As Push Comes to Shove, Utah Seeing Green : Jazz Unhappy With Laker’s Takedowns of Malone, Eaton

If Laker forward A.C. Green wakes up this morning and sees the Mailman in the mirror, he shouldn’t be surprised.

During the Lakers’ 113-100 win over Utah Sunday afternoon in Salt Lake City, Green and the Mailman--Utah’s Karl Malone--couldn’t have gotten any closer if they’d been wedged into the same phone booth. Even after the game, when Green came back onto the court for a radio interview, he was surrounded by 12,000 hostile fans, many of them carrying masks of Malone’s face attached to wooden sticks, nearly all of them booing.

“It was ridiculous,” Green said back in more hospitable surroundings Monday afternoon in the Forum, where the Lakers worked out in preparation for tonight’s Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals.

The best-of-seven series is tied at two games apiece. The series will revert to Salt Lake City for Game 6 Thursday night. A seventh game, if necessary, will be played at the Forum Saturday afternoon.

As ridiculous as it may seem to those who know Green only as a born-again lay preacher who speaks softly and carries a big Bible, the Lakers’ 6-foot 9-inch forward has become the leading heavy in what may turn into an increasingly nasty exercise.

The Jazz, who remember Green as the player who separated Utah forward Bobby Hansen’s shoulder with a hard foul last season, did not take kindly to Green’s takedowns of Malone in the first quarter and of 7-4 center Mark Eaton in the final quarter of the Lakers’ win Sunday. Utah Coach Frank Layden was so upset to see Green on the postgame show that he blasted Jazz broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley in the dressing room afterward.

Then Malone, a 6-9 budding Mr. Olympia, promised that this series was about to become a whole lot more intimate, and he didn’t mean sending candy or flowers. Hansen said that bodies are likely to be flying tonight, and he wasn’t talking about Dancing Barry taking a tumble.

“That’s interesting,” Green mused. “If that’s the way it’s going to be, I’d better stay in this weight room longer than I planned.”

The Lakers figured all along that they might have to break out their purple and gold combat fatigues sometime during this series.

“We always knew it was going to be a physical series,” Byron Scott said. “The farther it goes, the harder and more physical it will become.”

It’s a fact of life during the playoffs, Mychal Thompson noted.

“The closer you get (to the championship), the more violent it becomes,” said Thompson, who shared the task of guarding Malone despite a sprained ankle.

Although everyone in the Salt Palace and those watching on national TV might have seen the push Green gave Malone from behind while James Worthy was fouling him in front--a combination that put Malone flat on his back--few people saw what preceded it on the other end, Coach Pat Riley said.

“A.C. was trying to get down the floor, he was in front of Malone right at the top of the key, and he got a forearm smash, OK, in the back,” Riley said.

Ouch, you say? Riley said it would be folly to expect it to be any other way.

“Karl, A.C., Kurt (Rambis) or Mychal, that’s the way they’re going to play this game,” Riley said. “Karl Malone wants to play a physical game. He plays a very physical, post-up game. He roots for position, he works hard, and if you’re not going to defend him that way, he’s going to kill you.

“Karl understands that. Watch him banging and bumping in the post. And the officials let it go, because they know that’s how they’re going to play.”

Layden, naturally, is happy to have Malone on his side. But after seeing Malone flattened like a postage stamp on Sunday, the Utah coach again expressed his concern that one of these days, someone is going to wind up in the hospital.

“I don’t think anybody wants to hurt anybody else,” Layden said. “But there is too much rough play in the NBA, too many collisions.

“What (bothers) me is seeing Magic Johnson being pushed into the basket standard (by Hansen), A.C. Green knocks down Karl Malone. We’re all in this together. . . . Officials have to step in and take a stronger stand.

“It’s going to take a Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan or Karl Malone getting hurt before someone in the ivory tower says something or does something about it.”

Green, who replaced Rambis in the starting lineup for the first time since March 20, played 27 minutes, scored 8 points--including a couple of key tip-ins--and grabbed 7 rebounds. His takedown of Malone, he said, has received far more attention than it deserves.

“I didn’t see it as being anything out of the everyday part of the game,” Green said. “It got a lot of attention because it happened on the opponents’ court. A lot more was made of it than if it had happened here.”

Hansen said that takedown set the tone for the game, but Laker forward James Worthy said that Green established the theme before the tipoff, when he went to each player on the team and admonished them that Game 4 represented a chance for a new start. Worthy said he was impressed to see such leadership coming from Green, who is in his third season with the team.

“I was really focusing and thinking before the game that I wanted to be a focal point in whatever capacity I could be a help,” Green said. “What was happening was that we were getting down in the first quarter. They were getting a comfortable lead on us, and we had to fight to get back on it.

“I wanted to make sure we were mentally ready for battle. I was ready. I wanted to make sure they were.”

Those who see a contradiction in Green’s religious convictions and his aggressive play are missing the point, he said.

“I think what you see on the court is basically my own mentality,” Green said. “Most people misunderstand Christians when they think they’re basically . . . wimps or cowardly.

“It’s not that way. My life is totally contrary to that. On and off the court, I’m a very assertive, aggressive person. That’s the way I am, and I don’t change for no one.”

Laker Notes

Pat Riley made it through another season without being named the league’s coach of the year. The Lakers may have had the best record in the league--62- 20--but once again, Riley was no better than runner-up to Denver’s Doug Moe, who collected 41 votes to 25 for the Laker coach in voting by an 80-member panel made up of three reporters from each league city and 11 representatives of the national media.

Riley is a frequent target of some of Moe’s most pointed barbs, but the Laker coach had only praise for the coach of the Nuggets, whose team finished 54-28, its best record since entering the league in 1976 and a 17-game improvement over the season before. “He deserved it,” Riley said. “When the coaches voted, I voted for Doug Moe. He’s had a hell of a year. To take a team that was out of it and win a division title in the last week of the season was an incredible drive.”

On whether he was just as deserving, Riley said: “I don’t make those decisions, I don’t make those judgments. My reality exceeds any of my dreams. Coaching this team . . . being part of this group, is good enough for me.”