That Was No Simple Guarantee

Hold off on that tombstone, Arizona.

Paul Westphal anticipated, asked and answered the question two days ago about his own Phoenix Sun basketball players: “Are you guys dead?” No, he said--we are not. And no, we are sad to report--they are not.

The Suns live to play another day. They weren’t heavy favorites in this series; they were obese favorites. But in finally figuring out the Lakers, 107-102, Tuesday night in a Game 3 at the Forum that can best be described as action-packed, what the Suns truly have proven is that they are willing to put their bodies where Coach Westphal’s mouth is.

With much of America waiting to see what they were made of, Phoenix’s players played their hearts out. They had to. Nothing less was going to get the job done against a once-wimpy Laker team that suddenly is fighting back with everything it has got.

Forum janitors needed a number of Hefty bags with drawstrings to haul away all the trash that was talked between James Worthy of the Lakers and Cedric Ceballos of the Suns, while the concept of “in your face” took on an entirely new meaning when Charles Barkley slapped a palm upside Sedale Threatt’s cheek, not long after a Ginsu-sharp elbow belonging to Kevin Johnson performed involuntary cosmetic surgery on Vlade Divac, L.A.’s hottest player, transforming him into Bloody Divac.

“I’ll be bock,” Divac called over his shoulder to teammates with Schwarzeneggerian assurance as he loped to the locker room to be Q-tipped and stitched.

And back he came. Blocking shots. Making shots. Vlade made baskets from so many geometrically unlikely angles and so many complicated rubber-man positions that the hands of the Forum fans grew sore from all the giving-five they were doing. And when Sir Vlade blocked a shot by Sir Charles late in the third quarter and proceeded to Barkley-dribble his way downcourt on the Laker fast break, rookie Doug Christie sprang to his feet in front of the Laker bench and did a hilarious happy-feet dance.

Elden Campbell picked up wherever Divac left off. The two long-legged Lakers kept bounding up and down the court, as frisky as anyone had ever before seen them. Discouraged not at all by a run of 17 straight Phoenix points, they just kept coming and coming, Divac aiming skyhooks and three-pointers without hesitation and Campbell wheeling and dealing around the girth of Oliver Miller, the center of the Suns who is the approximate size of the center of the sun.

At one point early in the game, after young Elden whammed home a Campbell’s-Swoop dunk that was a thing of beauty to behold for everybody but the Suns, Barkley went absolutely ballistic, bawling out teammates as he escorted them back down the court. “Do not let him do that,” Barkley said in, uh, somewhat stronger terms.

The longer this game went on, the more it kept appearing that, any minute now, Phoenix would put it away. Yet this had happened before. In both Games 1 and 2, the napping Suns got caught with their plans down in the final minutes.

Everything they had done was off-kilter. Over the course of two games, Thunder Dan Majerle shot .500 from the line, .259 from the field, .091 from three-point range and personally ripped down one offensive rebound in 88 minutes. Barkley’s only memorable move was the time he deliberately used Divac as a doormat. Ceballos shot the ball as though he was blindfolded. Tom Chambers demonstrated the kind of excuse-me defense not seen in the NBA since Kelly Tripucka was in his prime.

Danny Ainge bravely did not dodge the dreaded C-word (it rhymes with Coke) when it was inevitably broached. Even the most loyal of Sun worshipers back home began to call for a gut check. Game 3 thereby became a test of their manhood as well as their skills for the Suns, whose leader, Westphal, cleverly acted to inspire renewed confidence by making a public promise to win Games 3, 4 and , dammit anyway, 5.

Westphal’s team rewarded him with the strongest possible effort. By the time Barkley ascended as high as the 24-second clock to stuff an alley-oop lob early in the second period, Phoenix was 15 points ahead and very clearly not dead.

But the Suns were tense as could be; that much was obvious. The one thing they needed least was for the Lakers to get their loudest crowd of the season involved in the game, but that is exactly what happened after Threatt’s three-pointer cut the difference to seven points and Divac’s reverse layup cut it further to 43-39, whereupon both Vlade and A.C. Green began working the studio audience like human “Applause” signs.

Alas, this one got away from the Lakers, even Divac finally doing something wrong when the game got down to the real nitty-gritty, taking a lousy shot. At least the Lakers gave it everything they had, which, in this weirdest of series, might not necessarily be enough. More excitement Thursday, same time, same teams.