View From The Other Side

There’s an inconceivable sight every day around Los Angeles if you remember to look--yes, the posh espresso shop in Larry Flynt’s Hustler store on Sunset Boulevard counts.

So on Wednesday, there it was, the Lakers, practicing and practicing, making everybody wait, conveying the urgency, still trying to finish off the Portland Trail Blazers, who had been written off after Sunday because that was the only rational thing to do with them.

Phil Jackson called his team together, and if you cupped your ear, you almost could hear him say: “Now, you have to watch Reggie Miller when he . . . Oh, sorry. . . . I mean, the Knicks will come at you with waves of . . . Oh, sorry.”

Almost.

Instead, they were saying strange things.

“Right after the game last night,” guard Derek Fisher said, “it almost seemed surreal. . . . It was just a weird feeling out there. I don’t know if I can really point to any one thing in particular.”

Pondering the visiting teams’ combined 4-1 record, Jackson said: “I have no idea [why]. I’m sure Mike [Dunleavy] and I would both like to figure that out.”

Say one thing for the Trail Blazers: Even if they go down Friday night in four quarters after leading after two--that’s not a prediction, for this series deserves no more of those--they still will have upgraded themselves from forgettable runner-up to singular one. They have produced possibly the two darndest wins of the whole NBA season.

Let’s see: There was the must-be-a-mirage, 106-77 win with the 28-8 third quarter in Game 2, only the Lakers’ worst loss of the season. Then there was the road win from the end of the plank Tuesday, an admirable show of intestines with a memorable asterisk in that it shouldn’t have included the Trail Blazers’ most valuable player, Scottie Pippen, whom the league inarguably should have suspended for what Jackson called his “embarrassing blow” to the head of John Salley in Game 4.

You could dismiss that as a loser venting steam until you saw the videotape and realized Jackson was right. As yet another wrinkle in this bizarre series, this was one of those rare, easy issues. You either think it deserved a one-game suspension or you’re wrong.