NBA PLAYOFFS : Lakers Face Real Can of Worms Now : Now They Must Fish or Cut Bait

Nick Van Exel goes scoreless in the first half. Elden Campbell goes scoreless in the second half. You catch the San Antonio Spurs on a day without Dennis Rodman and you score a puny 71 points. You catch them without the Worm and you let them off the hook.

And pretty soon it is late Sunday afternoon and you are standing there in the Great Western Morgue, trying to pretend that your basketball season isn’t dead. You now must jangle the Spurs not once but twice at the Alamodome, where no Laker team has won. You are in deep, deep Texas sheepdip, and every last one of you knows it.

Cedric Ceballos knows it.

“We’re a cornered cat,” he says.

Anthony Peeler knows it.

“We’ve got no excuses now,” he says.

Sam Bowie knows it.

“Don’t count us out,” he says, hopefully, “but if we’re about to get knocked out, all I can say is, let’s go down fighting.”

Nothing much can save our heroes at the Alamo now, short of a Sam Bowie knife. The Lakers had a shot, but they couldn’t hit a thing. They made 27 baskets in 48 minutes. Had Rodman been in the game, he could have gotten 48 rebounds. In the third quarter alone, three of the Laker starters failed to score a point.

Del Harris stood flapping his wings before the fans, trying to whip them into a frenzy. Didn’t help. David Robinson fouled out, taking his 26 points and 22 rebounds with him. Didn’t help. The San Antonio bench contributed one point to the entire first half. Didn’t help. The de-Wormed Spur offense made exactly one three-point shot in this entire game. Did not help.

Shoot better without Rodman out there?

Not this day. Not the Lakers.

Instead, they shot like Rodman.

“We just could not drop it in that hole,” Ceballos said.

And that is why they find themselves in a fix. That is why the playoffs will continue with Byron Scott in them (for Indiana) and with A.C. Green in them (for Phoenix), but not our other favorite Lakers, not unless they have something up their sleeves other than their 36%-shooting arms.

San Antonio came up smelling like a rose. Everything suggested that this team was ready to be taken. Robinson was ready, but Rodman wasn’t. Ol’ Green Hair was back in the doghouse. He had lipped off to the boss Spur. He had flopped himself on the Forum floor in his stocking feet, watching the end of Friday night’s game like a lifeguard on a “Baywatch” beach.

That didn’t sit well with Robinson, the old Naval watchtower.

After concluding his formal postgame interview Sunday, Robinson stood aside and reflected further on Rodman’s effect on his team. He said, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘mad,’ but we were disappointed in Dennis. Definitely disappointed. You’ve got a coach. You’ve got to pay attention to that coach. You can’t be laying on your back, getting a suntan out there.

“When Dennis is playing, you have a tendency to expect him to get every rebound. I’m as guilty as anybody. A lot of times, I step away and let him have the rebound. But if he’s not out there, I can always get the rebound myself. Or Terry Cummings can. Or J.R. (Reid) can. We want Dennis to play, but he has to play by the rules.

“Nobody could argue with what the coach did.”

Nobody from San Antonio, maybe.

But the Lakers’ Ceballos had a different point of view.

“You try to put restrictions on that guy (Rodman). But you traded for the guy. You acquired him. You know what he can do, and you know how he does it,” Ceballos said. “Just let Dennis be Dennis. Stop trying to make him something he’s not.”

Some people believe the Spurs cannot win an NBA title without Rodman.

Others believe they cannot win one with him.

Yes, Robinson did outrebound every Laker player in Sunday’s game. But so did Cummings. Yes, the Lakers did not have to worry about Rodman’s rebounding. But they also had to guard five shooters, rather than four.

“This is a team. There are certain things a team has to maintain, and one of them is discipline,” the Admiral said. “If guys don’t abide by the rules, they need to suffer the consequences.”

Like not playing against the Lakers.

Who today are suffering worse.