Why Is This Man Eating Popcorn?

All this and veteran Paul Silas tearing apart the backboards, too. Is it conceivable that everybody was correct about the championship staying way up there in the rainbelt, but had the wrong city?

LOS ANGELES

After Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke his hand on Kent Benson's face in the season opener, he missed 20 games. Then when he returned, and Jack Kent Cooke's checkbook surrounded him with new playmates such as Adrian Dantley and Charlie Scott, he went on a work strike for 20 more games, claiming he was "bothered by the violence.... It gets to my psyche." After journalists badgered him as "Captain Sleepwalker" and Coach Jerry West told him that if the game wasn't fun anymore he should get out, Abdul-Jabbar promised to end the most listless slump of his career and play his goggles off.

In the last month he has earned his $8,000 per game salary by averaging 28 points and 16 rebounds, and the feared Lakers are coming on. Or are they?

Too often they have lost the big game by missing the big shot. Though strong-boy Dantley and ancient Lou Hudson put together fine seasons, the injured Jamaal Wilkes and Scott contributed mostly by enabling the Lakers to lead the world in Muslims.

That left it up to a babe, rookie Point Guard Norm Nixon, to hold the Lakers together. And, oh, how Nixon responded. With his girlfriend in the stands shouting things like, "Use him, Norman! Use that chump!" Nixon became Hollywood's new Little Big Man.

West has said he doesn't care who his team draws in the playoffs, and no wonder; the Lakers are a combined 2-10 vs. their three probable Pacific foes. L.A. may have more native talent than anybody, but the team is a collection of men who are not close either on or off the court. "Our problem is rectifiable," Abdul-Jabbar has said. "But first, we have to identify what it is."

Whoever wins in the West will face the survivor of what could be the smokin'est series of them all, the probable East final between Philadelphia and San Antonio. This assumes that those division winners turn back two of the following: the New York Knicks in the Atlantic and the Washington Bullets, Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks in the Central.

A lot of good things can be said for Hawk Coach Hubie Brown and the job he did with a bargain-basement collection of more hounds than Disney rounded up in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. But what about the other "contenders"?

The Knicks have Bob McAdoo shooting everything and Lonnie Shelton fouling everybody. The Cavs have the alleged Walt Frazier, who sat out seven weeks with an ingrown toenail or something, and of whom Coach Bill Fitch said, "He's 32 going on 40. You or I would be playing on that. Looking at Frazier puts me to sleep." And the tired and gimpy Bullets, who keep their best player ( Mitch Kupchak) shackled in a sixth-man role, permit opposing guards to fire at will and then wander around wondering why they lose at home.