This Series Makes Third Time a Charm

Kobe Bryant could have called me at 2:30 a.m. and, unlike Shaquille O’Neal, I would have been awake.

Pajamas flopping like Vlade, mind racing like Bibby, alert and angst-filled and awaiting Game 7.

You?

Bryant could bloody my nose and I wouldn’t miss Game 7. Bobby Jackson could grab my shirt and it wouldn’t keep me from Game 7. Robert Horry could come to my backyard and demoralize me with a three-pointer in my face and I would bounce back to watch Game 7.

You?

Don’t lie.

I’ve seen you, with your Los Angeles smarts and sophistication, dancing and embracing and slobbering all over these NBA Western Conference finals as if they were being played in your backyard, as if the Sacramento Kings were shirts and you were skins.

I’ve seen you, the faded yellow flags flapping over the sleek black Mercedes-Benz, the blue afros above mock turtlenecks, the startling wall of photos at Palm Crest Elementary in La Canada Flintridge, 20 first-graders posing not in Sunday clothes, but Shaq’s jersey.

I’ve heard you too, shouting and stomping and howling behind me at Staples Center, louder than the 110, more crowded than the 405, more chaos than a Sig Alert.

On Friday night you were even heard over at Dodger Stadium, thousands of folks with their eyes on a baseball game and their ears pressed to the Lakers.

Randy Johnson was pitching, yet Kobe Bryant was firing, and that’s whose name was being chanted late in the game, throughout the stands, free throws overshadowing fastballs.

Eric Karros was batting, yet Mike Bibby was missing a three-pointer at the end of the game, so there erupted a giant cheer, and an apparently surprised Karros took a called third strike from Byung-Hyun Kim, and who can blame him? This sound of Angelenos showing passion about something beyond the limits of their neighborhoods is a strange one indeed.

That’s you.

A sprawling, diverse metropolis transformed, if ever so briefly, into a small town.

Transformed not by government, but by a basketball team.

No secession here, Chickie baby.

Even in a city that can’t even agree whether it’s a city will agree today on one thing:

Arco Arena, 4:30 p.m., Channel 4, the ultimate game of what has become an ultimate sort of playoff series.

What sports does best, sports is doing again. And if you still don’t believe it, look at the television ratings for Friday night.

More than half of the televisions that were flickering in Los Angeles were tuned to the Laker game. Can you imagine more than half of our diverse population agreeing on anything?

“Normally, you only see a number like that in a smaller city,” said Kevin Sullivan, NBC spokesman, speaking of the local 52 share. “This is a fantastic number for any town, but particularly L.A.”

Flash back a week, to Horry’s game-winning three-pointer in Game 4 at Staples. With nobody leaving and nobody sitting and everybody howling, Glenn Frey walked past the press table with a dazed smile.

“The Eagles never had a song like this.”

It has been many years since Los Angeles felt like this.

The first championship of this Laker era was new and fun. The second championship was so dominating, it was boring.

This one is different. This one feels closer to the heart. This one cuts deeper to the core of what it is like to be a sports fan in Los Angeles.

Somebody from Northern California coming down here to try to steal something. Somebody young, upstart, full of themselves. Somebody with the sheer nerve to already grab three-fourths of it, forcing the Lakers to make that dreadful trip north to grab it back.

It will all come together today, the cheeseburgers, cowbells, cruddy referees, pregame air kisses, the postgame whines.

Six games, four of which were decided in the final seconds.

Two game-winning shots. Two game-winning defensive stops. Every day something different, players either rising to the moment or collapsing under its weight, some players doing both, sometimes in the same possession.

Today, all of it whittled into 48 minutes that will turn the Lakers in one of two directions.

They lose, and it’s the last game of a nice little run.

They win, and it’s the first game of a dynasty.

In claiming the pressure is on the Kings--as O’Neal did immediately Friday night--the Lakers are denying the one aspect that would make this series victory one of the sweetest in club history.

No, the pressure is not on the Kings.

It is not the Kings who are trying to win a third consecutive championship.

It is not the Kings who realize the NBA requires at least three consecutive championships before true greatness can be bestowed.

The Boston Celtics of the mid-1960s, with eight consecutive championships, are legendary.

The Detroit Pistons and Houston Rockets, with two consecutive championships each in the 1980s and 1990s, are forgotten.

Today the Lakers have a choice.

They can take their biggest step toward joining the Celtics and Minneapolis Lakers and Chicago Bulls as one of the greatest teams in NBA history.

Or they can join the Pistons and Rockets as nice little diversions.

And they must make that choice in a hostile arena where they were defeated by a last-second shot only last week.

The pressure is on the Kings? Please.

Here’s hoping that the officiating is fair. Here’s hoping the players don’t dissolve under the greatest heat in pro sports, a common occurrence in seventh games.

And here’s hoping, after it ends, no matter who wins, Commissioner David Stern will step over the certain litter of bodies and hopes and ask an unusual but, given the circumstances, completely reasonable question.

Best of nine?

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