Happy Landing

Told on Friday night that he seemed a little down for a man who had just won his fourth NBA championship, Robert Horry pressed out a smile.

“I hate to say this,” he said, “but I wish we did this in front of our fans. It feels so much better to do it that way, with them screaming and cheering.”

So, they’ll have a parade.

On Monday morning they’ll put on their sunglasses and take the celebration from Broad Street to Figueroa Avenue, 2,500 miles between victory and party, hardly any distance at all. Shaquille O’Neal will say something loud and Kobe Bryant will say something soft and Derek Fisher will say something thoughtful, because his eyes were the reddest, and long before the first champagne flew.

And they will agree, perhaps, that this could be the birth of a dynasty, these back-to-back championships driven by O’Neal, at 29, and Bryant, at 22, and Phil Jackson, who seems content in his work here, at 55. He hardly can stop now, within one of Red Auerbach’s nine coaching titles, particularly because Red so rarely has anything nice to say about him.

Asked what he thought of this particular ending, Jackson took a momentary glance over his shoulder at an odd, trying season and said, “Surreal. This one is really surreal.”

It’s OK, though. Jackson likes surreal.

The Lakers and their traveling party flew home Saturday morning, three hours behind the airplane that ferried most of their wives and children and friends back to Los Angeles. By the end of the weekend, they’ll have eaten free and drank free and heard everything flattering about themselves, so pretty much the same routine as the week before the NBA Finals.

They established the regular season for what it is, which is the preseason, a place for emotional fixes and physical pacing, a lowly place from where they sprang to win a record 15 of 16 playoff games, and a record eight of eight on the road.

If the Lakers are capable of putting away four 50 plus-game winners--Portland, Sacramento and San Antonio before Philadelphia--with such efficiency, then what will the coming seasons bring, with O’Neal in his prime and Bryant only approaching his?

“With Shaq and Kobe at the age they are,” Horace Grant said, “I give it eight, nine more times.”

Did we mention all the champagne?

“This team is a very good basketball team,” Ron Harper said. “We’ve got two great basketball players and some role guys who know their basketball. We got some good role players. As long as we keep our role players, we’ll always be a very good basketball team.”

It’s a wonderful sentiment. But summer beckons, as do handfuls of free agents and their agents. The Lakers are more likely to hold onto their veterans than they were three months ago, when they looked less like a championship team and more like a rec-league entry. But they’ll take long looks at Grant and Harper, favorites of Jackson’s. Grant will be 36 in three weeks and Harper turned 37 in January.

Ninety minutes before Game 5, Jackson was noncommittal.

“There’s some decisions this organization’s going to have to make after the year’s out, and a lot of that has to do with how you move on, and how you stay fresh and still milk the experience and the veteran years that you have with players,” he said. “I thought the decision to bring Harper back and [Brian] Shaw back and Horace in were all good decisions--by Mitch [Kupchak]. Ronnie suffered a very serious [knee] injury, a debilitating injury that left his playoffs in doubt.

“He’s proved to be a very valuable player in the playoffs. But we know we need distance and some youth in the legs in the guard corps next year. We haven’t really even considered Ron coming back but he has expressed some interest in doing it. We’ll discuss that when it’s over. I’m going to listen to them, that’s for sure.”

Kupchak, the general manager, recently recalled an observation made years ago by owner Jerry Buss, who said that in a season a team does not age one year, it ages a year for each player, or 15 years. In the celebration of Friday night, which lasted well into Saturday morning at the team’s downtown hotel, there was joy for some, trepidation for others. Grant, Harper, J.R. Rider and Mike Penberthy are free agents.

“Jerry [West] promised me that he would always have a great team around me, and he kept his promise,” said O’Neal, just finishing his fifth Laker season. “This one is also for Mr. West. And, you know, I think I’m happy. It may not seem like I’m happy on my face. But I’m also greedy, and I’m not done. So, I will take a week off, start working out again, come back leaner and meaner and try to get another one next year.

“Most of the year we messed around, let a lot of teams beat us, let a lot of games slip away. But, the last 15, 20 games, we just became a great team. And you know, Kobe did a great job of keeping everyone involved and everybody shot the ball well and we played with that hunger. Somebody told me tonight that we made history. We have the best record in winning a championship. So, that’s another thing I can tell my sons, the Big Historian.”

Count Fisher among those who would vote to bring nearly everyone back.

“Our entire team won this,” Fisher said. “Shaq got the Finals MVP. We won a championship. Kobe played great. Everybody played great. That’s what feels the best about this. There isn’t one guy on our team that can’t feel good about what he did for us.

“[A dynasty] is a possibility. We just have to continue to work hard. Obviously, we have some things to take care of over the summer, to make sure we keep as many of the guys in the team in place. And we’ll see what happens.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Today’s Parade

11 a.m.: Kickoff in front of Department of Water and Power (1st and Hope). Mayor Richard Riordan will introduce team.

Parade Route: The team will board seven double-decker buses and will travel: West on 1st Street to Figueroa; South on Figueroa to Staples Center (at 11th Street).

Pep rally: at Staples approximately at 12:30 p.m. The Laker players will appear at the terrace after the parade. Fans will be ushered into the parking lot directly north of the arena.

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ALSO

Greetings: An enthusiastic crowd meets Lakers. B1

J.A. Adande: 76er fans still proud of their team. A18

Rider Update: He wants to return next season. D8

Viewpoint: They won’t call 76ers a bunch of losers. D9

Tuned In: Finals ratings higher than last season. D9