Three of a mind

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- What has formed with the Lakers is "a community," to use Phil Jackson's terminology.

It's one that is governed by three great branches, a society in which everyone accepts that Jackson, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant rule - but everyone else gets respect and glorification as a result.

"It's kind of our way to get into the Hall of Fame," Lakers forward Rick Fox said. "They'll show pictures of the team that won it each year, and I'll be able to go there and show my kids my picture alongside Shaq and Kobe, with Phil, and the rest of the guys."

The Lakers can win their third consecutive championship tonight in Game 4 of the NBA Finals against the New Jersey Nets.

And if the Lakers do, it will mean plenty to all their citizens. It has to mean more, though, to the men who created this world for the others to live in and win in.

Jackson previously won an NBA championship as a player, then six coaching the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s and two coaching the Lakers.

This one will not, however, be just another ring to throw in a crowded jewelry box.

This will make nine as a coach - tying Red Auerbach's record for most in NBA history. It was the dream of Jackson's mentor, Red Holzman, that Jackson reach Auerbach - and it's about to happen.

Jackson has joked about perhaps receiving a victory cigar - "not lit, hopefully" - as a gift from Auerbach, who is not known to be a particularly gracious winner or loser.

Jackson enjoys his cigars - he'll puff on them even after regular-season victories as he drives west on I-10 away from Staples Center, no matter that he doesn't really care much for regular-season victories.

He cares very much about postseason victories. And if the Lakers win tonight, he'll have his first NBA Finals sweep, and he'll have validation that he can do the three-peat thing without Michael Jordan.

"It's not similar," he said. "It's not as similar to the Bulls as people would think it would be. This team is very different. Our organization is very different."

And indeed, some aspects of it are eerily so. With a victory tonight, Jackson will have gone 45-13 in this three-peat, his exact record in his previous two three-peats.

The eight losses en route to the 2000 championship were Jackson's most in a title run. Going 30-5 in the past two seasons would be Jackson's best - and it would be the best two-year playoff record by any club since the NBA adopted its current format in 1984.

O'Neal has called this season his "toughest." Not only was there an array of injuries, led by that arthritic right big toe, there was that monster roundhouse right thrown at Chicago's Brad Miller the day O'Neal heard his grandmother had died.

"First time was when my father hit me with the right hook. Second time was when my grandmother passed away, my first grandmother. Third time was when we got swept (in the 1995 NBA Finals). And fourth time was when my other grandmother passed away."

He can sweep the Nets in the Finals and offset that '95 Houston sweep of his Orlando Magic, the last Finals sweep to occur. If he scores at least 21 points, O'Neal would eclipse Hakeem Olajuwon's record for most points scored in a four-game NBA Finals - a record set against O'Neal in '95.

And he can finish off this trying season with a victory here in New Jersey, just a few miles from where he was a pallbearer and put Irma Harrison to rest.

For O'Neal, this championship will be the one that reminds him that winning it all is worth all the grief. Jackson said Tuesday that he'd "certainly" coach beyond the remaining two seasons left on his contract if it's the only way to keep O'Neal from terminating his career early.

But O'Neal has backed off that talk. He is remembering how great this is, reveling in it, leaving the media in uproarious laughter Tuesday with his stand-up routine: "I've been getting criticized ever since I was a newborn: 'He's not gonna fit those Pampers,' his boom-boom is too big. You need some bigger Pampers!'"

Yet there was an even more memorable comment from O'Neal on Tuesday: "I would like to win five or six, seven ..."

In direct contrast to O'Neal, Bryant calls this his "most enjoyable season." He became a team captain, he became one of the guys, he became O'Neal's true pal.

And for Bryant, this championship is special because he did the right thing all season long and earned the title that way. To him, this ring won't be a result of his great skills; it rises out of his great attitude.

He did not get to score more than O'Neal, he did not get to play the Jordan wing position, he did not become NBA MVP as O'Neal suggested. But Bryant learned this season that those are not such important things.

"What motivates me is playing the game the right way, trying to do every little detail correctly," he said. "That's what's motivating me, that's what's pushing me. I don't use what people say, what other players say, as motivation yet. I just use the game, trying to master every little detail."

Bryant has always loved to learn. And what he learned this season he'll never forget.

That other stuff - the wing position, the MVP routine, etc. - will still be there in the future.

"I can't see it getting old and tiresome; I enjoy playing too much," he said. "The game is too fun. There's too many things to learn, both individually and as a team."

Now that France has been eliminated from the World Cup, I thought I'd post an article about the other team that America loves to hate, my own Los Angeles Lakers.

Although many pro sports fans around the country never get to taste so much as a single championship, I have the luxury to consider this NBA crown a rather bittersweet affair. Why, you ask? There has been no hated East Coast rival to defeat, no ghost of long ago seventh game loses to exorcise. Even my own prediction of a five games series will be shown tonight to be overly pessimistic, as the new Jersey Nets will undoubtedly succumb to the superior firepower of the boys in purple and gold.

On the other hand this will be the fourteenth championship for the Lakers, five in Minneapolis, and nine in Los Angeles. That puts the franchise only two behind the dreaded Celtics, and Phil Jackson at nine titles will tie with the old Boston coach who's fourth quarter victory cigars were a knife in the heart of old time Lakers fans. Can anyone doubt that before this run is through both the records of the Boston franchise and it's most famous coach Red Auerbach be bested by Phil and Company?

So have at it LA haters, but when all is said and done by 9:00 left coast time tonight the strains of We Are The Champions will fill the warm Southland air!

I love that song, as well as "I Love L.A." by Randy Newman. Red is going to choke on his cigar after the Lakers win, when Phil ties his record. There is no coach who more epitomizes arrogance than the way Red lit up at the end of games, especially in the Finals, often against the Lakers. It is sweet justice that Phil's 9th title will be with the Lakers, and that he will soon surpass Red's record in the years to come.

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