Straw Poll Shows Lakers Are Unstoppable Force

Easy, Shaq. That’s my neck you’ve got there!

Careful, Kobe. Those bristles are real!

Gently, Lakers. I’m not a toy or a weapon, even though you’ve been treating me like both.

I’m a broom. The czar of the kitchen corner. The sultan of cleaning supplies.

I do porches. I do garages. When I’m drunk and cold, I do curling.

At least, I did.

Then, two weeks ago, after a decade of neglect, the Lakers surprisingly pulled me out of the closet.

Now I do basketball teams. And I’m exhausted.

Two sweeps in two weeks, the latest completed Sunday at Arco Arena, where the Lakers beat the Sacramento Kings, 119-113, to win the Western Conference semifinals, four games to none.

Brrr! That barn floor is cold.

“No, no, no, no, we never thought this would happen like this,” Rick Fox said.

Nobody thought it. Two weeks ago, I was hanging upside down behind a winter coat. Today, it is the Laker season that is standing on its head.

The best team in the NBA right now? They are playing like the best team in the NBA since the Chicago Bulls were in the NBA.

All their troubles during the regular season? Swept away with Portland and Sacramento.

The Lakers have jumped on me like witches.

Seven playoff games. Seven wins. Not once have they trailed by double-digits. Not once have they trailed in the final 10 minutes.

They had yet to trail in the fourth quarter until Sunday, when the Kings began the period with a four-point lead, and it was actually tied with 10:52 remaining.

The Kings were howling and posing. The Lakers were adjusting their earplugs.

“Last year in that situation, we would have fallen apart,” Fox said.

And this year? I’ll brush to the side and let Derek Fisher describe it.

“This year, we’re going to force teams to beat us,” he said. “We are not going to give away the game.”

And so they attacked the Kings like my relatives attack cobwebs.

Shaquille O’Neal missed a free throw, but hustled off the line, grabbed the rebound, and was fouled again. He made both free throws this time to give the Lakers an 86-84 lead.

“We messed around all year with he-said and she-said, with all that talk about me and Kobe,” O’Neal said. “That’s over with now. We’ve got it together now.”

Lawrence Funderburke then missed a jumper for the Kings--and the fact that he was even in the game at that crucial point after playing just three minutes in the previous three games proves I wasn’t the only straw-brain in the building.

Robert Horry hit a three-pointer over a late-arriving Chris Webber to improve the Laker lead to five, and the Kings’ surge stalled.

From the time the score was tied, the Lakers scored at least one point on 15 of their next 18 possessions.

Kobe Bryant, that good young husband who left town late Friday to be with his ailing wife, showed again that he is nearly as good at basketball, with 15 finishing points and 48 overall.

On the list of hot young guards in the playoffs, that final number ranks him third behind Allen Iverson and Vince Carter.

But both could be watching him in June, which Bryant should remember if he ever wants to leave town and become one of those players.

Speaking of leaving, this loss ensured that Webber will flee Sacramento as a free agent, carrying the Kings immediate future in his shaving kit.

Oh yeah, did I tell you? I’m being helped these days by my buddy, the dustpan.

The Lakers aren’t just sweeping teams out of the playoffs, they are sweeping them into the compactor.

That sweep of the Trail Blazers became a firing of their coach and a probable dismantling of their roster.

This sweep of the Kings will send Webber to the East, Jason Williams somewhere that appreciates overhyped showboats, and the Kings back to the bottom of the Pacific Division.

In the final moments Sunday, a visiting Laker fan stood up and began waving a--I’m ashamed to admit it--a whisk broom.

This was bigger than that.

This was the final exorcism of last year’s demons. Just as there will be no Game 7 against Portland this year, there will also not be a Game 5 against Sacramento.

“That’s all last year’s news now,” O’Neal said.

This was also the affirmation that the playoff heat has welded their championship rings into a single band.

“We persevere, we weather the storm, we don’t sway,” Brian Shaw said.

And, perhaps more than anything, this was the prep work for the San Antonio Spurs.

“Right now, the Spurs have the best team in the NBA,” said O’Neal, who usually doesn’t say that about anybody but himself.

They haven’t quite finished off the Dallas Mavericks in the other Western Conference semifinal, but they will.

The seven-game series for the conference championship and probably the NBA championship begins Saturday in San Antonio.

“The champions of two years ago against the champions of last year--it’s the battle everyone wants to see,” Fox said.

Well, maybe not everyone.

Me, I’m going back to the closet.

If someone named Duncan asks, tell him I’m not here.

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

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INSIDE

PHILADELPHIA: 84

TORONTO: 79

Allen Iverson scores 30 points to help the 76ers win at Toronto and tie the Eastern Conference semifinal series at 2-2. D12

CHARLOTTE: 85

MILWAUKEE: 78

Jamal Mashburn’s 31 points spark the Hornets to a victory that ties the series at 2-2. The home team has won each game. D12