Horse Racing, NBA Are in Final Stretch Again

History beckons this weekend. The final leg is at hand. The invincible beast, having already sent overmatched challengers scurrying for the exits, bears not only the weight of expectation but also the burden of trying to save a once-widely popular American pastime, hoping to bring long-lost fans back to the television set.

Yes, the Lakers are back in the NBA Finals.

And the day before Game 1 against Detroit tips off on ABC, Smarty Jones runs for the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes on NBC.

This hasn’t happened in quite some time. Horse racing has waited 26 years for a Triple Crown winner.

Los Angeles has waded through 24 months of controversy, hype, acrimony, angst, legal documents, player underachievement, media overkill, insane rumors and scurrilous innuendo to see the Lakers return to the Finals.

Horse racing fans seriously wondered whether they would live long enough.

Laker fans too.

It’s funny how the paths have intertwined throughout the years. Horse racing’s last gilded age was the late 1970s, when Seattle Slew and Affirmed won the Triple Crown in consecutive years, 1977-78, right before handing the riding crop to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, who proceeded to beat new life into a tired old nag called the NBA, then limping around the track with its Finals tape-delayed and aired after most of the nation had gone to bed.

Horse racing’s popularity began to slide as the NBA’s took off. Magic and Bird carried the league for a good decade, then handed off to Michael Jordan, who continued the winning ride until he handed off to ... the Houston Rockets?

Unhappy with that development, Jordan got back in the saddle, won again, quit again, came back again.

By the time he returned, he found the league overrun by kids who didn’t go to college, thus missing the vitally important “Jump Shooting 101” and “Passes Before Posses,” and a fan base so numbed by the decline in overall quality that last year’s Finals between San Antonio and New Jersey drew record-low prime-time ratings while a movie about a long-dead horse named Seabiscuit was a box-office success.

This weekend, they collide again. Smarty Jones takes on a depleted Belmont field today at 3:38 p.m. PDT, and the Lakers take on the Pistons on Sunday at 6 p.m. Similar stakes, similar odds, similar competition.

Take a look at these names:

Master David. Tayshaun Prince. Royal Assault. Chauncey Billups. Tap Dancer. Rip Hamilton.

Which ones are challengers to Smarty Jones, and which ones are challengers to the Lakers?

NBC and ABC are giving Smarty Jones and the Lakers the big-deal treatment. NBC will cover the Belmont with 32 cameras, including one on the Goodyear blimp, which has been rigged to light up with Smarty Jones’ name should the horse deliver as expected. ABC will cover the Lakers and Pistons with 25 cameras, including one on a miniature blimp circling inside Staples Center, at least until it is punctured by an errant Piston jump shot early in the third quarter.

Also featured in ABC’s arsenal are eight stationary cameras (presumably for Shaquille O’Neal when the Lakers have the ball) and eight robotic cameras (presumably for the Pistons when they have the ball).

There are some differences too.

Smarty Jones is trying to win his third major championship in a row. The Lakers? Been there, done that.

When Smarty Jones goes through the motions, they call it a light midweek workout. When the Lakers go through the motions, they call it Games 2 and 5 of the Western Conference finals.

Smarty Jones is unbeaten, eight victories in eight starts. He never mails it in.

Also available for viewing this weekend:

TODAY

* Tampa Bay Lightning at Calgary Flames (Channel 7, 5 p.m.)

History beckons here too: Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals, Calgary at home grinding for the clincher, possibly the last NHL game to be played for a very long time.

Instead of trying to sell the sport while it still has the chance, and maybe leave casual fans thinking, “Hey, you know, it’d be a shame if the league went away,” coaches John Tortorella of Tampa Bay and Darryl Sutter of Calgary have spent their opportunity of a lifetime being surly and sour and paranoid, all but begging the owners to pull the plug and put everyone out of so much misery.

Tortorella, who comes across as a sort of Miles Drentell with a whistle, only with less charm, has been a master of the non-answer during needlessly combative interview sessions with the media. His specialty: “Next question.” On the plus side, he does help move things along.

Sutter has gone completely Captain Queeg, rambling on with bizarre conspiracy theories about how the NHL doesn’t want Calgary to win the Cup. When asked to clarify himself, Sutter then went Tortorella, first saying, “Next question. I already answered that.” And then: “It’s none of your business.”

NHL to American sports fans: “Why aren’t you watching our championship finals?”

American sports fans: “It’s none of your business.”

SUNDAY

* French Open men’s final

(Channel 4, 6 a.m.)

After Elena Dementieva and Anastasia Myskina take care of the first all-Russian women’s final in Paris today, Guillermo Coria and Gaston Gaudio send up the first all-Argentine men’s final. It’s 6 a.m. in America. It’s Guillermo Coria and Gaston Gaudio. TV ratings prediction: We could be talking Stanley Cup finals numbers.

* NASCAR Nextel Cup MBNA America 400 (FX, 10 a.m.)

The Sports Business Daily reports that Dale Earnhardt Jr. will soon appear on limited-edition buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, “marking the first time the buckets have featured someone other than Colonel Sanders.”

You mean Phil Jackson wasn’t the first?