Lakers Put Spurs Back in the Red : Pro basketball: They get 24 points from Threatt and use a trapping press to win their fifth in a row, 107-101. San Antonio falls back below .500.

Let’s have a big Laker welcome to the NBA for . . . Jerry Tarkanian!

Just when Tark the Shark had reached .500 for the first time as a pro coach, here came the Lakers to dump his Spurs, 107-101, Tuesday night for their fifth victory in a row.

“Their trap really hurt us,” moaned Tarkanian afterward. “If we had a point guard, we could handle the trap better.”

The Lakers have a red-hot point guard in Sedale Threatt, who led them with 24 points, giving him a 21-point average over the last four games.

The shooting guard position has been thin, however, with Byron Scott and Tony Smith out because of injuries. Coach Randy Pfund used one-guard lineups for long stretches last week, but Tuesday night he got Smith back, in unexpected style. Smith turned off Dale Ellis in key stretches, made seven of his 11 shots and scored 17 points, including two baskets in the 13-0 Laker run at the end of the third quarter that turned the game around.

“I didn’t really know how I’d feel being back,” Smith said. “It was just a matter of getting back and seeing how hard I could go. I didn’t know what to expect. On defense, I was kind of worried about being able to stick with my man.”

The Lakers had a 10-point lead early in the third quarter but a 23-9 run put the Spurs ahead, 72-68.

It was at this point, with the Hemisfair’s 72nd consecutive sellout crowd going wild, that Vlade Divac stepped back and banked in a long one-hander from out front.

As improbable as it was, it also started the Lakers on their 13-0 run. Despairing of any other way to deal with David Robinson (28 points, 14 rebounds, six assists), Pfund put his players into a trapping press, and the Spurs turned the ball over three times and missed three perimeter shots.

The point guard at that point was swingman Lloyd Daniels, the backup to starter Vinny Del Negro.

In the middle of the run, Pfund paid Smith the compliment of clearing the way for him to go one-on-one against Daniels. Both times, Smith beat him for baskets, hitting a 15-footer and a 17-footer.

The Laker run was capped, appropriately enough, by Divac, who beat the buzzer to end the quarter with a three-pointer that he banked in by accident.

“You surprised?” Divac said afterward, laughing.

“You can say he is lucky to make one but not two. I surprised myself.”

The Lakers, once 2-3, have won 11 of their last 14 and proved Tuesday that they can do more than beat up on tired teams playing back-to-back, as was the case in each of their four games at home last week.

“Early in the year, there was a lot of gloom and doom,” Pfund said. “I said, ‘Hey, the last couple of years, we haven’t started well. This is nothing out of character.’

“The thing that has pleased me is that we’ve been very competitive on the road. That and the fact that we’ve gotten contributions from a lot of players. It means we can play some basketball. We’ve had a favorable schedule, but tonight we won a tough one.”

Having won, the Lakers moved on to Dallas for tonight’s matchup with the NBA’s worst team, leaving admirers in their wake.

“They’re too good a team to have lapses against,” Tarkanian said. “. . . They’re big and strong and still have great quickness. I like that team.”

His own, he’s not so sure about.

Laker Notes

Necessity rides to the rescue again: With Byron Scott out, Randy Pfund’s one-guard lineups have turned the Lakers around as a rebounding team. In their first 14 games, they were outrebounded by 2.2 a game. During their winning streak, with A.C. Green and James Worthy backing up the shooting guard position, they have been plus-7. . . . Scott is on the trip but won’t try to run before the weekend. “The doctors want me to come back slowly,” he said. . . .The Spurs set a team record, making 10 three-pointers--and did it in 17 attempts.