Old Story Has a New Ending--Lakers Hold On : Pro basketball: This time, they hold off rally by Suns to break out of one-point rut.

Most of the fans stayed to the very end. They had to. These are the Lakers.

“Usually, they go out with five minutes to go,” Vlade Divac said. “Today, they were there all the way. They knew we would make it interesting.”

As if there is any other way for the Lakers these days. They pushed the envelope again Wednesday night, building a 22-point lead in the third quarter and then having it slip away right on schedule before pulling out of another nose-dive just in time to beat the Phoenix Suns, 107-96, before 13,484 at the Forum.

Disaster took a day off.

“It was almost like a replay of the other day,” Sun Coach Paul Westphal said.

That was Saturday in Phoenix, the last installment as the Lakers became only the second team in NBA history to lose three consecutive games by one point. Two of those came as they blew 16-point advantages in the second half, two on buzzer beaters, including one of the latter to the Suns.

This time, the Lakers held off another late charge as Divac scored 10 points in a row in the fourth quarter, half of his game total, and Cedric Ceballos had 24 points and nine rebounds in another good game against his former team.

“At halftime, I put on the board, ‘Ride the horse,’ ” Coach Del Harris said. “When you’re thrown by a horse, you’ve got to get right back up again. This was a tremendous opportunity for us.”

Not to mention a relief.

“I was scared,” Divac said. “It was almost like the same scenario that had happened three games in a row. But, finally, we handled it well.”

That the Lakers went right from blowing a 16-point lead with 10 minutes to play and then losing on Michael Finley’s 15-footer at the buzzer to playing the Suns the next game gave them a chance for revenge.

“It adds a little more drama, I’d say,” Harris acknowledged.

With that as an additional story line, the Lakers pulled away in the second quarter, shooting 50% and committing only five turnovers to go up by 18 points at halftime. Under normal circumstances, this would be construed as a very good start. These days, it could be the last step before the cliff.

The lead reached 22 points in the third quarter, 77-55. Not that these are trying times for Laker emotions, but when Wesley Person’s three-point shot for the Suns cut the advantage to 15 with 9:58 left in the game, Harris called timeout.

Phoenix got within five, 101-96, before the Lakers regained control. Even then it wasn’t easy. The Suns got that close with 36.1 seconds remaining when Finley made a three-pointer and was fouled by Anthony Peeler, although Finley missed the free throw and the chance to cut the deficit to four.

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Laker Notes

The new-look Laker huddle made its debut Wednesday--the one in which everyone will be forced to pay attention during breaks. This comes in the wake of Saturday’s loss at Phoenix in which at least two key players involved in the ill-fated final possession--Nick Van Exel and Cedric Ceballos--said they were not aware how many timeouts the Lakers had. “I’m going to have the assistant coaches corral everybody,” Coach Del Harris said of the new policy. “If people are saying they don’t know, that’s because they’re not in the huddle. I will not accept that the information was not given. But I will accept that [the coaches], for whatever reason, have not done a good job commanding their attention in a huddle. That’s our mistake.” And as for the notion that no one reminded the players how many timeouts they had? “Bill [Bertka, an assistant coach] and I have been at it about 70 years,” Harris said. “There wasn’t and there won’t be a time that our players won’t know how many timeouts we have.”

Tony Smith, making his first Forum appearance as an ex-Laker, was a surprise starter at shooting guard for the Suns as Coach Paul Westphal tried to emphasize defense in the first quarter. Smith, who spent the first five years of his career as a Laker swingman before signing with Phoenix as a free agent, had come off the bench in each of his previous four games. . . . According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Chicago Bulls of 1986-87 are the only other team in NBA history to lose three consecutive games by one point. . . . Willie Vereen of Lubbock, Tex., won $21,000 by making a halfcourt shot between the third and fourth quarters.