Lakers Beat Sixers, Launch Dynasty with 2nd Title
PHILADELPHIA—Just how good are these Lakers?
They have a chance to become the New York Yankees of the NBA . The Tiger Woods of basketball. The benchmark by which every other franchise is measured.
A dynasty.
The Lakers beat the Philadelphia 76ers 108-96 at the First Union Center on Friday night to close out the best-of-seven series 4-1 and complete a historic 15-1 run made all the more remarkable by the fact the Lakers managed not to lose a single postseason game on enemy turf.
The Lakers’ march to a second consecutive world championship was so sweeping, so methodical, so merciless, it has left the NBA landscape scorched.
This dynasty should be around awhile.
“I never told anybody this,” said forward Rick Fox, “but Kobe (Bryant) sat with me four years ago and said, ‘I’m going to win 10 championships.’”
Fox laughed at the memory.
“I looked at him and said, this kid has confidence. But now I’m thinking, I need to listen to the cat.”
Shaquille O’Neal, named the series MVP after averaging 33 points and 15.8 rebounds, wasted few words in describing the Lakers’ achievement: “I think it was just us looking for an identity. And we found it.”
He has promised to go on “a power diet” over the summer, the better to report to training camp leaner than last fall when he showed up looking conspicuously like The Big Jelly Doughnut.
At this point, O’Neal’s appetite is probably the only thing that can slow him. Sixers center Dikembe Mutombo certainly couldn’t slow him despite playing some of the finest basketball of his 10-year pro career.
“He’s not dominating Dikembe, he’s dominating our team,” Sixers backup center Matt Geiger said on the eve of O’Neal’s 29-point, 13-rebound romp in Game 5. “I don’t know of anybody I’ve ever seen, (Michael) Jordan included, that has single-handedly dominated the game the way Shaq is. He’s playing better than he ever has.”
Those are weighty words considering O’Neal was the MVP of the regular season and the Finals last year.
Bryant hypes up the Lakers crowd at the celebration of their 2001 NBA Finals triumph over the 76ers. (L.A. Daily News: David Sprague)
As the Lakers stretched their lead to an unreachable 17 points early in the fourth quarter, we saw the hollowed expressions of forward Tyrone Hill and guard Aaron McKie.
The Lakers raided the Sixers’ building, turning the festival atmosphere inside the First Union Center into a funeral. When Mutombo fouled out with less than four minutes remaining, Sixers coach Larry Brown had the vacant stare of a man looking past the court, into the crystal ball that divines his future.
Brown has talked of retiring. Now would appear to be as good a time as any. Better to walk away on his own terms than be shown the door the way Portland’s coach Mike Dunleavy was after the Lakers swept the Trail Blazers in the first round.
When Mutombo left the game, the sellout crowd of 20,890 showered him with cheers. Was it his last hurrah in a Philadelphia uniform? Mutombo will become a free agent next month. It’s uncertain whether he will stay or go his own way like Chris Webber, whom the Lakers likely swept out of Sacramento when they beat the Kings convincingly in the second round.
That’s what we mean about the Lakers scorching the landscape. They didn’t just beat teams, they rocked them right down to their foundations.
The Lakers rendered Portland coachless and the Kings likely Chrisless. They denuded a San Antonio Spurs team that compiled the best regular-season record and defused league regular-season Most Valuable Player Allen Iverson in these Finals.
“It’s amazing how well we’ve played against the best teams in the league,” said Lakers rookie Mark Madsen.
The Lakers have extended a reign that the league’s meteorologists had forecast last summer. While confetti falls on the Lakers on Monday during their victory parade, every other team in the league will be bracing for drought conditions.
Kobe goes up for a dunk in the 3rd quarter of Game 2 of the NBA Finals. He played a terrific all-around game in the series, averaging 24.6 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 5.8 assists per game. (L.A. Daily News: John Lazar)
“I look back to last summer when I was going into predraft workouts,” Madsen said, “and every team made references to the Lakers. In Houston, they asked me if I could defend centers, then said, ‘We’re not asking you to defend Shaquille O’Neal because nobody can.’ In Chicago, they said they were trying to build a championship contender but it was going to be hard as long as Shaquille was a Laker.
“They were almost predicting what has come to pass. I think there is a sense around the NBA of how dominant the Lakers can be.”
Can there be any doubters left after the Lakers won 23 of their last 24 games?
To be sure, it took them awhile — roughly six months — to figure out how to play the role of defending NBA champions.
They’ve now got the script down cold, which is all the more reason for everybody else in the NBA to read this and weep.
“We hadn’t won a championship before so we didn’t know what that felt like,” said Fox, who chipped in 20 points, six rebounds and six assists on Friday. “We didn’t know how to handle ourselves. We had to stumble and be embarrassed to really clear up all that mess we created for ourselves.”
Don’t be surprised if for the foreseeable future the rest of the league looks lost.