Lakers Advance With Shots Instead of Words : Floyd Held in Check as Warriors Bow

Top guns? The Lakers are obsessed with being nothing less this season.

But Tuesday night at the Forum, they applied the silencers before putting one last shot into the Golden State Warriors, 118-106, to advance to the Western Conference finals of the National Basketball Assn. for the sixth straight season.

The Lakers played an executioner’s song, but without the lyrics. This may have been a eulogy, but it contained very few words, especially after the nonstop blustering of the first four games.

They decided, almost to a man, to leave the talking to Chick Hearn.

“Things didn’t get out of hand, but we knew that maybe they could,” Magic Johnson said. “It had gotten to be a little more than we’d ever done before, talk-wise.

“We decided to forget about all that and play ball.”

From now on, just call them the silent assassins, Michael Cooper said.

But while the Lakers may have held their tongues--except for one flare-up in the first half involving Cooper (naturally) and Golden State’s Purvis Short--they didn’t hold anything else back in disposing of the Warriors.

The Lakers shot 65% in building a 22-point lead after three quarters, 99-77. They frustrated Golden State center Joe Barry Carroll into missing 12 of 16 shots. And they developed a tranquilizer for Eric (Sleepy) Floyd, who attracted two, three and sometimes four Laker escorts whenever he went to the basket.

Such a crowd definitely crimped his style. Floyd, who had scored 51 points in the Warriors’ come-from-behind win Sunday, had 18 points and 11 assists on Tuesday, but made just 7 of 17 shots. He also had six turnovers.

As a team, the Lakers shot just 41.1%.

Only a supreme rebounding effort by Golden State forward Larry Smith, who had 23 rebounds, 12 on the offensive boards, kept the Warriors in the game for as long as the third commercial break.

“I’ll go along with everybody else and say the Lakers are the team to beat,” Warrior Coach George Karl said.

They might have been more beatable if Karl had succeeded in arguing that Cooper be thrown out after the Laker guard responded to a shove from Short by throwing a left, which struck Short in the side of the head.

The two had been jousting for position for a rebound on a shot by Chris Mullin that made the score 46-37, Lakers, with 6:36 left to play in the second quarter.

Karl came onto the court and was held back by Floyd. Referee Hue Hollins decided to assess a double technical on Short and Cooper, but both remained in the game.

“He threw a punch and he should have been thrown out,” Karl said. “But in the playoffs, a referee considers a volatile situation a little more cautiously.”

Cooper had made another dramatic entrance, blocking shots by Terry Teagle and Mullin in the closing minutes of the first quarter. He then hit a three-pointer at the start of the second quarter and followed that by converting an alley-oop pass from Kurt Rambis.

“Once again, he electrified us,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said.

Cooper finished with 17 points. James Worthy, who hit 9 of 11 shots, had 23 to lead the Lakers, A. C. Green had 20 and Magic Johnson 19 points and 13 assists.

“In the last game they caught us looking at ourselves in the mirror and admiring how fine we were,” said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who split time at center almost down the middle with Mychal Thompson but finished with a team-high nine rebounds in 26 minutes.

“We can’t let that happen again.”

There was no preening at the outset of the second half, when the Lakers held the Warriors without a point from Floyd’s three-point play at 10:43 of the third quarter to Carroll’s free throws at 8:09. In the interim, a 12-point Laker lead grew to 20.

“We were very businesslike tonight,” Riley said. “We were embarrassed Sunday. We felt stung by that.”

But the Lakers bit back Tuesday, and no one felt their bite more than Floyd.

“We converged on him as a team tonight,” Worthy said. “We didn’t allow him to get off early.”

At game’s end, Magic Johnson walked over to the Golden State bench to shake Floyd’s hand.

“I just wanted him to know I really respected him for what he did,” Johnson said.

In the end, that respect was returned by the Warriors.

“All that on-the-court stuff won’t carry over,” Teagle said. “The playoffs are real intense, but we’re all professionals. It doesn’t mean anything.”

The next noise you hear from the Lakers will be against either Houston or Seattle. The SuperSonics lead that series, 3-2, with Game 6 scheduled for Thursday night in Seattle.

But is this really the beginning of Showtime, the Silent Movie? No way, Riley said.

“Basketball is an emotional game,” he said. “If you’re going to take all the emotion out of it, we’ll all be yawning by the third quarter.

“I want more of it, more emotion from this team, but channeled in the right direction.

“They got the message. They didn’t need any long sermons from me.”

Just a benediction for the Warriors.

Laker Notes If the Seattle-Houston series ends Thursday, the Western Conference final will begin here Saturday, with Game 2 at the Forum on Tuesday night. If Seattle-Houston goes seven, the final will begin here Tuesday night. . . . Golden State forward Larry Smith set a record for offensive rebounds in a five-game series with 36. At the same time, the Warriors managed to set a record for fewest defensive rebounds (108). Smith was selected the team’s most valuable player by his teammates. “He was a possessed man among men,” Warrior Coach George Karl said. . . . Karl said he believes the Lakers match up better against Seattle than they would against Houston. “(Houston Coach Bill) Fitch will probably try to play a power game, keep the score down to 100-105,” Karl said. “Seattle will try to run more, they’re a finesse team, a more offensive-minded team. A slow game, a power game, I think is the type of game you have to play to beat them.” . . . Karl on trying to stop Magic Johnson: “I don’t know if it can be done. Who slowed him down? When did it happen? We may have made a mistake by focusing on him, because he can’t be stopped.”