Volume 67, Issue 4  

No Stopping the Diesel

by Binyamin Muschel

You can’t slow down a locomotive, let alone stop it.  Trying to get in its way will only hurt you.  The locomotive will slow down when it chooses to slow down, or when it malfunctions.  Understood?

Three consecutive championships and counting.  The Los Angeles Lakers have dominated the competition in the NBA over the past three years, winning nearly three quarters of their regular season games.  In the playoffs they have been just as strong, winning at an even higher ratio.  This is no reason why this season should be any different.  The other contending teams from a year ago have not significantly improved (yes, Nets fans, both of you, this includes your “blockbuster” acquisition of Dikembe Mutombo – more on that later), nor have the Lakers weakened.  The Lakers’ biggest nemesis during this incredible run has been the Sacramento Kings, who pushed the Lakers to the brink of elimination in two of the last three years.  They did get bigger, adding Keon Clark to a front line that includes Chris Webber and Vlade Divac, but they still don’t have anyone to stop Shaquille O’Neal.

Shaq.  You remember Shaq, right?  Yes, The Big Aristotle will be sidelined for the first week of the season, healing a surgically repaired right big toe, but when he’s at full strength, he brings the term “unstoppable force” to its most literal possible form.  His career numbers speak for themselves: 27.2 points per game, 12.4 rebounds per game, and, the stat I have to bring up before someone else does, his 53% free throw percentage.  Nobody in the league can guard him successfully.  The Nets, who the Lakers made quick work of in the finals last year, had nobody to match up against the big fella, so they brought in Dikembe Mutombo and his 36 year old knees.  The same Dikembe Mutombo who limited O’Neal to 33 points per game when the two squared off in the NBA Finals two years ago.  If the Nets do make the finals again, expect to see the same results.  Actually, if the championship road for any team from the Eastern Conference has to go through the Staples Center, expect to see the same results.  The Magic can be a good team when healthy, but they’re too small (Shawn Kemp’s 280 pound frame notwithstanding).  Same goes for Detroit and New Orleans (Hornets, in case you’re just joining us).  As for the Western Conference opponents, only the Kings can cause real problems for the Lakers, but as always, Los Angeles will prevail.  O’Neal will go through the motions during the regular season, as he has so many times, maybe even win another MVP, and then conquer the opposition in the postseason, and add a fourth Finals MVP trophy to his collection.

Of course, the Lakers aren’t a one-man team.  They’re a two-man team.  Kobe Bryant has been the post-Jordan Scottie Pippen, and he just turned twenty-four, an age when most players begin to hit their prime.  The threat of such a dominant second man is what propelled the Bulls to six titles in eight years.  Oh yeah, they also had the best player in the game, a title which is now held by a gentleman who plays for the Lakers.

With a supporting cast of Rick Fox, Derek Fisher, and Robert Horry, the Lakers are poised for another championship run.  The Bulls of the 1990’s were a powerful engine, a locomotive that stopped when they chose to.  And like the Bulls, the Lakers have the same master conductor, Phil Jackson, who, by next summer, will have no ringless fingers.

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