NBA CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES : A DEEPER CUT : Cooper Wasn’t Hurt by Stitches as Much as Dwindling Respect

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. —  The scar is barely noticeable now, much to Michael Cooper’s displeasure. He thought it quite becoming, a perfect embellishment for the half-crazed, tough-guy image the Laker guard has long cultivated.

There is only a trace of his infamous accident in which Cooper butted his head against a metal railing in the Forum the morning of the Lakers’ playoff opener against the Portland Trail Blazers, resulting in a deep cut that required 21 stitches.

The stitches have long since dissolved, even though his teammates’ laughter has not. A patch of hair has covered most of the two-inch scar. Drops of blood at the accident scene, left as a sort of a shrine in what now is dubbed Coop’s Corner, have disappeared.

Too bad, really. More than ever Cooper needs to look, as well as act, tough. There will be no backing down, Cooper said, when the Lakers meet the physical and--some say--thuggish Detroit Pistons in the National Basketball Assn. championship series.

Starting Tuesday with Game 1, the versatile Cooper will be asked to guard any number of Pistons--from Isiah Thomas to Bill Laimbeer to Dennis Rodman--as well as match Rodman in “bad” behavior.

“It’s gone, man,” said a rueful Cooper, putting hand to head. “I’ll have to think of something else. They may be the Bad Boys, but they gotta know I’m bad, too.”

The Pistons might remember Cooper as bad, but in a different context than Cooper would hope. In last season’s finals against Detroit, Cooper made only nine of 44 shots while being hampered throughout the playoffs by a lingering left ankle sprain.

Traces of the ankle injury are gone. And the 33-year-old Cooper, second only to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in seasons of service with the Lakers, has undergone a renewal in the playoffs after a sub-par regular season.

Going into the finals, Cooper has averaged 6.1 points. He sank seven three-point baskets in the Western Conference finals sweep of Phoenix. And, he has returned to his role as a defensive specialist by helping to contain Seattle’s Dale Ellis and the Suns’ Kevin Johnson.

Cooper’s play, especially during the Suns’ series, was part of a rejuvenation of the Lakers’ reserves, who will need to continue to play well if they are to challenge the Pistons deep and talented bench.

“I don’t think there’s been any change in my game,” said Cooper, who made only 43% of his shots and was even occasionally benched by Coach Pat Riley during the regular season. “I’ve just picked up my game.”

It is as if that shot to the forehead has erased Cooper’s memory of his troubled regular season, which had some thinking Cooper’s time had passed.

“I haven’t lost anything,” Cooper said, shaking his head indignantly. “There’s nothing I can’t still do.”

That includes, apparently, retaining his title as, by far, the wackiest Laker player. Teammates were aghast when Cooper ran into the locker room with blood oozing from his forehead. But when Cooper came back later that night all stitched up but smiling, they dismissed it as just another manifestation of Cooper’s zany persona.

At the time, teammates suggested that the injury was not serious, because it was only Cooper’s head. Jerry West, the Lakers’ general manager, started affectionately calling Cooper “zipperhead.” His reputation soared.

“Everyone knows I’m the team masochist,” Cooper said at the time of the injury.

Since then, Cooper has reveled in the retelling of the incident. Now, he is claiming that running into the railing was intentional.

His thinking? Well, since the injury required 21 stitches, and since Cooper wears No. 21, the head butting must have been cosmically preordained or something.

While being interviewed by a reporter from Phoenix a week ago, Cooper winked at a few Los Angeles writers and launched into his act with mock sincerity.

“I haven’t mellowed at all,” Cooper said. “It’s getting worse. This time of year, it’s very difficult around the Cooper household, and I have to act accordingly.

“The craziest thing I’ve done is, to get myself ready for the playoffs, I ran into this thing on purpose. A lot of people thought it was an accident.”

But if Cooper can joke about this playoff injury, last season’s left ankle sprain is still a sore spot. Actually, the pain is gone, but Cooper said he so feels the sting of his poor performance against the Pistons that he does not want to talk about it.

By the same token, Cooper doesn’t really like to talk about the first half of this season. It was a continuation of his playoff problems, prompting some to say Cooper was losing it.

The low point, by most accounts, came on Jan. 3 at Seattle, when Riley benched Cooper after he had played three non-productive and uninspired minutes in the first half.

“That (a benching) is never a low point,” Cooper said. “I don’t think anyone who’s competitive and has to be sat down is going to be happy about it. But my game showed why I should be benched, and Coach Riley acted accordingly.

“It got everybody thinking and got me going. After that, I had to get back into myself first before I could even get back with the team. I had to reevaluate my priorities. My No. 1 priority for this ballclub is to play defense, and I wasn’t doing that.

“I don’t know why. Maybe I thought it was going to be a given this year, taking it too easy, too laid back.”

Riley said he sensed Cooper’s malaise. He said he tried to dismiss it for a while, but eventually had to take action to try to shock Cooper out of his stupor.

“Let’s face it,” Riley said. “We knew in training camp that we had eight spots and we’d divvy up playing time, so there’s not a lot of incentive. The only motivation for professionals is the bench. Sometimes, that doesn’t even motivate them. But, if you’ve got proud players they’ll want to perform well, and you don’t have to threaten them with the bench.”

Shortly thereafter, Cooper’s playing time increased because of Byron Scott’s urological disorder and the partially torn left hamstring that sidelined Magic Johnson for six games.

In 13 games as a starter, Cooper averaged 10.4 points and 6.6 assists. More important to the Lakers, Cooper’s defensive prowess returned whether he was starting or coming off the bench.

It did not return in time for Cooper to be named to the league’s all-defensive team in a vote of NBA coaches. Cooper had been voted defensive player of the year in 1986-87 and, until this season, was included on either the first or second teams for eight consecutive years.

Snubbed this season, though, Cooper took it as a personal affront. On the day the team was announced, Cooper graphically said that being excluded would only give him more motivation to stop Suns’ point-guard Kevin Johnson.

Actually, Cooper’s defensive surge was evident in the Seattle series. Early in the fourth quarter of Game 1, SuperSonic guard Sedale Threatt sliced through a Laker trap for what looked to be an easy layup.

But, Cooper came over from the baseline, glided across the lane and swatted Threatt’s shot to Magic Johnson, who converted it into a Laker fast-break basket. What might have been a three-point Laker lead swelled to a seven-point advantage. The Lakers were not threatened again.

Most of Cooper’s defensive work has not been as flashy. As part of a double-team on the Suns’ Kevin Johnson, Cooper merely helped keep the ball out of Johnson’s hands and often forced him to turn it over when he did have it.

“I think everybody needs a kick in the pants sometime during the season,” Cooper said. “Mine came when I didn’t make the defensive team. That just happened to be the motivating point for me.”

Another motivational tool for Cooper was when people whispered early in the season that age had caught up with him. After all, when was the last time you have seen a Coop-a-loop?

“I never doubted that with Michael,” Riley said. “I still saw enough quickness, intensity, three-point shooting and defense. That was always there. Those intangibles are what he’s best at.

“He did have some poor shooting games, and it bent people out of shape. They wrote him off.”

Even worse, as far as Cooper was concerned, they weren’t writing about him at all. When he played poorly, he was merely another symptom of a team-wide slump.

“They say I’m too old, but I haven’t even played half the time in games,” said Cooper, who has averaged 27.5 minutes per game in his 11-season career. “I’m a young 33. I haven’t had to sustain 40 minutes a game. I don’t feel old. The only time I feel old is when I go home and see my son getting bigger.”

Said teammate James Worthy: “Coop’s in great shape. He can keep up with players a lot younger than him. He has a young body. Look at him. Age doesn’t indicate what kind of shape he’s in.”

Physically and mentally, Cooper appears in playoff shape. He has segued into his aggressive attitude, bordering on his own kind of lunacy in the Lakers’ week off before Tuesday night’s opener at the Palace.

Cooper once said that, “I’m not schizo; I have three personalities.”

Now, he has amended that.

“It’s up to about six now,” he said.

And who says the Laker bench lacks depth.