Up in the Clouds

The Los Angeles Lakers will parade today to City Hall, where they will tower over Mayor Tom Bradley--no easy accomplishment in itself--and then spend their summer savoring the world championship that they wrung from the Boston Celtics on Sunday. Their fans will content themselves with a summer of tall tales, the only fitting kind for a sport in which your average player is mere inches short of 7 feet.

Most Southern Californians know the Lakers only through radio, television and newspapers because basketball, unlike football and baseball, is not played in the great outdoors and the Forum can hold only a relative handful of people who think of themselves as Laker fans. But the city obviously has managed to follow every sky hook of these champion practitioners of the most balletic of sports as closely and as enthusiastically as though they had front-row seats.

If you need to reach us this morning, you will find us on a balcony somewhere. We will be looking at a parade of stars smiling and waving, but we will be seeing them twisting and turning and floating on air on their way to a championship. Pride in achievement like theirs has no need of front-row seats.