This Team Can Play in Any Neighborhood

With a vanexcellent performance that brought a little magic back to the home of Showtime, the Lakers confirmed themselves as legitimate contenders for the NBA championship Thursday night at the Forum, eliminating the underachieving Seattle SuperSonics, 114-110.

People will be saying they won’t be able to beat David Robinson, Dennis Rodman and the San Antonio Spurs . . . but that’s what they said about playing the SuperSonics. And look at them now, Tacomatose.

This one was Nick Van Exel’s night of nights, proof positive that the Lakers have one of the hottest guards in the game.

“I think it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen,” Magic Johnson, sitting courtside, said afterward of the point guard’s 34-point effort.

“That you’ve seen from Van Exel?

“That I’ve seen ,” Johnson said.

Shooting and scoring from every possible angle, including distances that Reggie Miller would have considered long, Van Exel was the star of the show as he personally sent SuperSonics back home, where they will have plenty of explaining to do.

But tricky little Nickey did get plenty of help, even on a night when coach of the year--and richly deserved, may we add--Del Harris went with a seven-man squad much of the way.

Not getting much of a chance to help until the very end, George Lynch aimed and nailed the final free throw that put the Lakers into the second round of the playoffs. That was the way George played at North Carolina too--quiet but always there when you need him.

Elden Campbell also was there, big time, playing the kind of game that the Lakers have always wanted him to play in these circumstances. After Shawn Kemp climbed over his back with 31.8 seconds to play, Campbell untied the score with two perfect free throws.

Rattled Seattle never recovered.

All five Laker starters scored in double figures, with huge numbers from Vlade Divac, who along with 23 points had as many rebounds--11--as the Laker starting forwards did combined.

Cedric Ceballos also was there come clutch time, overcoming an off shooting night with some big, big moves.

And as for Anthony Peeler, there were times when he and Van Exel were almost interchangeable in their brilliance, two bald little southpaws who drove the SuperSonics nuts all night.

No way the Lakers wanted to go back to Tacoma and try to win in the building that forgets to pay its electric bill.

Asked after Monday’s game whether he wanted to wrap up this series in Game 4, an enthusiastic Ceballos put it this way:

“Boy, would I!”

And did the Lakers go out and wrap things up?

Boy, did they!

The night began with Harris accepting his coaching award to a standing ovation, something he couldn’t have foreseen in his wildest dreams back when he was appointed to the position.

And then on came the game, with a Forum crowd at full fever pitch. Jerry West, the Laker vice president, said the other day that, as disappointed as he was last summer when Horace Grant chose not to sign with the Lakers, Monday night’s crowd at Game 3 “made the whole season worthwhile.”

Thursday’s crowd got a little jumpy when Seattle broke open a big early lead, similar to the one the Lakers had in Game 3.

Before the game, Shawn Kemp, the SuperSonics’ powerful power forward, had said: “We’ve got to go out and play like men.”

But the Lakers were pretty manly themselves. At one point with his team behind by 12, Campbell dunked over Seattle’s Ervin Johnson, who couldn’t stop the ball even while getting a hand on it.

Things began to go very, very wrong for the SuperSonics after that. Hotheaded little Gary Payton drew a technical foul, and snapped at teammate Nate McMillan, who tried to calm him. And veteran time bomb Kendall Gill began to stare daggers at an official who called him for traveling.

He should have called Seattle for unraveling.

Coach George Karl could only watch and suffer as, once again, his talented team went down in flames.

Perhaps Karl can show his face in the Pacific Northwest again. Or perhaps not. “If the Pope visited Seattle,” goes a gag that the SuperSonic coach tells on himself, “and his hat fell in the lake, and I walked on water to fetch it and slapped it right back on his head, the headline in Seattle would be: ‘George Karl Can’t Swim.’ ”

There seemed no way Seattle could lose this series to some, but those people underestimated the Lakers and particularly Van Exel, who is playing some of the best ball in basketball at the moment.

They look like the Lakers of old, more every moment. Maybe they will against San Antonio as well.

Dennis Rodman could end up so impressed with them, he might dye his hair purple and gold.