Lakers’ Message to Trail Blazers: We’re Still Here : Basketball: Scott hits big shots in last two minutes at Portland. Worthy scores 30 as L.A. wins fourth in a row, 108-104.

Just when the Blazermaniacs thought it was safe to go back to a Laker game . . .

Ghosts of a lot of bad local memories, dressed in purple and gold, rode triumphant once more in Memorial Coliseum, past the heretofore almost-all-conquering Trail Blazers, 27-4 before Thursday night.

Make that 27-5 now. The Lakers got 30 points from James Worthy, 17 assists from Magic Johnson, seven points in the last 1:42 from Byron Scott and beat Portland, 108-104, in the finest moment of their most trying season since Johnson was an undergraduate.

“It was a win we needed,” Johnson said. “For ourselves. To show everybody in the league, we’re still here and we’re not going anywhere.

“Also for our fans. For them to say, ‘OK. They’re the Lakers.’ ”

The Trail Blazers were 15-1 at home before Thursday but were up to their neck in trouble all night. The Lakers led twice by 11 points in the first half. The biggest Portland lead was five points, late in the third quarter and early in the fourth.

Whereupon the Lakers jumped them again. The game was tied at 94, 96 and 98 before real tension settled in. Worthy shot a 17-foot airball, Clyde Drexler missed a flashy finger roll in the lane when he could have gathered himself and dunked the ball up to his armpit, Johnson missed a three-pointer, Buck Williams shot a brick from 12 feet, Scott missed a three-pointer, the not-so-blazing Blazers got off three shots in the next sequence, two by Terry Porter, and missed them all.

The Lakers ran with Porter’s last miss and out of the right corner, Scott knocked down the 20-footer that put them ahead to stay.

The Lakers have won four in a row, following their lethargic trudge through losses in Cleveland and Chicago.

The Trail Blazers, for the first time this season, have lost two in a row.

Were the Lakers impressed, or what?

Nahhh, they said.

“We felt like we gave the game down in Los Angeles (a Portland overtime victory) away,” Coach Mike Dunleavy said. “We lost the game. We made the mistakes.”

Said Scott: “We just knew it was a matter of time. We weren’t looking at the other two teams (Portland and Phoenix, both ahead of the Lakers in the Pacific). We just wanted to get our games together. Once we did, we thought we could play with anybody.

“We still really don’t have it going. But we’re confident going down the stretch that we’re going to win, the way we used to be.”

The game, you should excuse the expression, blazed from the opening tip. The Lakers grabbed an 11-point lead in the first quarter, with Johnson rolling up eight assists and Worthy scoring 10 points. The Blazers closed to 28-24. The Lakers led, 30-24 in the final seconds of the quarter and ran Johnson off a high screen. The Blazers’ 7-foot Kevin Duckworth jumped out and forced Johnson back, so Johnson retreated to 25 feet and swished a three-pointer, his only field goal of the quarter.

Moral: Don’t mess with the Magic man with time running out.

The second quarter brought the battle of the benches, and unfortunately for the Lakers, it went as most have.

Drexler and Porter left the game with the Trail Blazers nine points behind (33-24), got two minutes more rest than the Laker regulars and returned to a game the Blazer subs had narrowed to 42-39. The return of the Laker regulars couldn’t stem the tide, either. By halftime, it was Portland, 51-50.

The teams battled to the wire. The Lakers crossed first.

The Trail Blazers aren’t surrendering.

“Taking nothing away from the Lakers,” Drexler said, “it’s more what we did than what they did.”

They’ll meet again, the not-quite-as-high-riding Blazers and the men who are, OK, still the Lakers.

Laker Notes

The Lakers are 17-10 in Portland since 1981. . . . The Lakers (18-9) still trail the Blazers by 6 1/2 games, but by only four games in the loss column. Magic Johnson says not to hold your breath until they make that up. “The good teams in the West are going to start playing each other and the records are going to go down and down. I don’t know if we can catch them. It’s not important. we’re just trying to get our game going.”

Two reasons Portland lost: Leading scorer Clyde Drexler shot eight for 19 against James Worthy; Terry Porter went four for 11. . . . The Trail Blazers are 0-2 since losing Jerome Kersey with a strained left calf. . . . Mychal Thompson played well off the bench, scoring 10 points with five rebounds in 22 minutes. However, substitute guards Terry Teagle and Larry Drew played only 17 minutes between them. Johnson went 44 minutes and didn’t leave the floor in the second half.

Former Detroit and Milwaukee great Bob Lanier to ex-teammate Mike Dunleavy before the game: “Did you get a good deal?” Dunleavy, laughing: “It was a good deal then. It’s not enough now.” . . . The Lakers are at Golden State tonight. On the second night of back-to-back road games, the Lakers have lost by 13 at Dallas, by 22 at Salt Lake City and by 10 at Cleveland.