Lakers’ Final Chapter Yet to be Written

Today, you’ll read a lot of stories questioning whether the Lakers have what it takes to win a championship, casting aspersions on their “killer instinct” and invoking any number of other sports cliches. And yes, there is something decidedly weird about L.A.‘s inability to hurry up and dispense with a Yao-less, T-Mac-less Rockets team. But before we start jumping off bridges and selling our children to gypsies, I have three words for you: Remember the Celtics! ↵
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↵If you recall, before the Big Three smacked around the Lakers and became the model of a major modern championship team, they went 7 with Atlanta, 7 with Cleveland, and 6 with Detroit. The Hawks were just finding themselves that week as real competitors. Cleveland back then was Bron and a bunch of rebounding. Detroit had to get by without a healthy Billups. So don’t go buying the myth that Boston had a hard road to the Finals that only made them stronger. It might have made them stronger, but it wasn’t that hard, and up until the Finals, it also had supposedly exposed their age. ↵
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↵In life, you will meet many interesting people. Some will tell you that it’s the journey, not the end result, that matters. Others will insist the opposite, that the ends justifies the means. When it comes to the NBA postseason, we want it both ways. We speculate endlessly about the present, only to turn around and rewrite history when the Larry O’Brien trophy has been decided.
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This even holds true for a single series; think about how much momentum shifts, at least in the eyes of fans and media, from one game to the next. It’s become a truism that the seven-game format makes it more likely that the better (read: more consistent) team will win. However, producing this rational outcome often takes 6 or 7 games, over the course of which this “better” team will appear vulnerable. ↵
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↵That’s not to say that a team can’t power its way through the playoffs with a barrage of blowouts, sweeps, statement games, and an air of boredom or weightlessness. Cleveland has been on that kind of roll; Denver, too, has toyed with opponents most of the time -- whether or not they themselves realized it. That also describes the 2007-08 Lakers in the playoffs. The 2008-09 Lakers, well, they haven’t been so fortunate. Like the Celtics of 2007-08, if they end up with rings, they’ll have had to work for it. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t capable of running away with the Finals. ↵
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↵Maybe that, if nothing else, is what Kobe Bryant took away from that otherwise humiliating series. And why he, and the Lakers, aren’t quite ready to panic yet. The rest of us, we’ll just pile on, and then turn around and praise the team for its guts if they go all the way. After all, things get really weird really fast if you start criticizing champions for not winning in decisive enough fashion. So we have no choice but to find new language for praising them.
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