SERIES REPORT

It’s quite a productive five years the Lakers could be wrapping up now, what with three championships already won in that stretch. It’s three more than the Clippers have in their history and three more than the Knicks have won the last 30 years.

Undoubtedly because the lead characters, Phil Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, are so outsized, folks are going to refer to this period as a Laker dynasty and compare them favorably with the best teams of the last 25 years.

But beyond the glamour, these Lakers don’t measure up to Magic Johnson’s Lakers, not to Larry Bird’s Celtics, certainly not to Michael Jordan’s Bulls, and probably not to the Bad Boy Pistons. There is one way the Lakers can dramatically alter the legacy of the current team: Get off the mat and beat San Antonio. The truly great teams have all done something improbable during the playoffs, like the Lakers exorcising years of demons by winning big in Boston Garden, like the Bulls coming back from 0-2 down to beat the Knicks. If the Lakers do that in this series, then fine, maybe history will have to reconsider them.

Championships, especially in pro sports, are entirely merit based, beyond critique. The value of a single title is undeniable. But historical ranking is a much more demanding exercise. Impressions, while subjective, still matter.

Magic, Bird and Jordan “brought it,” to use the players’ favorite phrase to describe effort, every night. There was never the perception any of the three took a night off here and there. After a dark period left the NBA’s reputation in question, it was Magic and Bird who restored the value of a ticket to watch an NBA game. Even more than their passing skills, they appeared to play every single game as if it were the playoffs.

The most important thing Jordan did was be Michael Jordan every single night. You never had to watch an understudy because he hardly ever got sick or missed a game because of injury after his second season. If you bought a ticket in November to take your kid to watch Jordan in February, you could not only count on him playing, you could count on seeing his full genius.

The Lakers of the last three years have never played the regular season with the passion and purpose the Bulls, Magic’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics did, so how could they possibly be rated as high?

It would be easier to forgive that if the Lakers had just powered their way through the playoffs in each of those three championship seasons, but they didn’t. The Lakers probably shouldn’t have even reached the 2000 NBA Finals and it took one of the great choke jobs in NBA history to get them there. Portland blew a 17-point fourth quarter lead in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals at Staples Center.

This season will become, officially, a clunker if the Lakers cannot win Game 3. You don’t figure a team with this kind of talent to be down 0-2 and looking so vulnerable. The Lakers have been very good at applying so much pressure that other teams buckle. But now, it’s the Lakers under all of the pressure.