Aguirre Is Still a Puzzle to the Lakers--and Dallas

For all of the free counseling Magic Johnson was giving out Tuesday morning at the Forum, there should have been a sign in front of his dressing-room cubicle: “The Doctor Is In.”

With the session nearing an end, someone asked Johnson if he has grown tired of psychoanalyzing his friend, Mark Aguirre, the Dallas Mavericks’ All-Star forward whose shot selection is eclipsed only by his mood swings. A Sybil in short pants.

“It’s all I’ve been doing,” Johnson said, “since I’ve been in the league.”

It’s open season once again on Aguirre, who used to suffer a coach, Dick Motta, who admitted he called Aguirre worse names than he would call a dog. Like coward, for instance. Now Aguirre suffers broadcasters on national TV calling him more names. Like mental case.

No such abuse falls from the lips of Johnson, who winced when he heard broadcaster Billy Packer question Aguirre’s state of mind during a recent Dallas-Denver playoff game in which Aguirre openly sulked at the end of the bench after being taken out in the final minutes.

“A lot of people judge Mark on hearsay,” Johnson said. “They don’t know him, and they don’t sit down and talk to him. That was kind of a tough remark.”

A tough remark made about a player facing the toughest situation of his seven-season professional career. Under Dallas’ new coach, John MacLeod, Aguirre has become a franchise player whose franchise apparently has decided it has outgrown him. Aguirre, who was the No. 1 draft pick of the Mavericks when they were the worst team in the league, is no longer the No. 1 option now that the Mavericks have reached the National Basketball Assn.’s Western Conference finals for the first time.

“Mark is the type of player who likes to be in there when it’s money time,” Johnson said. “He’s like Dominique (Wilkins), Larry (Bird), myself, Isiah (Thomas), Charles Barkley, the type of players who want to be in there, who don’t want to be on the bench when the game’s on the line.

The Lakers, who lead Dallas, 1-0, in the best-of-seven series, still respect Aguirre enough to know that he could go out tonight and light up the Forum for 35 points, as he did last November in a three-point Maverick loss. But it’s just as possible that Aguirre--who scored 18 points in Dallas’ 113-98 loss to the Lakers in Game 1--will be on the sidelines, watching Sam Perkins or Detlef Schrempf paired with the Mavericks’ splendid young power forward, Roy Tarpley.

That’s what happened in Game 3 of the Houston series, when Aguirre sat out the last 8 1/2 minutes of a one-point Dallas win. After that game, the Dallas media proclaimed the end of the Aguirre era, with one columnist suggesting that the Mavericks should unload the player who led them in scoring in each of the last six seasons, including this one, when he averaged 25.8 points.

But in the next game, a series-clinching win over the Rockets, Aguirre exploded for 38 points--27 in the third quarter--to match his season high. In the next round, however, Aguirre was in and out again: A nine-point effort in a Game 2 loss to Denver, the Game 3 benching after he made as many turnovers (4) as baskets, a 34-point outing in Game 4, a career-low 4 points in a foul-plagued Game 6.

Maverick owner Donald Carter was so disturbed by Aguirre’s Game 3 pout--Aguirre didn’t even bother to stick his head into team huddles during timeouts--that he had not one, but two heart-to-hearts with his shaken superstar.

“I told Mark that I had just come back from church, and that I was wearing out my pants doing all this praying, and it was about time they started answering my prayers,” Carter told reporters after Aguirre’s turnaround the next game.

Aguirre has acknowledged that the yo-yoing is wrecking his confidence. But Tuesday, he said he’s handling the situation much better than he would have in the past, when his confrontations with Motta regularly wound up in headlines.

“That’s what got us here,” Aguirre said of his transformation from leading man to supporting player. “We’re here, because we’re playing a real balanced type of attack.”

That’s not to say that Aguirre--who scored just nine points against the Lakers while complaining of a bruised hip in the deciding game of the 1984 conference semifinals--doesn’t long for the days when the Mavericks just cleared out of his way and let him go to work.

“When you’re looking to score, you’re in a totally different rhythm,” Aguirre said. “You can score points in flurries.

“But every coach since I was this high has said you can’t just turn it on and off. I just hope it’s still there when it’s needed.”

Johnson said he hasn’t talked to Aguirre about the situation yet. “It’s the kind of thing we’ll probably talk about in the summer,” he said.

“It’s hard for me to talk about it (publicly). The only thing that is going to happen is that it won’t come out right. So my way is to let Mark talk about the situation.”

Johnson rejected the suggestion that Aguirre actually likes it better this way, that the pressure of carrying a team was too much for him.

“If Mark didn’t want it, he sure had it anyway,” Johnson said. “The No. 1 pick of the whole draft, he was the focus of that team for so many years. If he didn’t want it, he sure had it, and I think he thrived in that situation.

“Mark always--even back in high school and college--liked that weight on his shoulders. He won so many games against us in the past in the fourth quarter.”

But while Johnson and Thomas--the third member of an enduring friendship--have both won championships, Aguirre has yet to experience that.

“He was on great teams at DePaul that never got over the hump and were eliminated early,” Johnson said. “In high school (in Illinois), Isiah’s team beat his for the title.

“Now it’s like he’s running up against me in the West all the time.”