The Lakers need overtime to beat Milwaukee in one game, crush Sacramento and Minnesota in the next two. Kobe Bryant gives them eight points in one game, 45 in the next. Shaquille O'Neal goes for 20 points and 17 rebounds in the opening playoff game against the Houston Rockets, seven and seven -- a Seagrams -- in the second.
Good, bad. Up, down. Light, dark. Strong, meek. Wacky, wackier.
Better learn to love it.
Fans have been taught to despise inconsistency in our favorite players and teams. We give nodding recognition to the fact they're human. We prefer they perform like carefully maintained machines.
If this attitude were extended to the world beyond the ballpark turnstiles, we might find a doctor discovering a cancer cure on Thursday, doing a routine heart operation on Friday -- and being ripped in the journals for his inconsistency.
Or we might find a crook holding up a bank on Monday, helping a little old lady cross the street on Tuesday -- and getting 12 months for the holdup and 10 years for aggravated inconsistency.
Really, inconsistent is a polite way of saying, "Wow, you guys really stink up the joint sometimes."
Still, its one of those thought cliches that sports fans -- and sportswriters in need of something to complain about -- are going to have a hard time letting go.
Now's the time to try.
We can wring our hands about how mercurial the Lakers are. Or we can be amused by their unpredictability. I choose the latter.
"We don't learn to love it, so I don't expect you guys to," Derek Fisher was saying at the Lakers' practice gym on the afternoon after a victory over Houston on Monday night that gave them a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. "I think its just a fact of life, its a fact of sports and team sports.
"Good teams are consistent at the right time. But there isn't a group of reporters [with] all 29 teams in the NBA that haven't asked the same question at times. The Spurs play bad at times, we play bad at times. Sacramento, which has been talked about the most recently, has not played as well."
This is not what we were led to expect from the Lakers, though.
With the All-Star credentials of O'Neal, Bryant, Karl Malone and Gary Payton, with their experience, with their single-mindedness, the Lakers were supposed to be efficient to the point of monotony.
Injuries took care of part of that, keeping the four stars apart for half the season, and their healthy egos took care of the rest, the well-oiled machine sometimes running as smoothly as a bucket of bolts.
When they're losing, we call it inconsistency, and when they're winning, we prefer adaptability.
At least until Friday night in Houston, the Lakers are winning, having taken Game 1 by a 72-71 score -- too low for championship basketball teams, too high for Masters champions - and Game 2 by 98-84 -- more appealing.
"We [coaches] have said to this team that we have to improve as a basketball team as we go through the playoffs," Phil Jackson said Tuesday. "Detroit, perhaps the Spurs, reached the playoffs playing at a very high level. We didn't.
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