Past Is Present After Debacle

SALT LAKE CITY — Come, Laker children, form a circle and sit down. Are you all here? Eddie, there’s a place for you over there. Nick, lower your elbows and take that spot. Shaq, I want you right in front of me. Elden, where’s Elden?

I want to tell you a story about something that happened around this time of the year in 1985.

For most of you, I know that’s ancient history. Kobe, were you even a gleam in Jellybean’s eye yet?

I also know you don’t like hearing about the old Lakers, like “Showtime” was a vaudeville act that had nothing to do with whatever Shaq-fu thing it is you do today. But you might find this story appropriate to the situation you find yourselves in after that embarrassing 35-point loss to the Utah Jazz on Saturday.

That was the worst playoff loss in Laker history, but only one-point worse than the 148-114 beating the team took from the Celtics in the first game of the 1985 finals at Boston Garden.

It would have been called the Boston Massacre, except that name was already taken. So it became known as the Memorial Day Massacre.

A little background: The year before, in 1984, the Lakers also were better than the Celtics and figured to beat them for the first time in eight championship series between the two teams, ending a frustration for the franchise that dated to 1959 and its days in Minneapolis.

The Lakers led the series, 2-1, and were en route to a victory in Game 4 at the Forum when Kevin McHale applied a vicious clothesline tackle to Kurt Rambis, almost breaking his neck and halting the Lakers’ momentum. Boston won the championship in seven games.

The Lakers said they would remember if they got another shot at the Celtics, sort of like you guys did when you lost to the Jazz in five games in last year’s playoffs.

There was no more appropriate time for the Lakers to make good on that vow than Memorial Day.

In the book, “Winning Times,” Michael Cooper said: ‘These guys, they hung Kurt, they beat us up, they pushed us around, they taunted us, they talked about us.

’ . . . Magic Tragic,’ things like that. They’d sing to us--’Off to see the Fakers [to the tune of ‘Off to See the Wizard’]--that kind of [stuff], and you don’t want to hear that.

“But I guess we were fakers . . . We come out the first game of the playoffs and they beat our [butts] real royally.”

O’Neal, did you catch that headline in the local paper that said, “Shaq Who?”

You in particular should listen to this part because no one was more humiliated in Game 1 in 1985 than your predecessor as the Lakers’ Big Fella, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Abdul-Jabbar had 12 points and three rebounds and caught glimpses of Robert Parish only when the Celtic center was passing him going the other way.

The next day, instead of looking for his customary seat at the back of the dressing room during the Lakers’ film session, Abdul-Jabbar sat directly in front of the VCR.

He watched intently as Pat Riley repeatedly hit the rewind button each time Parish swooshed past Abdul-Jabbar.

“I wasn’t embarrassed,” Abdul-Jabbar said, “but I thought I’d really let my team down.”

Shaq, we all know how close you are to your father, Sarge. Abdul-Jabbar had the same relationship with his father, and Riley knew his center was bent on redemption when he asked if Big Al Alcindor could ride the bus with the team to Boston Garden for Game 2.

That reminded Riley of his father, a former minor league baseball manager named Lee, who, in his last words to his son before dying in 1970, said, “Just remember--somewhere, someplace, sometime, you’re going to have to plant your feet, make a stand and kick some . . . “

Recalling those words for the Lakers in the dressing room before Game 2, Riley told them it was the time and place.

Abdul-Jabbar had 30 points, 17 rebounds, eight assists and three blocked shots that night as the Lakers won by 17. They won the championship in six games.

After practice Sunday at the Delta Center, one of your assistant coaches, Rambis, was saying he didn’t know if you will respond like he and his Laker teammates did 13 years ago.

“We had the experience to know it was a seven-game series,” he said. “After what happened in the first game, you have to relax, regroup and recover so that you can go into the second game with a positive attitude. You can never let one game drain you. If it does, you’re setting yourself up to fail. You’re showing your immaturity.

“That team we had in the ‘80s, we knew we were going to come back. We had been there before. We had a winner’s mentality and attitude. No matter what, we knew we’d find a way to win. “Time will tell if this team has that.”

Time also will tell if the Lakers have someone who can lead them back from the edge of the abyss, someone like the Lakers had in 1985 in Magic Johnson.

“Someone who stands out as our glaring leader like Earvin, that hasn’t developed yet,” Rambis said. “But Shaq is as close as it comes.”

Shaq, maybe tonight is your time to plant your feet, make a stand and kick some. Bring Sarge.