Basketball: Dynamic duo restore LA's pride

By ANDREW GUMBEL

LOS ANGELES - As cities go, Los Angeles has never been too good at cheering for itself. It has always been too big, too sprawlingly anonymous to inspire anything resembling proper civic pride.

Not to mention the fact that its sports teams have rarely managed to get it together to win anything. Not until now.

Last weekend, the city's basketball team, the Lakers, astonished pretty much everyone - not least themselves - by pulling off their second NBA championship win in a row. They did not just defeat the Philadelphia 76ers, they ground them into the dust, just as they had their previous playoff opponents, Portland, Sacramento and San Antonio.

In the best-of-seven-games final, the Lakers creamed the 76ers 4-1, leaving them with a record-breaking balance sheet in the playoffs of 15 victories and just one defeat.

After years of floundering, Los Angeles suddenly finds itself with the two greatest players in the NBA, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, as well as near-legendary coach Phil Jackson, who masterminded the invincible exploits of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls during the 1990s.

There is talk of a new dynasty reigning for years to come, particularly since Bryant is just 22 and O'Neal a still-youthful 29. Thanks to their achievements - and their often bitter rivalry - national interest in basketball is greater than at any time since Jordan's heyday.

Los Angeles cannot believe its good fortune, or the opportunity to get genuinely excited about itself for the first time since the Lakers and the Dodgers baseball team hit the top of their respective leagues back in 1988.

In the run-up to Sunday's concluding game, Lakers banners popped up on cars and buses all over the city. Fast-food restaurants pulled their usual burger special-offer adverts from billboards and replaced them with the words: "Go Lakers!"

Even Hollywood was caught up in the frenzy. In newspaper advertisements for the box-office smash Shrek, the DreamWorks computer-generated comedy, the film's four protagonists were portrayed sporting Lakers shirts, offering sentiments of good luck "from one winning team to another."

The Lakers' championship win last year did not have anything like this feel-good factor, not least because the taste of victory was soured by a mini-riot outside the Staples Center arena afterwards, resulting in a pitched battle with police, extensive vandalism and 11 arrests.

This time, the winning game took place away from home, and the few disturbances outside Staples after the game were quickly crushed by no-nonsense mounted officers firing rubber bullets (positively kid-glove treatment from the notoriously heavy-handed LA Police Department).

More importantly, this year's repeat championship was proof that the Lakers' previous success was no fluke.

"The first championship was to get the monkey off my back," O'Neal remarked in a post-game news conference as he accepted his second most-valuable-player accolade in a row.

"The ones from now on are to stamp my name in history."

Curiously, as recently as three months ago, nobody would have held out much hope of the Lakers romping home. The talents of O'Neal and Bryant were undeniable, but the two were embroiled in a seemingly intractable feud over everything from commercial endorsements to the time each of them enjoyed in possession of the ball.

Both spoke darkly of quitting the team. O'Neal was so enraged that he could not get himself properly into shape for months. Bryant went to see the Lakers' former president Jerry West to talk about throwing in the towel.

But then the turnaround began.

West told the young star to think about winning instead of fighting. Derek Fisher, the Lakers' point guard, returned from a long absence caused by injury and, with Jackson, figured out how to separate the two front men's clashing egos and make them work as a team.

What followed did not resemble basketball so much as a whirlwind, with the Lakers flattening everything in their path.

The consensus now is that only one thing can undo the Lakers, and that is themselves.

- INDEPENDENT