Don't crown the Lakers just yet

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LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Lakers are back on top in the Western Conference. Or, as their fans consider it, Manifest Destiny. Those "M-V-P" chants Kobe Bryant has heard for years in Staples Center apparently are about to finally become accurate. And all of Southern California seems to be rushing to catch that speeding purple and gold bandwagon as it races toward the postseason. But maybe we should hit the brakes ever so gently. As the Lakers enter their playoff opener against Denver, there's a lot of assuming taking place. The idea of a back-to-the- '80s (or '60s, depending on your loyalties) Finals meeting with the Boston Celtics is picking up momentum, to the point that an anonymous ABC staffer told Sports Illustrated's Jack McCallum "there is no second-best scenario." Put it this way: NBA commissioner David Stern did his annual pre-playoffs teleconference interview earlier in the week, and he fielded five questions involving a potential Lakers-Celtics matchup. (In comparison, he danced around four queries about the duplicity of the Seattle SuperSonics' owners.) We are forgetting, in our giddiness, that the Lakers haven't gotten beyond the first round since 2004. The Lakers have two players, 29-year-old Bryant and 33-year-old Derek Fisher, who have played in 131 and 133 playoff games, respectively, and won 19 series and three championships apiece. The rest of the players on the 15-man roster have played in a collective 144 playoff games and won a total of 13 series -- and no championships. And the guy who could turn out to be a significant piece of the puzzle has played in three playoff series in his career without his teams winning so much as a game. Then again, Pau Gasol never had Kobe on his side before now. "The key will be Gasol -- how he plays and what you can do with him," Sacramento Kings coach Reggie Theus said this week, when asked how the Lakers could be knocked off. "Kobe, you're not going to stop. Fisher, you're not going to stop him. You know what he does. The guys that shoot the ball from the perimeter, they're going to get open shots because everybody's guarding Kobe and Gasol. So they're going to get open. "I think the X factor is how Gasol plays. ... This is a great challenge for him. But at the same time, it's a great opportunity." Gasol's Memphis Grizzlies reached the postseason in 2004, his third pro season, only to be swept by San Antonio. Phoenix did the honors in 2005, and Dallas swept them out of the playoffs in '06. In each instance, Gasol was The Man. And when things went badly, he endured The Blame. Similarly, his countrymen did plenty of grumbling last September when Spain, the reigning world champion, lost by a point to Russia in the finals of the European championships. The upset was helped along by Gasol's five missed free throws in the fourth quarter, a key turnover in the final minute and a missed jumper at the buzzer. It's not a reach, then, to suggest that when the Lakers acquired Gasol on Feb. 1, they also liberated him from the curse of high expectations. "There's a lot of load taken off my shoulders because here I'm not the No. 1 guy," he said. "I've been the No. 1 guy on every team I've been on. (But) if it translates to winning, I don't mind taking a step back as far as roles and stuff. "... I'm pretty smart, in knowing what to do out there, not trying to do too much, because I have great teammates around me, and they can do many different things and contribute in many different ways." Win or lose, Gasol's embrace of a secondary role already puts this Lakers team in a far different place than that occupied by the championship teams at the beginning of this decade. Then, you'll recall, the identity of The Man was a regular subject of debate, or at least conjecture. "Our team was largely defined by (Shaquille O'Neal's) size and his dominance and his strength and his personality, and then Kobe's brilliance and composure and athleticism, kind of in a supporting role in a sense," Fisher said. "They carried us in a lot of ways, and the rest of us were just kind of instrumental at different times." Those teams were more heavily dependent on their stars. Now, Fisher said, "It's hard to say we have to rely on one person to do anything. We can beat you in a lot of different ways." Yet there's no doubt about the identity of the lead dog. And if these Lakers do meet the expectations of their fans (and ABC, and in all likelihood the commissioner's office) by playing in June, they'll have reinforced the value of a defined pecking order. E-mail Jim Alexander at jalexander(at)PE.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)