Decisive Shot at Alamo One for History Books

Now they have two things to remember at the Alamo.

Making a stand to a man that would have done the old fortress proud, the Lakers survived Game 5 of the Western Conference playoffs and lived to play another day, with Nick Van Exel shooting the San Antonio Spurs right through the heart.

Down here where it’s 92 degrees in the shade and where gnats fly around the basketball dome, nobody among 35,888 eyewitnesses will soon forget the way Van Exel stormed the hoop, fired on a dead run and sent the Spurs spinning, 98-96, in an overtime game every bit as great as those from the Laker golden era.

“The fans who have been following the Lakers know that we don’t die easily,” said their leader, Coach Del Harris.

“We felt we won Game 2, except for certain circumstances, and we know we should have won Game 3. But we’re still here. We’re alive and kicking.”

The cannon fire was Van Exel’s, but everybody passed the ammunition. Cedric Ceballos had a huge first half. Elden Campbell again played in the Alamodome as though he owns it. Anthony Peeler scored 15 points. Vlade Divac cleared 15 rebounds. Eddie Jones gave a strong 35 minutes off the bench. The Lakers won this one as a unit.

Best news of all was the revival of Ceballos, whose 20 points, eight rebounds, four steals and two blocks compensated for his struggles in previous games.

Ninety games into a season, a coaching staff can only tinker or fine-tune so much. A quandary for the Laker coaches, nevertheless, continued to be what they could do to unshackle Ceballos, a jump-shooter by nature whose vulnerability San Antonio’s scouts had plainly detected.

A stratagem used by the Spurs throughout this series was to have 6-foot-8 forward Sean Elliott step right up in Ceballos’ face, crowding him. This necessitated a drive to the hoop rather than a jumper by Ceballos, whose weakness is that he is not a particularly deft passer. Unable to dump off to an open man, Ceballos often lost control of the ball in traffic or put up a poor shot.

Endeavoring to break him of this habit, even at this late date, the Laker coaches looked for ways to free Ceballos for what he does best. Funny thing was, they were fairly satisfied for a change with his defense, which is generally the worst part of Ceballos’ game. Almost without notice he had clamped down on Elliott, who after averaging 19 points in a playoff series with Denver, was scoring only 13.3 against the Lakers.

Harris has had no complaint with his club’s defense.

“Here we are, going head-to-head against the No. 4 best-scoring team in the league, and look at what we’ve accomplished,” Harris said with obvious pride before Tuesday’s game, his words reverberating off the Alamodome’s hallway walls.

“Last game, all the Spurs got off us was 80 points. The second game of the series, that one was tied at 83 after regulation. And don’t forget that we also held the Spurs to 72 points for most of Game 3 before they got a bunch on us in a hurry during garbage time. They’ve only scored 100 off us once this whole series.”

The first points of this life-or-death game for the Lakers were tallied by Ceballos, with a bomb from just inside the three-point line. Next trip downcourt, Ceballos nailed a three-point shot, scoring from a hard-right angle. And his medium-range jumper at 5:19 of the first quarter gave him seven points, or as many as he had scored in three of the previous four Laker-Spur games.

Falling behind from the start, San Antonio hurt its cause further with three technical fouls. A nasty attitude helps sometimes, but not when one of the officials is Steve Davie, who was described by Spur broadcaster Dave Barnett as having “the shortest fuse in the league.”

At one point, feeling Divac’s elbow too near his throat, J.R. Reid judo-chopped him on the arm, to which Divac responded with a hard shove. It was at that point that a certain red-haired individual on the Spurs’ bench sat up and shed his warm-up jacket.

Ceballos and the Lakers had gotten hot enough that Coach Bob Hill of the Spurs finally had to reach a rapprochement with his henna-rinsed malcontent, Dennis Rodman, sending him into the game. Cutting into a 13-point disadvantage, Rodman did a couple of his runaway-pony fast breaks. He almost single-handedly reduced L.A.’s edge to 45-41, arousing the crowd with a thundering dunk.

Thereafter, nothing came easy for the Lakers. Ceballos went ice cold, not scoring in the second half. Divac struggled all evening to locate the hoop. But there was one thing that the Laker defense absolutely refused to do, and that was surrender that lead. Try as they might, the Spurs could catch but not overtake the Lakers, at least until the thrilling end.

“They bent, but they just would not break,” David Robinson said.

Even when the situation seemed hopeless for the visitors, Van Exel crashed the hoop for a lay-up that got L.A. as close as 96-93, then stole the ball in a half-court trap and fed it to Ceballos, who had to be snagged by Reid from behind. San Antonio simply could not score the basket that would wrap up this game.

First, Avery Johnson missed an open jump shot. And the Lakers got within a point. Then Elliott missed from the corner. Then Robinson missed, after Doc Rivers had all but captured the series for the Spurs by stripping the ball from Campbell in the lane.

“We just let them back in the game, all the time, all the time,” Hill said with a wince.

“Maybe we got too much swagger. Maybe we got too cocky. All I know is that we didn’t stay aggressive. And if you don’t stay aggressive, then you lose.”

The Lakers stayed aggressive, to the very last drop. In the final ticks of overtime, Campbell, playing so well in the Alamodome that the Spurs should make Jerry West an offer for him the instant this season is over, went strong to the hoop with a mighty effort to save the day. But when his finger roll spun around the rim and out, the Lakers looked doomed.

But stay aggressive, that’s the key. With a lunge that saved the season, Divac got to the bounding basketball a fraction of a second before Johnson did, poking it toward Van Exel. Bending for it, Van Exel made an amazing move with his hips, under the circumstances, faking one way and going the other--right at the hoop.

And shot the ball into it.

Once again, the Alamo neighborhood was shell-shocked.

As for Inglewood. . . .

“Our fans are waiting for us,” a celebrating Ceballos said. “Let’s go home and see them.”