This Is No Time to Speak Softly

The grills were rolled out on a littered patch of wood chips and weeds underneath a roaring interstate.

There were boxes of Newports, and six-packs of Yuengling beer. There were tongue studs and navel rings and a state-shaped tattoo reading “Hellaware.”

Gathered was a cheerful group that proudly, if quite illegally, races cars through the industrial area surrounding the nearby First Union Center.

Everyone enjoying a South Philly picnic.

Featuring the newest South Philly cry.

“The Sixers are working-class people,” Scott Mirkin said with a scowl. “The Lakers are pretty boys.”

Like exhaust fumes on ribs, an aging stereotype soaked into this curious bit of city park Saturday, dressing the set for today’s Game 3 of the evened NBA Finals between the Lakers and 76ers.

“The Lakers are like everything out in L.A., laid back and relaxed,” Bob Lyons said. “The 76ers are like this town. Everything is faster. Everybody works hard.”

The game will be played across the street in a world admittedly too expensive for most in this crowd, but they already knew the score.

“It’s the East Side versus West Side, the tough guys against the showboats,” Charles Robinson said. “George Washington lived here. Ice Cube lives there.”

It’s about more than basketball, they say, it’s about life.

“It’s rougher here, and that’s how our team is,” Cassandra Pio said. “You think of Philly, you don’t think of stars. You think of L.A., and that’s all you think of.”

When it comes to basketball, that sort of thinking is as stretched and worn as certain pipsqueak’s elbow sock.

The Lakers are pretty boys?

Let’s see, Shaquille O’Neal is from Newark, Rick Fox played high school basketball in Indiana, Robert Horry and Horace Grant banged heads on the playgrounds of the Deep South . . .

And, oh yeah, Kobe Bryant is from Philly.

“But the rich part of Philly,” snorted picnicker Michelle Trafford. “And his high school team stunk.”

The Lakers are soft?

Last year they won the Western Conference championship with a 15-point comeback in the fourth quarter of a seventh game. This year in the playoffs, they have yet to lose on the road.

Last we looked, only one key player in these Finals has ever made the “soft” mistakes of consistently missing practices and shoot-arounds . . . and that was tough-preaching Iverson.

“Everybody talks about us being beach boys, but most of us never go to the beach,” Horry said earlier this spring. “And nobody in this locker room surfs because, you know, black people don’t surf.”

He was laughing, but the general perception isn’t so funny, and this week we have seen how.

It’s serious when the other team uses it for motivation. It’s serious when the Lakers find it becoming self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s serious right now, in a series where the Lakers must become an East Coast team, and quick.

As Phil Jackson said, there can be no home runs against the resilient 76ers. Beginning tonight, the Lakers must bunt, hit behind the runner, take the extra base.

The Lakers must show South Philly what L.A. has known for years, that simply because the stands are filled with air kisses and cell phones doesn’t mean the players are fluffy robes.

The captain of this team is not Dyan Cannon. The point guard is not Denzel Washington. The fight song is not a three-minute, saxophone-blared national anthem.

For the sake of every sports team in town, there is no better time for the Lakers to set the record straight, even if it requires an occasional crack and a cuff.

“Everybody I went to high school with is asking me for tickets. I’m not getting them tickets because they’re all Sixer fans anyway,” Bryant said, smiling, but also setting the tone. “They could stay at home and watch it on NBC like the rest of us.”

You would think that Los Angeles would have shed its soft image the moment Kirk Gibson finished his 1988 limp around the bases. But the Dodgers have long since lost their status as the city’s sports spokesmen.

That the outmanned USC and UCLA basketball teams advanced to the Sweet 16 in Philadelphia this year--with the Trojans fighting to the Elite Eight--should have been a strong argument for this town’s sports heart.

But that had as much national impact as the Kings’ strong push of the eventual champion Colorado Avalanche in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

It was nice, it was fresh, but it didn’t cause a change in the perception of our culture.

Only the team whose celebrity atmosphere created the culture can do that. Only the Lakers. And only by beating the 76ers at their own floor-burning game.

Certainly, there will always be those who will cannot resist tweaking Los Angeles teams for their glitter. But a win here, and at least one littered corner will know better.

“Rick Fox?” South Philly picnicker Mirkin asked. “The worst kind of pretty boy.”

“Tyronn Lue?” Chris Edwards said. “He’s Iverson without the talent.”

“Robert Horry?” Mirkin asked. “Whatever happened to him, anyway? Wasn’t there a time he used to be tough?”

“And how cool is Derek Fisher trying to be?” asked Carlos Marvin. “He wears that headband down around his ears? Might as well wear a ski cap, if you ask me.”

Perhaps Fisher will uncover those ears tonight and listen. Perhaps they all will.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.