t put the pressure on you. They were good in half-court. But these guys are the best.”

Said Kersey: “All of a sudden, you’re faced with guys who are a lot quicker, that deny the wings (contest the guard’s pass to the forwards that starts many plays), that overplay you. None of the other teams overplayed us. You just can’t walk out and catch the ball against these guys.”

Nor can you fall on your face in the championship series without hearing about it.

There is but one NBA champion and 26 teams who become butts of jokes. All you get from losing in the finals is more people laughing at you.

“If we don’t win it all, then people are like: ‘Who cares who comes in second?’ ” Kersey said, smiling sadly.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘Well, here we go again.’ Just because we lose one game at home, where we haven’t lost a lot.

“You just go out and you keep playing. The thing is, you don’t want to go out and play the way we did Sunday. You want to lose playing the way you normally play. Then you can say, ‘Hey, we played hard and it just wasn’t there for us.’ Sunday, you got to look at it and say, ‘We should have played a lot better than this, guys.’

“I mean, coming home, first game, we could have played with more intensity. I felt like I just couldn’t get that second wind. It was like it was right there, but we just couldn’t get over that little hump. It’s kind of a weird feeling. You go to the bench and say, ‘Let’s get going! Let’s turn it up! Let’s turn it up!’ ”

For the Trail Blazers, winners of 179 games in three seasons, losers of four in a row at home in the finals, it’s time to turn it up, or grin and bear it.

NBA Notes

Michael Jordan practiced Tuesday on his sore left heel and will play tonight. Jordan didn’t practice Monday and left limping, but he was later spotted on the golf course at Waverly Country Club. “I went out and rode around with my friends,” he said. “I putted on a couple of greens.” . . . The Bulls, 36-5 at home during the regular season, are only 8-3 at home in postseason play but 5-3 on the road. . . . How can a team psych itself up to be aggressive and then surrender the initiative, as the Trail Blazers did during Game 3 and the Bulls have done several times recently? “The team that’s most desperate is going to play that way,” Bull Coach Phil Jackson said.

Good question: Portland Coach Rick Adelman wonders why the schedule has two days off in the same city before Games 4 and 7, but only one day for travel before Games 3 and 6. Answer: NBC wants a Sunday-Wednesday-Friday-Sunday format. . . . Jerome Kersey on Scottie Pippen: “Everybody is saying, like, ‘You gotta bump Scottie.’ You’ve got to play the way you play. He comes down the lane, you bump him with your body, but you don’t want to hurt anyone. If somebody wants to cream somebody in the chest, let somebody else do it.” . . . Cliff Robinson on the Trail Blazers’ plight: “It’s a long series. There are two more games here and two in Chicago. If this series is over, somebody please tell me so I can go on vacation.”