Games in the Afternoon Are Becoming Routine

Nobody ever said being a matinee idol didn’t come with its drawbacks. For the Lakers, in Seattle for a second afternoon game in the last six days and starting a stretch in which they will play a day contest in eight of the next nine weekends, it means forgoing the usual game-day shootaround.

Instead, they’ll walk through the scouting report the day before, at the end of the regular practice. And they won’t stay out so late the night before.

“I don’t think they’ll stay home and read a book every night,” Coach Del Harris said. “But I think our guys are pretty disciplined in that area.”

Of the new routine that started this week, when the Lakers played the Orlando Magic on Monday afternoon because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and now makes them the sunshine boys on a regular basis because of NBC, Harris said:

“Because of the schedule, you really don’t get into a total routine anyway. The routine in the NBA is basically to adjust. One routine when we play singles, one with back-to-backs. Then you have the home routine and the road routine. Then you’ve got the Forum practice routine and the Southwest [L.A. College] practice routine. Hopefully, there’s enough changing and adjusting going on that the guys will look at change as normal.”

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Robert Horry, a Sun for about half of last season before being traded to the Lakers in the Cedric Ceballos deal, Wednesday returned to Phoenix for a regular-season game for the first time and was booed almost every time he touched the ball or was called for a foul.

The reaction was hardly a surprise. Any chance of it being an uneventful short run ended when Horry threw a towel in the face of his Sun coach, Danny Ainge, on the bench.

“That’s how they are here,” he said of Phoenix. “There’s nothing else to do here. The baseball team hasn’t started yet. The football team was doing OK, but basketball is still the thing. You step out of the boundaries, they’re going to remember.”

TONIGHT

at Seattle

* 12:30 p.m.

* Channel 4

Site--KeyArena.

Radio--KLAC (570).

Records--Lakers 31-9, SuperSonics 32-9.

Record vs. SuperSonics (1996-97)--3-1.

Update--The Lakers have won six in a row on the road, their best streak in two years. Their last defeat away from the Great Western Forum was Dec. 17 at Chicago. They are a league-best 14-5 on the road.