Third Watch

Two days passed neither quickly nor slowly for the Lakers here; they are accustomed to the methodical and habit-forming pace of the NBA postseason.

The time simply went, 22 hours a day in Manhattan, two in New Jersey, about the palatable ratio, even for Shaquille O’Neal, and he’s from New Jersey.

Ahead, three games to none, the Lakers can finish the NBA Finals and become the fifth team in league history to win at least three titles consecutively with a victory against the New Jersey Nets tonight at Continental Airlines Arena.

By Tuesday afternoon, they seemed to care less about the aesthetics of a four-game sweep than its utility. That is, O’Neal’s arthritic toe isn’t getting any healthier, the Nets aren’t exactly bubbling with confidence, and there was no sense in hanging around, or allowing the Nets to do the same. After all, L.A. waits, and the Lakers can feel it a continent away.

“It’s not a record-book thing,” Coach Phil Jackson said. “You just want to get the thing over with as quickly as possible, because each game means a lot. There’s a lot at risk.”

So they bided their time, attended movies, saw the city, broke down the Nets’ full-court press, and waited for what most of the world figures to be inevitable, another win, perhaps as early as tonight. Even the Nets haven’t sounded as if they have their hearts in it anymore.

“You can’t think about being down, 3-0,” guard Jason Kidd said. “I mean, you start doing that, eventually it’s going to end.”

Yet, the Laker minds wander.

“I’ve thought about winning this one,” Kobe Bryant said. “Then you kind of dream about winning a fourth one. I mean, everything starts with a dream, you know? You have to be able to dream. You have to be able to set goals for yourself in order to achieve them. That’s the first step. So, yeah, I dream about it sometimes.”

The Lakers practiced on a gym floor in the Meadowlands in the morning, answered handfuls of questions in the early afternoon, and trucked back to Manhattan after that. In the moments before heading for the Lincoln Tunnel, however, Rick Fox was struck by a question about legacies.

O’Neal and Bryant, of course, seem destined to have their jerseys on an arena wall someday, and their busts in a Springfield, Mass., hall. Theirs will be legacies of championships now, of course, but also about fantastic individual statistics, and nights they were as good as anyone who ever played basketball, and game rooms filled with All-Star shirts.

Fox and those Lakers like him-- Robert Horry, Brian Shaw, Derek Fisher, Devean George, those who have filled gaps around O’Neal and Bryant for three seasons--perhaps will cling more to the championship banners tacked beside the famous jerseys.

A win tonight, or soon, would put the Lakers in the same place as the Minneapolis Lakers (1952-54) and the two Chicago Bull teams of the 1990s among teams to win three straight titles, if behind the legendary Boston Celtic teams that won eight in a row from 1959-66.

“It’s kind of our way to get into the Hall of Fame,” Fox said, smiling. “They’ll show pictures of the team that won it each year and I’ll be able to go there and show my kids my picture alongside Shaq and Kobe in the team picture, along with Phil and the rest of the guys.”

Not lesser players, he said. Just not as great.

“We’ve played the game as a supporting cast with the understanding that a lot of other people in this league greater than ourselves individually have not shared in the experiences we have the last three years because of Phil, Phil’s leadership, and Shaq and Kobe’s excellent play,” Fox said. “I think we’re humble enough to know that there’s a lot of other people capable of doing our job. Yet, still, we happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

George is set to become only the seventh player to win a title in his first three NBA seasons. The others: Chicago’s Scott Williams, Minneapolis’ Whitey Skoog and four Celtics--K.C. Jones, Tom Sanders, Larry Siegfried and Gene Guarilia.

Shaw is a captain figure in a locker room replete with leader types. Fisher is sturdy and responsible. Horry has a star’s coolness in a reserve’s ego.

“In the past eras, on those championship teams, some of the role players were the favorite guys,” Fisher said. “Kurt Rambis. Michael Cooper. Norm Nixon. Other guys, like Bobby Jones. Andrew Toney.

“Hopefully it will be the same for us. As we continue to be part of something special, people will remember the contributions that we made.”