A Banner Season? It’s a Little Early for That

First emotion of the Western Conference semifinals:

Amusement.

Just as it was not lost among the SuperSonics that Coach Del Harris asked the league for a ruling as to whether the Lakers would officially be known as co-champions of the Pacific Division after both finished 61-21, some longtime members of the Laker organization found it laughable that Seattle has hung a banner for a division title. It became a topic on the bus Monday morning on the way to the shootaround.

“If we put up banners for Pacific Division championships, there wouldn’t be enough wall space in the city of Inglewood,” said Chris Bodaken, the video coordinator and scout who was a ball boy during the Showtime years. “We had eight in a row in the ‘80s?”

Eight in a row and nine in all.

“You only need one [kind of banner,” Bodaken said. “Nothing else counts. . . . For true winning organizations, like us and the Celtics, it’s only world championships.”

Said Harris later, standing in front of a handmade banner placed outside the Laker locker room that proclaimed the SuperSonics’ title: “That’s fine. It’s an accomplishment. They should be proud of it.”

But . . .

“You actually think we’re going to hang a division banner in the Forum? Whatever. The important thing is getting the rings.”

*

Those weren’t his Houston Rockets who went down Sunday, so Robert Horry watched the first-round series against the Utah Jazz with detached interest, if at all.

“I didn’t even watch the game,” said Horry, who started for two NBA champions in Houston. “It seems funny. I just knew that the teams in the past were going to win. That’s how we won our second championship--Game 5 at Utah, we were down eight points with like four minutes to go in the game, and win. You kind of expected Houston to win those.”

Only two players had remained from the back-to-back champions--Hakeem Olajuwon and Mario Elie. Clyde Drexler, Matt Bullard and Charles Jones were Horry’s teammates for one title.