It's A Wrap

They finally figured it out. It was there on both their faces, the jubilation and relief that came with knowing that they had cracked the safe and learned how championships are won. There were times in their careers when it must have seemed to Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant that the trophy that they wanted so badly was locked in a vault, and that no one would tell them the combination. But they persevered, and on Monday night, they received their reward. It took all of the Los Angeles Lakers to win the NBA title with a 116-111 victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 6 of the Finals at the Staples Center, but they would still be stumbling about as talented underachievers if O'Neal and Bryant had not grasped what they needed to know at last.

When the final buzzer sounded and made them NBA champions for the first time, the two players immediately sought each other for an embrace, and the bitter endings of previous years melted away. There was 1995, when O'Neal's Orlando Magic team was swept in the Finals by the Houston Rockets, as well as his two other postseasons as a Laker that concluded on the short end of a sweep. For Bryant, 21, there was 1997, when he shot wildly down the stretch as L.A. was bounced out of the playoffs by the Utah Jazz. They have endured a great deal of disappointment for players so young, but Monday night was the ending they had been searching for. When they found it, O'Neal, 28, broke down in tears. "I've held the emotion for about 11 years—three years in college and eight years in the league," O'Neal said. "It just came out. It just came out."

Bryant expressed his joy with humor. He was asked what he had learned about being a champion. "I didn't know champagne burned your eyes like that," he said, smiling broadly. "It's brutal." But he has discerned much more than that in his four pro seasons, especially this one. In their first year under the tutelage of coach Phil Jackson, O'Neal and Bryant learned how to put a leash on their egos, how to replace panic with patience, how to let themselves be coached, and the rest of the team followed their lead. They developed, in short, the qualities of a champion, qualities that were never more apparent than in Game 6, when a noble effort by Indiana nearly pushed them to a seventh game. The Lakers of the past few years, just as talented as this team, would have crumbled under the pressure applied by star guard Reggie Miller and the Pacers, who led for most of the game until LA. asserted its superiority at the end.

That superiority, as usual, was embodied by the Lakers' two superstars. O'Neal scored 41 points in Game 6, and his series averages of 38.0 points and 16.7 rebounds earned him the Finals MVP trophy by unanimous vote. Bryant was relentless down the stretch, repeatedly breaking down the Pacers' defense in the fourth quarter and hitting the free throws that clinched the tide with 2.5 seconds left. O'Neal and Bryant didn't do it alone by any means. Embattled forward Glen Rice (16 points) had his best all-around performance in the series, and forwards Rick Fox and Robert Horry drained crucial fourth-quarter threes. "We played our hearts out tonight," Fox said. "Going through the Pacers and the Blazers, no one can say we took an easy route to this championship."

One of the things these Lakers will learn—and let's be clear, a solitary title doesn't mean class is dismissed—is that winning a championship brings with it a new set of opponents, historical adversaries who exist only in memory and who can't be defeated on the court. All the champions of the past become the standard against which the new one is measured, and in that imposing context no flaw is too minor to escape notice. For these Lakers, the inability to deal wounded opponents a swift and fatal blow will be used by their detractors to cast them as some sort of short-attention-span champs.

Los Angeles was on the verge of a three-game sweep in the first round before letting the Sacramento Kings drag the series out to five. After taking a 3-0 lead in the next round against the Phoenix Suns, L.A. was run off the court in Game 4, 117-98, before clinching one game later. The Portland Trail Blazers came back from a 3-1 deficit to force a seventh game in which only a miracle finish allowed the Lakers to survive. Finally, the Pacers delayed a possible coronation in Game 5 with a 120-87 demolition that sent the series back to the Staples Center. "I don't like to think of a team that has championship quality in it losing by 33 points," Jackson said after Indiana's rout.

The margin of victory may have been humbling, but the suggestion that the Lakers cannot be considered elite champs because of their failure to put the hammer down doesn't take into account the stumbles of past titlists. Jackson in particular is well aware that several of his Chicago Bulls championship teams had a similar habit of letting opponents temporarily dodge the last bullet, at least in the Finals. In 1993 the Bulls missed a chance to win the title at home by losing Game 5 to the Suns. Three years later they had a 3-0 lead over the Seattle Super-Sonics before dropping Games 4 and 5. In 1998, Michael Jordan's final year, they were ahead 3-1 and lost Game 5 at home to the Jazz. Chicago won all three series because it was the best team in the big moments. The same can now be said of L.A.

But with a 2-1 lead heading into Game 4 on June 14, the Lakers weren't worried about their killer instinct as much as their own survival. Bryant's left ankle, which he sprained early in Game 2 when he landed on the foot of Pacers forward Jalen Rose, had kept him out of Game 3, and how effective he would be for the rest of the series was anyone's guess. What few observers expected was that Bryant would not only play in what turned out to be the pivotal game of the series, but he would also decide it.

Los Angeles dealt Indiana a knee-buckling emotional blow with a 120-118 overtime win to take a 3-1 lead. The Pacers played an inspired game, shooting 50.0% from the field, including 52.6% (10 of 19) from the three-point line while holding their own against O'Neal and Co. on the boards. Still, the Lakers hung in, thanks largely to the brilliance of Bryant, who scored eight points in the extra period, including two on a balletic reverse tip-in, to rescue L.A. after Shaq had fouled out with 2:33 left in OT. Though he scored 36 points and grabbed 21 rebounds, O'Neal had no trouble admitting, "Kobe was the hero tonight."

Bryant's 28-point performance was a tribute not just to his talent and ability to excel under pressure but to his powers of recuperation as well. By the estimate of Lakers trainer Gary Vitti, if the average weekend warrior suffered the same second-degree sprain (third degree is the most severe) he would need several weeks before he would be healthy enough to return to his pickup games. Bryant needed only five days to recover enough to put on the kind of show that Jordan used to deliver on a regular basis at this time of year. "Somebody must have waved a wand over that boy's leg," said LA backup center John Salley after Game 4. Bryant's resilience might have seemed magical, but it was actually the result of around-the-clock treatment that was both high-tech and hands-on.