In a 36-Minute Game, Lakers UnstoppaBull

Now that was a basketball game. For three quarters the Lakers looked about as strong as an NBA team can look, only to be taught by the Bulls that if L.A. has any intention of returning to Chicago for the 1997 NBA Finals, be sure to remember that games are four quarters--at least.

In without a doubt the best NBA game of this season, the Bulls won, 129-123, in overtime, Tuesday night at the United Center, even though the 72 points the Lakers poured through the hoop by halftime were 15 more than the Orlando Magic recently scored in an entire game.

Five full years have passed since the Bulls checked into a Marina Del Rey hotel under bogus names--Jordan registering as “Leroy Smith,� Horace Grant as “Clemson Tiger� and Coach Phil Jackson as “Chief Swift Eagle�--and proceeded to win their first NBA championship, in the summer of 1991. But that was then, and this is now.

This was the team of the ‘80s versus the team of the ‘90s, with the Lakers out to assert themselves as a team for the 21st century. Even daring to use 18-year-old Kobe Bryant to guard Air Jordan for several minutes, Coach Del Harris threw everything but the United Center lavatory sink at the Bulls, who spent much of the night watching helplessly as Shaquille O’Neal did practically anything he pleased.

With the Big Kahuna, Luc Longley, still out with a surfing injury, not even sherbet-head Dennis Rodman could do anything to defend against the Lakers during those first three periods. O’Neal scored at will--and not only on dunks, but with spin moves, finger-rolls and no-arc shots from the paint that Shaq practically stuffed from five feet away.

Elden Campbell was every bit as dominating as O’Neal, and when those two weren’t scoring, Eddie Jones was dive-bombing the baseline for a reverse dunk, Nick Van Exel hip-hopped and shadow-boxed for the crowd after one perfect outside shot after another, and even Bryant followed up his own miss to put the Lakers on top by 21 points, 53-32.

Rarely have the Bulls looked like such a beaten team, not even way back on Nov. 23, 1966, when a Laker team astounded Chicago with a record-breaking 91-point second half.

Everybody loved playing the Bulls in those days. But nobody, and I mean nobody, does to today’s Chicago Bulls what these Lakers did to them in this game, running up 101 points by the end of the third quarter. The only way Chicago survived this game was that non-starter Toni Kukoc got into a “zone� with an 18-point fourth quarter, making shots from somewhere in the vicinity of downtown Evanston.

It turned out to be a night when neither Jordan nor O’Neal could buy a basket with their hundreds of millions of dollars during crunch time, while teammates Van Exel and Kukoc carried the load like a couple of Dream Teamers.

For those of us who waited quite a while to see if L.A. is once again in the same league as Chicago, figuratively as well as literally, we got our answer. Yes, as the Lakers demonstrated by pulling 22 points ahead while administering a thorough Bull-whipping. And no, as the Lakers demonstrated by showing that they still have much to learn.

Harris had the team he has been longing for, playing attentive defense, forcing the Bulls to let centers Bill Wennington and Robert Parish shoot, often keeping Jordan and Pippen so quiet on offense that you hardly knew they were there. Even the rookies took it right to the Bulls, with Bryant putting himself right in the superstars’ faces, and Derek Fisher draining a jumper with Randy Brown hanging all over him.

It was entertaining, electrifying basketball. The Lakers gave notice that the Bulls--who beat L.A., Portland, Phoenix and Seattle for their four championships--should not automatically be expecting a fifth opponent in the NBA finals next summer, like, say, Utah.

But the Bulls didn’t get where they are by playing three quarters of basketball. The Lakers have shown everybody that they can play with the Bulls. But they haven’t shown anybody that they can beat them.