Lakers Dig Hole Too Deep : Pro basketball: Seattle builds early 30-point lead, cruises to 113-97 victory. L.A. slips in playoff race.

The Lakers hopped back on the down escalator Tuesday night, this time taking it all the way to the basement, if not beyond.

The carryover from Sunday’s victory over Dallas that ended a four-game losing streak lasted all the way until, oh, midway through the national anthem. The Seattle SuperSonics started working the Lakers over from there, building a 30-point lead before halftime and a 37-point cushion by late in the third quarter and rolling to a 113-97 victory before 17,505 at the Forum as Gary Payton had a game-high 28 points.

And to think the Lakers haven’t hit bottom. They can drop further, from fifth to sixth place in the Western Conference now that their lead over Houston has been cut to half a game in the standings and 1 1/2 games in reality, considering the Rockets must pass them because L.A. has the tiebreaker advantage.

The Lakers have two games left--a home-and-home with Portland, Thursday in Oregon and Saturday at the Forum. The Rockets play three times--at Utah tonight, at Seattle on Thursday and home to the Jazz on Sunday.

A few more outings like this and the Lakers, losers of five of their last six games, will actually have five games remaining. Two in the regular season and three in the first round of the playoffs.

“We were out-energized totally by the Seattle team,� Coach Del Harris said. “Here’s a team that played last night (at home against Portland), and we didn’t. That was a playoff job they did on us. Unfortunately, ours was an exhibition job, a preseason performance.

“Hopefully, it’s a one-time thing. We’ve done this before. We’ve had about eight of these ballgames where, for whatever reason, we don’t show up, and tonight was a very poor night to do that. You don’t like to see that in the last week of the season, but that’s the way it is.�

So is this: Anthony (Pig) Miller had nine rebounds, but no starter got more than five as the Lakers were beaten on the boards, 47-32. Anthony Peeler scored 18 points, but no starter had more than 13 as Vlade Divac missed all six attempts, Eddie Jones was one for nine and Nick Van Exel two for eight en route to a team 41.7%.

“It was a cool game,� said Payton, who scored 21 of the SuperSonics’ first 40 points. “That’s all it was. That’s all we did.�

Apart from giving the appearance of a team struggling at the wrong time--wonder where people would have gotten that impression Tuesday--a drop to No. 6 would hardly be devastating news for the Lakers. The only way it could come back to hurt them is that the Rockets would have home-court advantage should the teams meet down the line.

The upside is much more encouraging. Being passed by Houston would put the Lakers in the opposite bracket as San Antonio, the one team almost all of the others would like to avoid. With a repeat of the SuperSonic game, though, it becomes a moot point.

The Lakers came in looking to join the Mavericks of 1986-87 as the only teams to go 5-0 against Seattle in a season series, but by the end of the opening quarter they would have settled for a game. Respectability would have helped too.

Neither was found. The SuperSonic lead was 15 points with 56 seconds to go in that first period, then hit 22 with 8:35 left in the second. It was a bad time to be advertising season-ticket sales for next fall on TV, and it got worse, finally reaching 30 in the closing seconds.

The only question was whether it was the Lakers’ worst half of the season. After a 13-point second quarter, they had been outscored, 64-34, outrebounded, 28-12, and outshot, 61.4%-24.3%.

No need to put the game in the refrigerator. It never thawed to begin with.

Laker Notes

Anthony Peeler, pulled from Sunday’s victory over Dallas after only eight minutes because of a sore right foot, played 25 against the SuperSonics, one day after an MRI exam showed the injury was not serious. But another reserve guard, Sedale Threatt, sat out his fifth consecutive game because of an abdominal strain. He remains day-to-day.