Encore !

Years from now, when basketball fans reminisce about how the Los Angeles Lakers dominated the game during the 1980s, when legend transforms them into an invincible machine, it may be forgotten how close this team came to losing the championship. But today’s fans know that the final victory over the tenacious Detroit Pistons and the back-to-back NBA titles are sweeter because they almost didn’t happen. The uncertainty about whether the Lakers would triumph despite age, injuries and occasional lethargy made this overly long season--at 229 days the longest in the history of professional basketball--worth watching.

There is no simple explanation for why the Lakers outlasted one inspired challenger after another. They might have lost the Western Conference semi-finals if Coach Pat Riley hadn’t staged a temper tantrum when they were down, two games to one, to the Utah Jazz. Their drive to repeat as champions would have derailed on Sunday if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, at an age when most athletes are tending their investments and their yellowing scrapbooks, hadn’t sunk two free throws in the last 14 seconds. And Detroit, not Los Angeles, might have been putting on a victory parade Wednesday if Lakers owner Jerry Buss had succeeded in trading away James Worthy.

Preachers, team chaplains and sports columnists usually find profound meaning in sporting events. We will leave it to them to decide whether Pat Riley’s guarantee of back-to-back titles was just the motivation that the Lakers needed, whether Isiah Thomas might have won it for the Pistons if he had played with two good ankles, whether the Lakers had more heart or more brains or more stamina than their opponents. As simple spectators, we would say only that this has been a supremely satisfying season. Do it again.