Buddha, Doc and Abdul

Sources say wall space is being reserved at the Forum for a banner honoring Paula Abdul, the music artist and onetime Laker Girl, alongside all those other banners that immortalize superstars of the Lakers, who open their 1992 home season Tuesday night against the Clippers.

If true, my reactions are these:

1. Why not? She’s as super a star as anybody who ever represented the Laker family.

2. Why not? About time they put a woman up there. Women support the Lakers as loyally as men.

3. Why not? She’s a model citizen who has performed with dignity and distinction in Los Angeles--unlike, say, Axl Rose or Benoit Benjamin.

4. Why not? She never scored as many points as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but she had better moves.

5. What if she married Abdul-Jabbar? Would her name become Paula Abdul-Abdul-Jabbar? Would they have to get her a bigger banner?

This is merely one of many subjects basketball fans will be discussing Tuesday as they bumper-to-bumper their way into Inglewood for the Lakers’ first official appearance there since that character from Chicago with the droopy tongue wept inside the locker room, hugging the NBA championship trophy.

Among other things, this also will give Laker fans an opportunity to check out the New, Improved, Either We Make The Playoffs Or We Will Quit This Stupid Game Los Angeles Clippers.

Could this finally be the year the Clippers--the Addams Family of professional basketball--accompany the Lakers to the playoffs? Could this be the beginning of a great new era of Clipper basketball? Will one of the Clipper cheerleaders ever have her own MTV video?

Why not?

(Keep your eye on that third Clipper Girl from the left. She’ll be bigger than Paula some day.)

Let us sneak-preview the 1991-92 Lakers and Clippers, shall we? There are new faces (Sedale Threatt, James Edwards, Doc Rivers), new places (the remodeled Sports Arena, the redecorated Forum) and new injuries to worry about (Vlade Divac, Sam Perkins, Tony Smith, Charles Smith, Rivers).

The coaches, as opposed to a year ago, are not new. The Two Mikes, as Jack Nicholson might refer to them (but probably wouldn’t), have their work cut out for them, the Clippers trying to work their way up, the Lakers trying not to slide down.

Mike Dunleavy has been in the head-coaching business for exactly one season and is batting 1.000 on getting his team to the finals. He had a harder act to follow than any Los Angeles coach since Gene Bartow. Other coaches in other cities daydream about doing as well as Dunleavy did with the Lakers last season.

Mike Schuler went from coaching the Portland Trail Blazers to coaching the Clippers. This is sort of like leaving a Robert DeNiro movie to go see “Ernest Scared Stupid.” Portland games were sold out every night. At Clipper games, management was pleased on nights when every player showed up.

The Lakers began the season with two dates in Texas. One of their players had a different date in Texas last season that did not work out so well.

They easily could have gone 2-0 or 0-2. One game went into double overtime and Perkins got hurt. The other game went into single overtime and Divac got hurt. Tuesday’s game scares us already.

Between last season and this, the Lakers had more on their minds than basketball. Basketball’s most eligible bachelor, Magic Johnson, got married; Michael Jackson did not hold the affair at his ranch. And Vlade Divac’s homeland, Yugoslavia, was divided by a violent civil war, as were Vlade and many of his dearest friends.

Back spasms bothered Divac during Saturday’s game at Dallas. If anything good comes out of this, it could be the increased playing time of Elden Campbell, who can use the work. While we all miss the standup comedy of Mychal Thompson from the post-game interviews, we also realize that Campbell can’t improve much from the bench.

The Lakers still look as though they have 50 victories in them, but look fast; a couple of years from now, Magic Johnson is going to be a Pepsi-Cola distributor spending his nights at home with his wife, pipe and slippers.

And now . . . you know ‘em, you love ‘em . . . ladies and gentlemen, the L.A. Clippers.

This is the finest nine-deep roster the Clippers have had since leaving San Diego. One thing about the Clippers over the years, they don’t lose as many games in the first quarter or the fourth quarter as they do in the second quarter, when NBA teams go to their benches.

With all hands on deck, the Clippers conceivably could come off the bench with Ken Norman, Loy Vaught, Olden Polynice and Gary Grant. Not bad, not bad at all. Of course, this depends on being able to keep healthy a starting five of Danny Manning, Smith, Rivers, Ron Harper and Edwards, and keeping players healthy is not exactly a Clipper tradition.

Buddha Edwards and Doc Rivers are class acts, and the Clippers have weeded out a problem child or two. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Edwards isn’t getting any younger, so this team had better win soon, and that Rivers felt he deserved a pay raise from the Clippers before he ever played a minute for them. He came late and now his back hurts.

As usual, the Clippers need all the help they can get. Maybe that’s why they went after people called Buddha and Doc.