Mavericks Take Care of Business in Texas, Do a Job on the Lakers

DALLAS — Magic Johnson was icing his knees and ankles after Sunday’s spirited tiff against the Dallas Mavericks when his old pal Mark Aguirre ducked into the Laker locker room to pay his respects.

Aguirre leaned into Johnson’s mini press conference and handed Buck (Magic’s other nickname) two pieces of cardboard to autograph.

“Sign these for Shirley and Stephanie,” Aguirre said.

Then he said, “See you in L.A.,” and kissed his good buddy square on the cheek.

The kiss of death?

If the Lakers don’t find a way to control the shooting of Aguirre and the rebounding of Roy Tarpley, two Mavericks who were a heartbeat away from becoming Lakers two years ago, well then, the Buck stops here. The Lakers can kiss their dream goodby.

It’s too early to panic, but the Lakers have been given food for thought. They swaggered into Texas and staggered out. Got beat and beat-up two games in a row.

The explanation is simple.

“We just shoulda took care of what we shoulda took care of,” Magic said.

And what they shoulda took care of is rebounds--those things that ricochet off the rim and backboard and then hang in the air like floating nuggets of gold, to be plucked out of the sky by the leanest, meanest and hungriest of those waiting below.

Remember, not so long ago, the catchy battle cry of the mighty Lakers? Now it has been reduced to a playground taunt.

“No rebounds, no rings.”

Sunday the Lakers got outrebounded, 32-16, in the second half and couldn’t hold the Mavericks off the glass in the fourth quarter, when they turned as tight a National Basketball Assn. game as you’ll ever see into a Maverick laugher, 118-104.

Fourth quarter: Mavericks 22 rebounds, Lakers 5.

For an NBA team, that’s embarrassing. For the defending champions, it’s profoundly humbling.

“We were able to hold off the stampede of the young stallions for three quarters, being the veteran cowboys we are,” said Laker poet laureate Mychal Thompson. “But in the fourth quarter we couldn’t hold back the stampede.”

The Lakers thought they were ready for this stampede. After suffering hoof-in-face disease in Friday’s game, the Lakers were stung, angry, chastened and challenged.

Saturday they spent almost an hour and a half watching film, and it wasn’t a festival of Pat Riley and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar TV commercials. They watched a Maverick rebound festival.

Then the Lakers were given their assignment--keep the Mavericks off the boards.

Just before Sunday’s game, Riley was asked to estimate how many rebounds Roy Tarpley would get in this game.

“Under 10,” Riley said, grimly confident.

The questioner misunderstood the reply and asked, “A hundred and 10?”

Close. Roborebounder Tarpley snatched 13 golden nuggets Sunday, including seven in the fourth quarter. Seven of his rebounds were offensive, especially to the Lakers.

“A couple times I thought I had him boxed off but he got his long arm in there,” Thompson said.

Well, guys 7 feet tall will do that to you, especially if they have arms as long as pushbrooms, and what can you do?

“You can’t let him keep comin’ over the top,” Magic said with a shrug. “You have to take care of business.”

And Byron Scott said: “They (the Mavericks) didn’t do nothin’ special. They took care of business.”

Exactly what Johnson and Scott mean by taking care of business will not be found in Forbes Magazine or the Wall Street Journal. Maybe in Soldier of Fortune magazine, or Ninja Newsletter.

If the Mavericks climb up on your rear end, you can’t turn the other cheek. You do what you gotta do to get done what’s gotta be done.

When this series moved to Dallas for Games 3 and 4, the Mavericks were like Elvis, big-band music and the flat-earth theory--alive only in the hearts and imaginations of a tiny band of true believers.

Now, suddenly, the Mavericks are back. The battle, ladies and gentlemen, is joined.

Ominously enough for the Lakers, the Maverick comeback was accomplished by virtue of back-to-back fourth-quarter blitzes.

Gee, isn’t that the Lakers’ modus operandi? Wasn’t it always the other team that sat around the locker room after the game, glumly icing its bruised egos, talking about how they stayed with the Lakers until the end, then somehow let ‘em slip away?

Wasn’t the fourth quarter always Winnin’ Time (Magic Johnson patent pending)?

But twice in a row now the Lakers have come 12 minutes short. Brother can you spare a quarter?

Obviously, the home crowd helped the Mavericks rise to the occasion and to the rebounds Friday and Sunday.

“This is as loud as a heavy metal concert,” one music fan screamed at me during the fourth quarter, when the 17,007 Maveriacs in Reunion Arena got their vocal chords loosened up.

But more than heavy metal, this series has become heavy mental. Neither team can function on the road. The Mavericks play like Bambi in Los Angeles; like Rambo at home.

In Los Angeles, the Lakers play like headliners; in Dallas, they’re strictly a warmup act.

Now the action moves to Los Angeles, and it’s anybody’s series. Whoever can do what they gotta do will be taking care of business soon in the NBA finals.