Divac Gets on a Roll, Then Taps Out

A simple tap.

Vlade Divac has been waiting 13 years for such a simple tap, through seven years with the Lakers, two with the Charlotte Hornets and four with the Sacramento Kings.

He joined the Lakers for the 1989-90 season, hoping to follow in the giant steps of the just-retired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, hoping to win an NBA title alongside Magic Johnson and James Worthy and the rest of the remaining Showtime cast.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Divac’s biggest contribution to the Lakers was not his arrival, but his departure. It was his trade to Charlotte that gave the Lakers the draft choice they used to get Kobe Bryant, which, in turn, led to two championships.

Sunday at Staples Center, with 12 seconds to play, Divac felt he was about to take a giant step toward the championship ring that has so long eluded him.

With a team-high 22 points, with seven rebounds, with a solid defensive effort, Divac had helped his Kings hang on to a 98-97 lead in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals against the Lakers. Victory would give the Kings a 3-1 series lead with two of the possible three remaining games in Sacramento.

Not only that, but Divac had the ball in his hands and a clear shot at the basket. He drove in, scored, and figured his team was guaranteed no worse than a tie.

Instead, he heard a whistle cutting through the roar of the crowd.

“I thought they had called me for traveling,” Divac said.

Nope. Foul on Rick Fox.

“I was surprised,” Divac said. “He didn’t touch me at all. I thought I had scored. I did score.”

Divac still had a chance to get those two points at the free-throw line. He stepped up there having connected at an 80% success rate Sunday, having hit eight of 10. This time, he had to settle for 50%, getting one of two.

Still, that stretched the King lead to two. Now all they had to do was defend at the other end. Bryant put up a shot that missed, but Shaquille O’Neal got the rebound. Divac didn’t know exactly how much time was left, but he knew it couldn’t be more than a few ticks of the clock. If he could just get that darn ball out of there, his team would be home free.

Divac got his chance against O’Neal in the battle of seven-footers. The Laker center’s shot came off the rim and hung in the air. All Divac needed to do was tap it out of there like a volleyballer.

“Shaq was on my back,” Divac said. “I was fighting for position. I didn’t have time to think about what to do with the ball. I just knocked it out of there and I thought time would run out.”

Almost. But Divac’s tap went to the wrong place at the wrong time, straight to Robert Horry just outside the three-point line. With half a second remaining, Horry fired up the game-winning three-pointer.

“It was just a lucky shot,” Divac said. “You don’t need to have skill to do that. You just throw it up and if it goes in, it goes in.”

Teammate Chris Webber backed up his teammate.

“It is something I would have done,” he said of the tap. “It was something we all would have done.”

Seeing Horry with the ball in hands, Webber came leaping out, arms outstretched.

“I tried to bust tail,” Webber said, “tried to get out there, get a hand in his face, but it was too little, too late.”

In the stunned King locker room afterward, Divac tried to boost his teammates’ spirits.

“I told the guys they should feel good,” Divac said. “A basketball game should be decided on a last-second shot.”

But Divac didn’t feel good. Not even when Laker owner Jerry Buss, encountering Divac outside the locker room, told him he thought it was the best game Divac had ever played.

Trying to make his way to the interview area, Divac instead accidentally walked into the Laker locker room.

Same old story for Divac, wrong place, wrong time.