ESPN.com - Touch of luck

ESPN.com: Page 2

Tuesday, May 28, 2002
Updated: May 29, 1:26 PM ET
Touch of luck

By Eric Neel
Page 2 columnist

Crazy weekend. Amazing stuff from Paul Pierce and Robert Horry.


	For all of Game 4's subplots, it will be remembered for just Robert Horry's 3-pointer.

As a Lakers fan, it's probably sacrilege to say so, but I swear it felt like we were drawing off the magic of what the Celtics had done the day before. It was like their comeback had kicked open the door of what was possible, and if we hurried, we could scurry through and pull out a win too.

Anyway, wherever the mojo was coming from, it was good stuff.

I gotta say, I like the Kings. I dig Chris Webber's inside-outside game and I think Mike Bibby's incredibly entertaining, so I didn't really have the blood-feud feeling about this series until the fourth quarter Sunday.

But there was a stretch late in the game when the teams were exchanging buckets that got me dialed-in. Webber hit a jump hook, Kobe Bryant hit a weird fade-left-shoot-up-and-under-to-the-right thing that almost felt normal coming from him. Webber came back with a jumper, Shaquille O'Neal scored down low, then Vlade Divac from outside, Horry from 3, then Hidayet Turkoglu, and then I think it was Kobe again.

I was holding my 6-month-old daughter in my arms. She was sleeping, and I was standing and swaying in front of the TV, trying not to wake her. The Lakers were creeping close and the Kings were fighting to hold them off, and the crowd was making noise, and I was getting that great nervous feeling you get in your gut when you think something is going to happen, and even though you can't be sure, you're willing to open yourself up to wanting it and wishing for it. You're getting yourself ready for what's either going to be the wild happiness of a big win or the kick-in-the-gut sadness of watching your team go down.

That's where I was, holding my girl, first whispering and then shouting at the screen, going all in and tapping into old, deep channels of Lakers love.

I don't know what history is worth in a playoff series. I don't know that it makes any difference that Kobe and Shaq are playing in the same tradition as Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain, but I do know that I love the way images of those other guys bounced around in my head while I was watching the end of Game 4. It felt like there was something in the uniforms maybe, something that carries over and gives this team a little juice or swagger when they need it. I know that's ridiculous, but whatever, they sure looked good in what Chick Hearn used to call "Forum blue" and gold on Sunday.

... except for Shaq at the line, who looked tortured as usual.


	The free throw line brings Shaq down to our level.

Man, I love Shaq at the line. He's so human when he shoots free throws, sweating it out like any other poor mug, looking like he might actually fall on his face when he lets go. It's the antithesis of the rest of his game. The dunks and stuff are entirely without drama, but the free throws are terrific, poignant theater. I never feel closer to Shaq than I do when he's up there trying to get out of his head and searching desperately for some semblance of smooth on his follow-through.

When he made those two throws late in the game Sunday, I jumped off the floor a little, daughter and all. She woke up and looked at me all wide-eyed and wondering what the fuss was about.

When the last few seconds rolled around, and the Lakers were down two, I told her Kobe would take and make a shot, and we'd go to overtime. She looked at me as if to say, "OK, cool."

But this game didn't follow the usual scripts. (The Lakers, not the Kings, were supposed to come out strong at the start of the game, after all.) So Kobe missed and looked bad doing it, and Shaq somehow missed a short put-back, and then Divac tapped it back to Horry ...

Bang. He looked so right shooting that shot.

What's the value of calm? Where does it come from? Seriously. What goes on in a guy's brain or in his body that lets him function so effortlessly and smoothly in a moment so ragged and desperate? We should all hope to be that present and placid and confident just once in our lives.

The play had been ugly and broken down until then -- so had the game, so had most of Game 3 for the Lakers, for that matter -- but Horry redeemed it.

Suddenly, it was one of those moments when the shooter, his teammates and the fans are part of the same loud, ecstatic thing.

I yelled and my daughter flapped her arms and kicked her legs and we spun around in circles.


	Kobe Bryant in "Forum blue" and gold brings back images of past Lakers greats.

The conventional wisdom about the Lakers these last couple of years is that they're dominant and they can turn it on and off when they want to, and that their fans take their winning for granted.

That's bunk. Sacramento's a great team, probably better than the Lakers in a lot of ways. Game 4 and the series were in serious jeopardy, and the cry that went up in the Staples Center -- and in Lakers living rooms all over the country -- when Horry's shot went in was the cry of a crowd experiencing relief and joy at something turning out different and better than it looked like it would only seconds earlier.

An hour after the shot went in, and after watching the replay about a hundred times, I was still grinning with disbelief.

I knew, for all the skill in the shot, that we were lucky, too. Horry's touch was a wonder, but so was the weird sequence of tips and taps that somehow put the ball in his hands.

I don't think I would have realized that when I was younger. I found myself trying to imagine what the game must have been like in the mind of a young Lakers fan, maybe a kid 12 or 13 years old ...

Is he thinking that his team looked awkward and out-of-step for most of the game? Does he realize how close this series is? Does he care that chance has more to do with the series being tied than fate does?

Nah, he doesn't care about any of that. He's riding high on a wave of adrenaline. For him, the game and the series up till now are reduced to a single, glorious moment when Robert Horry canned a long J and the crowd went wild.

I smiled at my daughter and she smiled back up at me and I thought, "I'm with the kid."

Eric Neel reviews sports culture in his "Critical Mass" column, which will appear every Wednesday on Page 2. You can e-mail him at neel@sportsjones.com.