Lakernoise

It’s time for another “manhood” check for Phil Jackson’s Lakers team.
Yes, they beat the Celtics in Los Angeles on Christmas day. That has helped Jackson’s young players in dealing with their profound embarrassments of the 2008 championship series against Boston.
But those bad memories linger and will continue to do so.
Here’s the hard part: The Lakers will never put that series behind them unless they win the championship series this year. It would help if they claimed that title with a win over the Celtics. That’s all getting way ahead of the task at hand, of course.
Before they win another title, the Lakers have to emerge from a challenging field in the Western Conference.
Still, that doesn’t set aside the psychology of all this.
You could blame some of this on the six championship losses the Lakers suffered to Bill Russell and the Celtics back in the sixties. But that deep pain really precedes memory for most involved in today’s NBA.
If you want to look to the past for an antecedent to the current Laker mind-set, you have to look no further than 1984. That was the true birth of the woofing and physicality that Kevin Garnett and his current Celtics teammates practice so effectively today.
Specifically, it was Game 3 of the 1984 championship series between the Celtics and the Lakers with the series tied 1-1.
The Lakers had lost a disappointing Game 2 in Boston but quickly recovered back home in the Forum. Magic Johnson had a Finals record 21 assists, and Showtime rolled to a 137-104 win. Bird was outraged at Boston’s flat performance. “We played like a bunch of sissies,” Bird told the media afterward.
Sissies wasn’t the word Bird used when he took up the subject with his teammates.
The next day the Los Angeles papers began touting James Worthy as the series MVP, a development that infuriated the Celtics. None was angrier than Dennis Johnson, who had scored only four points in Game 3. “1 thought I was into the game,” he said, “but Game 3 convinced me I wasn’t. It was a case of getting mentally and physically aggressive.”
Boston Coach K. C. Jones adjusted the Boston defense, switching Dennis Johnson to cover Magic Johnson. Regardless, the Lakers took an early lead and seemed poised to again run off with the game. From the bench, Boston’s M. L. Carr vociferously lobbied for the Celtics to become more physical. Kevin McHale complied in the second quarter when he clotheslined Kurt Rambis on a breakaway, causing, a ruckus under the basket. The incident awakened the Celtics and gave the Lakers reason to pause
Later Riley would call the Celtics “a bunch of thugs.”
This is humorous, of course, because the sequence gave Riley his big idea. When he became coach of the New York Knicks, he employed Dick Harter as his assistant to set up a game of pure thuggery, launching the NBA on a new era of physical play.
But we digress.
Cedric Maxwell and his teammates were overjoyed with the McHale development. “Before Kevin McHale hit Kurt Rambis, the Lakers were just running across the street whenever they wanted,” he said. “Now they stop at the corner, push the button, wait for the light, and Iook both ways.”
Still, Los Angeles held a five-point lead with less than a minute to play in regulation. But Boston’s Robert Parish stole a bad pass from Johnson, and the Laker point guard later missed two key free throws, allowing the Celtics to force an overtime. Late in the extra period, Worthy faced a key free throw. But Carr hooted loudly from the bench that he would miss. Worthy did, and Maxwell stepped up and greeted him with the choke sign. The Celtics vaulted to a 129-125 win to tie the series again and regain the home-court edge. They went on to claim the series and scorch a painful reminder into the Lakers organization about its 1960s humiliation at the hands of the Celtics.
“Cedric Maxwell and M. L. Carr would try to talk you out of your game,” James Worthy told me later. “They’d do a good job of it. They made me mad with the choke signs. I really didn’t say anything, except, ‘Forget you,’ or something like that. But they were good at taunting you and keeping you disoriented.”
And then there was the matter of Bird’s psyche game. “Bird talked as tough as he played,” Worthy told me. “He’d always say, ‘Get down!’ or ‘In your face!’ or ‘You can’t guard me!’ Whatever he could use to throw you off balance. That was his biggest weapon over the years. Back then, when I was young and didn’t know any better, I thought he was a jerk. But after reflecting back, I realized that was just part of his game. He was measuring and analyzing his opponents, and he would do it from the moment he stepped on the floor. In the lay-up line, he’d be looking down there at you, just checking out your tendencies and your mannerisms and your posture. He could tell if your confidence wasn’t right. He could tell. He could sense the vibe. If you came out on him and really didn’t bump him or weren’t aggressive with him, he knew. He knew he had you. If you showed any signs of doubt, you were through with Larry.”
The Lakers can talk about these developments with a chuckle these days. They smacked down the Celtics in Boston to win the 1985 title. Then they did it again for good measure in 1987.
All of that points to the long hard road to sanity for the current edition of the Lakers. They’ve just lost fine young center Andrew Bynum to a knee injury.
They still have match-up issues with Boston.
“I felt that the Celtics were a better team going into the finals,” Lakers great Jerry West told me after last year’s series. “I didn’t feel the Lakers had anyone to cover Paul Pierce. And Boston’s defense was much too good for them.”
Trevor Ariza, L.A.’s promising young defender at the small forward, is just coming back from a concussion suffered in a late January home loss against Charlotte.
Lakers consultant Tex Winter also fretted before the series that the Lakers couldn’t contend with Boston’s physical frontcourt.
Jackson’s Lakers are having to show they can contend with these issues one step at a time. If they’re fortunate, they’ll be able to put the matter to rest for good in June. Tonight is just one more step in that direction.