Lakers Can’t Meet Knicks Even Halfway : Pro basketball: New York leads by 17 at the half, has game well in hand by third quarter in a 110-89 victory.

The people started heading to the Forum exits Wednesday night with about seven minutes to go. That didn’t make them an L.A. crowd, merely a smart one.

Besides, they were only imitating the home team. The Lakers clocked out sometime in the third quarter, sticking around only in body to endure a 110-89 thrashing by the New York Knicks before 13,630 in a game that included enough garbage time to keep three sanitation departments busy.

“Our worst game of the year?” said Laker Cedric Ceballos, who had 19 points, 12 rebounds and five steals. “I don’t know. I guess it was shooting-wise. We worked hard, but nothing was falling. We couldn’t put the ball in the hole.”

Two games after making only 34.6% of their attempts from the field against Golden State, a season low, the Lakers shot 36.8% against the Knicks. They committed 18 turnovers, about four more than their NBA-low average coming in. They surrendered 22 points, eight rebounds and five blocks to Patrick Ewing and 27 points to Hubert Davis, although 14 came in the fourth quarter when the game was all but over. And they went through another starting power forward.

“We played very poorly, obviously,” Coach Del Harris said. “You have to give credit to the Knicks. They’re a very good and very disciplined basketball team. They took us out of everything we wanted to do offensively. They’re just as good if not better than last season.”

The Lakers (3-5) look tattered. Their last three games have resulted in two blowout losses and a thank-God-it’s-the-Clippers victory on Wednesday. They now have one day off to prepare for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Make that one day to recover.

Elden Campbell was the starting power forward de jour, not so much by default, although it might quickly come to that, but because Harris wanted to add some size against the powerful Knicks. Coming after George Lynch and Anthony Miller, he is the third different Laker in the opening lineup at that position in as many games.

Campbell, who went from starting last season to averaging only 16.2 minutes his first five appearances, won the job, for the moment, with a strong fourth quarter against the Clippers. His reward in his first start of 1994-95 was to guard Ewing, after Harris switched the defensive assignments from the first meeting at Madison Square Garden and used the power forward on the center.

Campbell had bigger problems than a superstar, though. He had trouble staying in the game, replaced after picking up his second foul only 5:39 in. Ewing proceeded to work the reinforcements for 17 points, five rebounds and four blocks in the first half as the Knicks, on the third stop of a four-game Western Conference swing, took a 53-36 lead at intermission.

Concluding the series against the defending Eastern Conference champions only eight games into the season, the Lakers fell apart late in the second quarter.

They were down only 39-32 despite poor shooting, before the Knicks added to the cushion with a 14-4 run over the final 2:50 for the 17-point lead.

Ewing had four of the points in the late rally, but John Starks did the most damage with seven points, including a three-point basket with 1.3 seconds left.

That turned out to be merely the beginning of the blowout. The Knicks went up by as many as 26 points in the third quarter, the first time at 73-47, and led heading into the fourth period, 82-59.

Campbell, meanwhile, avoided additional foul problems and finished with 17 points and seven rebounds in only 23 minutes.

No Knick had more than eight rebounds, though New York still had a 51-44 advantage in rebounding.