When It Mattered, Lakers Had Heart

I’m sorry. I still don’t believe it.

It is going to be difficult writing a column about something that did not happen, could not happen, not in this town, not with this team.

The Fantasy on Figueroa has been finished for an hour, and the heart won’t stop pounding, the feet are uncontrollably bouncing, the palms still leak.

This is embarrassing.

Somebody tell me again, quick.

Did, or did not, the pretty Lakers crawl on their bellies out of a 15-point ditch in the fourth quarter to win the biggest game of many seasons?

Did, or did not, a team with questionable heart just beat the Portland Trail Blazers into a franchise humiliation Sunday with a lot of heart?

Did, or did not, a town with questionable passion just light the fire that stoked that heart?

Will, or will not, the sporting world’s perception of Los Angeles be a little different today after the Lakers’ 89-84 win over the Trail Blazers for the Western Conference championship?

“This has not yet sunk in,” said Brian Shaw afterward, still breathless in his post-shower towel.

You see?

“I’m still taking this all in,” said Rick Fox, eyes the size of Shaquille O’Neal’s palm, still wearing his uniform as teammates filed past him to the parking lot.

Told you.

“I was losing my mind,” said John Salley.

Join the club.

We’re now supposed to be thinking about the Indiana Pacers.

I’m sorry, I can only think about Kirk Gibson.

Shaq didn’t limp, he leaped. Kobe Bryant didn’t throw a slider, he threw a floater.

But when the soaring Shaq seemed to touch a ceiling championship banner before grabbing the alley-oop pass and throwing down the dunk that symbolized the comeback and clinched the win, it was 1988 again.

“It’s what makes champions,” said Kobe.

We’re now supposed to be thinking about the NBA finals against the Pacers that begin Wednesday here.

I’m sorry, I can only think about the Miracle on Manchester.

It wouldn’t have been admissible in a game of H-O-R-S-E, he was just trying to arc it over a bunch of heads. But when Shaw banked in that three-pointer at the end of the third quarter to essentially begin the comeback, it was 1982 again.

You remember the miracle.

The Kings trailed Edmonton, 5-0, in the third period of Game 3 of the first round of the playoffs. The Kings won, 6-5, in overtime.

No offense, but this was better. Because this was worse.

The Lakers were on the verge of becoming only the seventh team in NBA history to blow a three-games-to-one lead and lose a playoff.

They were on the verge of becoming the first Laker team to lose a deciding seventh game at home in 31 years.

Phil Jackson’s aura was falling from a fifth-floor window. Shaq’s reputation was blowing around like a hot dog wrapper.

The franchise looked bad. Staples Center, so quiet in the third quarter that you could hear a season drop, sounded bad.

Trailing by 16 points in the final seconds of the third quarter, this was no longer a game, it was a cliche.

After the fourth quarter began, a Portland official actually prepared to hand NBA finals ticket information to their radio announcers.

“All this talk for so many years about this team not having any fire, any fight . . .” Fox said.

So who could believe what happened next?

So remind me.

Late in the third quarter, did Jackson actually scream at his team during a timeout? This same Phil Jackson who has spent much of this season--heck, much of this week--acting as if this was all one big shrug?

“He yelled at us, all of us,” Shaw said. “He said we got lazy. He said we weren’t taking the extra step on defense. He got everybody’s attention.”

Then, trailing by 13 with 9:48 remaining in the game, did Kobe actually make a leaping block of a Bonzi Wells’ layup?

At that point, the guy next to me said that one more basket would clinch the Portland victory. One more basket.

For more than seven minutes, we waited for that basket.

Is it possible that the Lakers really stopped them that long?

Portland actually missed 12 consecutive shots?

Was that really smiling Robert Horry grunting and shoving on Rasheed Wallace?

Shaw--his most noted previous moment in this series was a suspension for leaving the bench during a fight--really stole the ball on one possession, then stole a rebound moments later?

And the offense really flew without Superman?

(If this is true, that column appearing in this space Sunday, about how the Lakers weren’t good enough to win without being led by Shaq . . . scratch that.)

“I have never seen one quite like that before,” Jackson said afterward.

Same here. And this was before Horry hit the three-pointer to pull it within five, and before Kobe schooled Scottie Pippen with a jumper, and before Shaw tied it at 75 with a three-pointer.

All the while, the Staples Center crowd was such a rolling, deafening sea of yellow that you wondered how the Lakers heard anything on their bench during timeouts.

“I talked to my guys,” Shaq said.

So that’s how.

“I told my guys, this is do or die, we’ve come too far to go home now,” he said.

Oh, but with this win, they did go home.

With Shaq’s splendid wide-eyed sprint into the arms of teammates after the alley-oop dunk gave the Lakers a six-point lead in the final minute, they returned to the residence of past Laker glories.

A place where they win not with carnivals, but character.

A place where for all their giant stars, the most important ones are sometimes the smallest ones.

A place of the heart.

Welcome home.

“This is the most important game in my life,” Shaw said. “This may be the most important game in all of our lives.”

Or so he says. I still need to see the tape.

Again and again and again.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.