Ceballos Up Creek Without a Paddle?

Staying true to his team name, if not his team, Cedric Ceballos apparently ditched the Lakers during an important part of the season to spend time boating on Lake Havasu in Arizona.

His agent, Fred Slaughter, phoned the Lakers Friday morning, a day after Ceballos was suspended indefinitely, to say their team captain and leading scorer was safe and healthy, but working out a personal matter. The call came about the same time the man who rented Ceballos a houseboat told the Associated Press:

“He’s on the lake having a good time. He’s got his family with him and he’s just out having a good time.”

He had better be. It’s a $30,000 trip so far, not to mention the toll it may take among fans and Laker players and staff who would have preferred to see one of their top players in uniform Thursday at Seattle, when they had a chance to pick up a game on Houston in the race for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

Instead, their bench thinned out and outscored, 30-10, the Lakers lost by 11 points after being within five with two minutes remaining. Ceballos, meanwhile, lost $27,378 for the suspension, following a $1,000 fine for skipping practice the day before and whatever other penalties the Lakers add for missing the team flight and game-day shootaround. In canceling Friday’s scheduled workout, they saved him another $1,000.

“We don’t want to penalize or fine any of our players,” Executive Vice President Jerry West said. “But this is just not acceptable.”

The Lakers have not decided what course of action to take when Ceballos does return, though it now appears unlikely they will keep him on the suspended list an extra game--at the same $27,738 per game--for every one he misses while AWOL. The when part is also unclear.

As of Friday evening, team officials still had not heard from Ceballos, although there appeared to be a chance he would be at practice today. After that comes Sunday night’s game against the Charlotte Hornets at the Forum, then a six-game trip starting at Orlando as the final leg of the regular season begins.

With the magic number at four to clinch a playoff spot, the Lakers are left to wonder why a team captain would bolt without explanation at such a critical time, when he plans to return and what effect this will have.

“Anything can be a distraction for a team,” Coach Del Harris said. “Winning eight in a row, losing three in a row, injuries, illnesses, absences. The psyche of a team is always a delicate thing. What’s important for a good team is to not be sidetracked.”

The Lakers have proved they are a good team even without Ceballos. They got used to playing without him last season, going 15-9 when he was out because of injuries, just as they had learned to accept his brooding at the end of the bench, sometimes separated from the other players, after being pulled from games. The Lakers are 2-1 without him this season.

The disappearance may have been the same moody Ceballos, just with the volume turned up.

A series of events might have set the stage, although the return of Magic Johnson is not necessarily among them. In fact, for most of the recent games in which Ceballos has had reduced minutes--31 against the Clippers, 29 against the Dallas Mavericks, 31 against the Vancouver Grizzlies--Johnson was sidelined because of a calf injury.

Then came March 3, a nationally televised game against the Houston Rockets at the Forum. Ceballos played only 24 minutes, but that was mostly because Houston’s three-guard alignment in the second half was doing damage, and Harris decided to counter with the same to match up on defense.

Ceballos’ minutes climbed back up from there--31 and 32 the next two, then 37, 37, 32 and 38, the last despite going scoreless in the second half of a one-point home loss to Orlando. The 32 minutes before that, against Milwaukee, were the second-most of any Laker.

Then there was Tuesday against the SuperSonics: 12 minutes, his fewest in 130 regular-season and playoff games as a Laker, and only four minutes in the second half. Johnson was getting more of his time at small forward, as had been the case for parts of the previous five games. Ceballos still played enough to miss six of seven shots and pick up three fouls.

If Ceballos was doing a slow burn against Harris, he hid it well after that game. The next thing anyone knew, he missed the charter flight to Seattle, bound for his own private destination to work out personal problems and rent a houseboat.