<b><u> Lack of competition keeps current Lakers from top spot.</u></b> <i>June 15, 2002 If the subject is history, you know this is a first draft, and maybe less than that - maybe the first note card - because the question came up not 20 minutes after the Los Angeles Lakers became the fourth team to win three championships in a row. Roughly. If you want to get technical, you can attribute two three- peats to the Boston Celtics of the 1960s, who eight-peated, and to the Chicago Bulls of the '90s. I'm counting each of these as one team because the subject here is dynasties, not arithmetic. The old Minneapolis Lakers had the other three-peat, the phrase Byron Scott conceived but Pat Riley copyrighted, to Riley's continuing profit. John Kundla's team won five of six from 1949 to '54, but, frankly, comparing those Lakers to these is like comparing the Model T to the T-bird. The T-bird is a better car by any measure but the Model T was every bit as impressive in its day. The Celtics of the '60s are another relic, though more recognizable as a modern basketball team than the oldest Lakers. They don't match up with modern teams in size or athleticism but they dominated the sport longer than any team before or since. Domination of an era can't be what I'm after, though. It disqualifies the Lakers and Celtics of the '80s, only the two best teams of all time. Neither dominated the era because of the other, which made theirs the best of basketball times. Then you have the Bulls of the '90s and today's Lakers, star-driven champions without significant competition. Byron Scott played for the Lakers and against the Celtics of the '80s and was just skunked, as New Jersey's coach, by the Lakers of the new millennium. "They're right up there," he said of the new version. "But . . . if you're trying to compare them to the teams we had in the '80s, I still think we had a better team." The 1980 team had five players in double figures. Its top four scorers - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes, Magic Johnson and Norm Nixon - all shot better than .500 from the field. Kareem was over .600. The current version had three players in double figures, one - Shaquille O'Neal - over .500. The '87 team had seven players average double figures. Match them up. I like Kareem and Michael Cooper on Shaq and Kobe Bryant a lot better than I like Rick Fox and Kobe on James Worthy and Magic. The Showtime Lakers won five titles and played in the Finals for four more in the league's most competitive era. In fact, if the Philadelphia 76ers of the time had played in any other era, you wouldn't have to be a basketball geek to bring them into the conversation. You can be pretty sure Moses Malone and Julius Erving would have been Eastern Conference champions this year. They made the Finals three out of four years from 1980 to '83, meeting the Lakers every time and beating them once. It is surprisingly popular now to pick out one of the middle '80s Celtics teams and claim it was the best of all time, but this is a notion propagated almost entirely by white people. The Celtics stars were white. The numbers tell the unbiased story: The Lakers won five titles to the Celtics' three. They played in nine Finals to the Celtics' five. They played each other for three championships, and the Lakers won twice. The Lakers were deeper and more athletic, and their stars were better than the Celtics' stars. But both beat today's Lakers. And the '90s Bulls. In fact, I'd bet on the '83 Sixers - Moses, Dr. J, Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney, Bobby Jones - to beat either of the recent dynasties in a seven-game series. So your first draft from here says the current Lakers are right up there, like Scott said, but not at the top, and not in the top three, no matter how many titles they rack up against competition such as the Nets. I put the Lakers, Celtics and Sixers of basketball's golden age one, two and three, respectively. At the moment, I have the '90s Bulls and current Lakers tied for fourth. Shaq would dominate inside, but Scottie Pippen would disrupt the triangle and Michael Jordan would be . . . well . . . Michael Jordan. The current Lakers can win more championships and not affect this calculation measurably. I already have them tied with a team that won twice as many. Four or five in a row would be something, but the subject still isn't arithmetic. The '60s Celtics aren't the best of all time by virtue of eight in a row. It's also about competition. Which reminds me, I'd like to see the current Lakers play some.</i> <b>AS my post stated, I couldn't have said it better myself. 4th is better than nothing for the lakers of today. <b>
