THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Lakers Need to Stop Talking the Talk and Try Walking the Walk

Spinning the dials, wondering whatever happened to the Lake Show?

Last season it was a surprise hit. This year instead of fast breaks and dunks, it’s been three-point shots, complaints about replacement officials and broken refrigerators.

OK, the Lakers are young, they have had injuries, they can’t sneak up on people anymore and they could still be 13-6 except for those three consecutive fourth-quarter gags. They’re soft in the middle but they can get $9 million under the cap next summer and hire themselves some cavalry to ride to the rescue.

In the meantime, however, maybe you’d like to see a little attitude adjustment?

Try less taunting of opponents and complaining about referees, more standing up and taking responsibility.

In a recent victory over the Suns, there was so much taunting the guys on the Phoenix bench, Coach Del Harris asked his players the next day if they might zip it up.

Fat chance. In early warmups before the game at San Antonio, they were telling the Spurs, whom they remembered so fondly from last spring, what they were going to do to them. The Spurs went back to their dressing room and reported to their teammates, insult by insult, firing everyone up, and they came back out and walked all over the Lakers.

In the modern game, of course, talking is just part of the deal. This team takes its cue from its youngest player, Nick Van Exel whose attitude is what drives him, even if it obliges him to learn things the hard way (see ’93 draft).

If he’s their acknowledged leader, it’s not enough that he’s a hard-bitten competitor. He has to set the tone, which means he can’t say “four other guys” could have called the time out he forgot about in the final seconds at Phoenix when he let himself get tied up.

His proper response was: I messed up, it’s as unacceptable for me as anyone else and I intend to hold everyone to that, starting with me.

If the Lakers hope to land Shaquille O’Neal or Dikembe Mutombo next summer, they have to show they already have hard-nosed players. Bad things happen to everyone, including last season’s Lakers, who fought through them. They’ve never stopped talking the talk. Time to start walking the walk again.

THE HOLY WAR: ALONZO VS. WORLD

Alonzo Mourning, a zealot, now plays for Pat Riley, whose style is like that of a knight going on crusade. The result is a hot time in whatever town they’re playing.

In last week’s home-and-home with the Boston Celtics, the Miami Heat woke up the nodding Celtics with a brawl that started when rookie Kurt Thomas sucker-punched peaceable Pervis Ellison. The Celtics tied it on Dana Barros’ three-pointer at the end of regulation and won in double overtime, setting the stage for the rematch when they could do some real venting.

After one of his nine blocks, Mourning mimicked pulling a trigger. He was called for a technical foul and the fans started imitating the gesture. Celtic Coach M.L. Carr pulled Mourning aside on the sideline and told him how inappropriate that was in an age in which children are shooting each other.

“He said, ‘You are absolutely right,’ ” Carr said later. “And that showed class to do that.”

The Heat led by 12 after three quarters, when Mourning flexed his right biceps, pointed to it and yelled to the Celtic bench.

In reply, Celtic assistant Dennis Johnson tapped his head with his finger. The Celtics staged another fourth-quarter rally and upset the Heat again.

“I look at our team and their team,” Mourning moaned later. “I look at us being short-handed [Billy Owens was out with a bruised shoulder, jarred by a pick in the first Boston game] and I think we are still a better team than they are. So, what is it?”

I don’t know. Maturity?

Proving there are few moral imperatives in the NBA next to winning, after the game a delighted Carr did Mourning’s trigger-pulling gesture.

That was only three days out of a Heat season that looks like a safe bet to be the best in franchise history, assuming they make it to April.

D.C. IN PHILLY: LUKE’S GOT HIS WORK CUT OUT

How’s this for openers? Derrick Coleman shows up big as a house, waddles onto the floor, scores 17 points, takes 11 rebounds and the 76ers snap an 11-game losing streak.

Of course, being D.C., he’s upset as usual.

Net forward Jayson Williams describes Coleman’s reaction to the deal as, “Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep.”

“He didn’t want to be a Sixer, no,” Williams says. “I’m not going to believe he’s there until I see him in a Sixer uniform.”

However 76er Coach-General Manager John Lucas, the last of the great players’ coaches, is backpedaling faster than Deion Sanders, rewriting the rules to accommodate the new order.

Luke had a rule that players must wear jackets and ties but it must have seemed too much like the one that prompted D.C, to ask Net Coach Butch Beard if he could write him a check for a season’s worth of fines. Coleman showed up for the first 76er game wearing a sweater. Lucas said it looked nice on him.

D.C. doesn’t like to practice on days after games--”I don’t like to practice when my body is depleted.” OK, he doesn’t have to.

“He said something about playing his way into shape and not practicing,” said Lucas. “That’s fine.”

Honeymoons, aren’t they great? Start your stopwatch.

NAMES AND NUMBERS

David Robinson’s new “lifetime” contract takes him off the ’97 market and guarantees he’ll stay in San Antonio--he thinks. “That was very, very important to me,” Robinson said. “That’s one of the things my wife and I discussed. We wanted to build a house, we wanted to raise our kids here. And it would have been a big factor in my decision if I thought we weren’t going to stay here.” . . . Meanwhile, the Spurs, trying to wheedle yet another arena--they don’t like the cavernous Alamodome--out of a small-market city that doesn’t have much corporate money to buy luxury boxes, don’t sound as sure. Team president Jack Diller says they are committed to “continue our discussions with the city to find a basis in order to--even with the new economics of basketball--make it work here.”

Shell game: David Falk, scourge of the players’ union (he led last summer’s insurgency challenge) and the Hornets (he’s Mourning’s agent), continues his reign of terror. Next targets: the New York Knicks (Falk has Patrick Ewing, free in ‘97), the Denver Nuggets (Dikembe Mutombo, free next summer) and the Washington Bullets (Juwan Howard, next summer). . . . Ewing is getting $19 million on a balloon payment this season, which Falk argues is not obscene but a sign of things to come. “I think there is going to be a new salary structure in the league next summer for the superstars,” he says. “I think there will be players making in excess of $20 million a year. I think Patrick is one of the elite players in the league and that he would certainly be at the forefront in terms of salary. It’s up to me to set the market with Dikembe, Alonzo and Juwan Howard this summer.”

Comment: Nice try. When Ewing’s contract ends, he will be 35 and he’s already a step below the elite centers, Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon and O’Neal.

Big moment at the Sports Arena: In a routine loss to Orlando, Brent Barry scores 10 points in four possessions, including two shots so wild Coach Bill Fitch has to call time to chill him out. The kid can shoot--he’s still over 50% on threes--handle and pass. When he calms down, we’re talking big-timer. On ESPN’s SportsCenter, they’re already calling him “Pistol.”

Net General Manager Willis Reed is a folk hero in New York but after acquiring Benoit Benjamin, Yinka Dare and Shawn Bradley, they no longer want his autograph but his head on a stick. TNT’s Chuck Daly ripped the deal. “Based on what I’ve heard from people I know the kid [Bradley] just doesn’t want to work,” he said. “And face it, he hasn’t improved since he’s been in the league. He’s gone downhill, in fact.” Outgoing point guard Kenny Anderson also thought little of the deal. “I’m not trying to criticize anybody but Derrick was worth more,” he said.

Bradley, asked at his arrival press conference if he really loves the game, bristled. “Give me a break,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. There are too many things I could do with my life if I didn’t love basketball. Changing light bulbs would be easy for somebody 7-6 but I love to play basketball.”

Comment: If his love survives New Jersey, we’ll know it was real.

Another sign that the Michael Jordan comparisons were overdrawn: 76er prodigy Jerry Stackhouse, catching his first flak for such youthful excesses as demanding Bradley’s trade and noting his teammates didn’t come from winning programs like North Carolina, now refuses to talk before games. Jordan was in the league for eight seasons before he started pulling that stuff. . . . After Toronto’s Oliver Miller scored 28 points in a loss to the Heat, Riley called him an oxymoron. He meant Miller was a contradiction in terms, a 320-pounder with great skills, not a combination ox and moron, no matter what Ollie’s former employers, the Suns and Pistons, say. . . . With replacement refs, there were 27 suspensions, as opposed to 21 all last season. Said Mourning at the news the real refs were returning: “Thank you, Lord.”