Laker Notebook : Magic, Who Has Been There, Comforts His Friend Isiah

When the phone rang and it was Isiah Thomas on the other end, Magic Johnson wasn’t surprised. He had been expecting the late-night call.

They’re best friends, and, after all, Thomas had stayed up all night with Johnson in a Boston hotel room that June in 1984, when the Lakers had lost to the Celtics in the seventh game of the National Basketball Assn. finals.

On that occasion, Thomas had been the comforter. This time, Johnson knew the Detroit guard--who threw a certain Piston win into Larry Bird’s hands in the closing seconds of the Celtics’ 108-107 win Tuesday night--would need some consoling.

“I guess you feel sick,” Johnson said Wednesday afternoon after a workout by the Lakers, who are awaiting a winner to emerge from the East so that the NBA finals can proceed.

“It’s a feeling no fan, nobody else knows, unless they’ve been through it before. For me, it brought back memories that I want to forget.”

Chick Hearn, sitting in an empty Forum after practice, retrieved that memory as if it had happened yesterday, instead of in the waning seconds of Game 2 of the 1984 finals. That’s when Gerald Henderson of the Celtics stole a pass by James Worthy and scored a layup that sent the game into overtime. The Celtics went on to win the game, which gave them a split in Boston. They eventually won the series.

Hearn pointed to various spots on the court, the ones that corresponded to the cursed places on the Boston Garden parquet that night. There were 17 seconds left, Kevin McHale had just missed two free throws, and Magic Johnson had called time out.

There, Hearn pointed, that’s where Johnson in-bounded the ball to Worthy in the backcourt. And there, that’s where Worthy was, right by the Laker emblem, when he tried to loop a cross-court pass to Byron Scott, only to have Henderson pick it off.

Tuesday night, Magic Johnson was watching on TV with friends from Michigan when Thomas prepared to in-bound the ball with six seconds left and Detroit ahead by a point.

“At first you look and say, ‘OK,’ ” Johnson said, recalling the situation. “Then, I see him sneaking.”

“Him,” of course, was Bird, who stepped in front of Bill Laimbeer and intercepted the pass, then fed Dennis Johnson for the game-winning layup with a second left.

“After it happened, Gerald Henderson came into my eyes,” Magic said. “You never forget that, because it’s one championship you don’t have.”

When Thomas called, Johnson said, they didn’t rehash the play.

“We didn’t go over the play because there’s nothing to say to ease his pain,” Johnson said.

“We just talked, about anything, just to try to ease some of it. It happens to everybody.”

It happened to the Pistons, Laker Coach Pat Riley said, because they had begun celebrating too soon.

“There were three guys celebrating as they went the other way down the court,” Riley said. “(Dennis) Rodman was doing his thing, (Rick) Mahorn was talking to somebody out of bounds, even (Joe) Dumars was down the other end.

“The game was over with, in their minds. But Larry Bird was still in it.

“It wasn’t as much Larry Bird making the play as Detroit not making the right play. That’s poise.”

To Riley, plays like that are “ultimate moments, a freeze frame.”

He said: “I could see the whole thing coming. I didn’t think Isiah would throw the ball to (Laimbeer). I couldn’t believe he threw it, and Bill wasn’t aggressive to the ball.”

When you haven’t been through it--the Pistons are playing in their first conference final since moving to Detroit--you’re susceptible to making such fatal errors, Riley said.

“You have to have lived through these things,” Riley said. “We’ve been through the pain. We’ve had a lot of similar painful experiences in the last six years.”

Did it surprise Riley to see the Celtics transform certain defeat into a stunning win? No way.

“Championship teams are like a cat,” Riley said. “They have nine lives. They have unbelievable resiliency and character.”

The Pistons will respond in one of two ways tonight in Game 6 when they play the Celtics in Detroit, Magic Johnson said. They’ll either recognize how close they came to winning Tuesday and build on that, or dwell on the memory to the point of being demoralized.

“They have a lot of young guys and there are a lot of young guys who emotionally can’t bounce back,” he said. “We’ll just have to see what happens.”

In the meantime, Johnson would prefer to put his own ghosts to rest.

“You hurt to see it happen, to see (Thomas) lose,” he said. “You know how he’s feeling ‘cause it’s happened to you.”

Laker Notes If Detroit wins tonight and the Eastern Conference final goes to a seventh game Saturday in Boston, the Lakers may head to Santa Barbara for the weekend, Coach Pat Riley said. It’s not an outing they’re planning but rather a chance to cut down on the distractions during their extended layoff. “I got 10 calls myself yesterday,” Riley said. “People saying, ‘We’re having a party, why don’t you come over and celebrate.’ For (the team) to get together somewhere for two or three days would be perfect. To focus in on each other would take care of the distractions.” Magic Johnson, for one, was all for the idea. “Why take chances?” he said. “It’s been a long time since October. No sense in letting up now.” . . . Guard Wes Matthews was not at practice Wednesday after informing team officials that his grandmother had died. . . . Rookie Billy Thompson did not practice, either, because of a hyper-extended left knee and isn’t expected to play in the finals.

If Boston wins tonight, the finals will begin Sunday at the Forum, with Game 2 Tuesday night at 6. If Boston-Detroit goes seven, the finals will open Tuesday at Boston, with another game there Thursday night. . . . Riley called the $7,500 fine levied against Boston’s Robert Parish for punching Detroit’s Bill Laimbeer Tuesday night “chump change.” Said Riley about Parish’s one-game suspension: “He wasn’t going to play, anyway.” The officials claim they didn’t see Parish retaliate against Laimbeer, whose headlock on Larry Bird Saturday provoked a fight that resulted in both players being ejected and fined. “That was a blatant take-down, as bad as I’ve ever seen,” Riley said. “As bad as (Kevin) McHale (who clothes-lined Kurt Rambis in the ’84 playoffs). I think it unnerved everybody and unnerved the officials.” There may be a reason both officials claimed they didn’t see Parish punch Laimbeer, Riley said. “Maybe he deserved it.” Added the Laker coach: “I don’t believe in an eye for an eye; you’ve got to forgive. But hey, this is the NBA.”