Me-Me-Me-Me Turned Out to Be a Sour Note to Magic : Lakers: Attitude of the players was a key factor in his decision not to return as coach.

It started as a slow burn, when Magic Johnson came into the Seattle Coliseum locker room late on March 31 and realized that the coaches were more upset after a tough three-point loss to the SuperSonics than the players. It escalated last week in Phoenix, when he criticized some starters for clocking out on the season seven games ahead of schedule.

Quickly, it had become apparent there were other factors making it difficult for Johnson to stay beyond this season as Laker coach. His outside business interests, such as the shopping malls and movie theaters he is opening, even the overseas basketball tours that he says bring in more money than an entire season of coaching. His family life, the option of being able to go to Hawaii on short notice for a vacation or to a boxing match.

There was one other factor that helped push him out.

His players.

“It (the game) has changed a lot,” Johnson said Friday night, after announcing he would not return for 1994-95. “Back when I was playing I used to love it. If you were late, those other 11 guys would just rag you until you couldn’t be late any more. We understood how to help each other. If you had a baby, we all had a baby. Every guy was there. If you had a tragedy, every guy had a tragedy. It was just that family.

“Now you’ve got a lot of individuals. Everybody cares about me, I, I, I. ‘Where’s my minutes, where’s my shots? What’s wrong with my game? Why can’t I get my game off?’ So it’s a lot of that now. And I don’t like that.”

It grew to bother him greatly. Ultimately, it was a factor in convincing him that 15 games was more than enough, at least with this team at this time.

Johnson’s predecessor, Randy Pfund, and his assistant coaches used to get frustrated by the same thing. The difference was that Pfund wanted, and still wants, to be an NBA head coach, so his only move was to lean into the wind and continue to try to mold. Johnson had another option. Leaving.

He took the job planning to stay no longer than the four weeks. He wanted to tighten the defense and, without any significant changes, get the offense to go more up-tempo. More than anything, though, he wanted to make a difference in attitude and approach.

His phrase was, “to teach the Lakers what it’s like to be a Laker.”

He never saw the response coming. He never expected to hear players say they wanted a divorce from the championship-filled tradition.

“They wanted that removed from them,” Johnson said. “They didn’t want to deal with that. They call themselves the ‘90s Lakers.”

Is that good or bad?

“Look where we were and look where they are,” he replied. “You can answer that yourself.”

Said Larry Drew, an assistant coach and friend: “I won’t say they drove him away. But what he wanted to accomplish and try to do just wasn’t happening. He wanted to change their attitude about approaching the games. He wanted to change their attitudes during the games. Being focused. If we lost, he wanted them to understand why we lost. That didn’t happen, and those are all the factors that snowballed.”

Vlade Divac, asked if that criticism was fair, shrugged. Tough to say, he said. Doug Christie said he didn’t know if Johnson’s appraisal was totally true because he, for one, felt there was a lot to learn from the ‘80s. Nick Van Exel said it’s going to be tough to start next season with another new system but that “I’m going to try to milk him as much as I can.”

George Lynch, one of the handful of young players who comes early to practice to get extra tutoring from the coaching staff, knew one thing for sure.

“If we would have had him from the beginning of the year, it would have made a difference,” Lynch said. “But he came in too late to change some of the players.”

Or change himself.

“When he was a player, he was in control,” Kurt Rambis said. “As a coach, you don’t have that kind of control and that frustration is something really hard to deal with. And he doesn’t have to deal with it, so why should he?”