National Basketball Association

Kobe, Gasol may align to create title

Published Jun. 4, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

It’s just like old times for the Lakers.

They again have the two top players in an NBA Finals, meaning they’re a pretty good bet to be popping champagne bottles and hoisting the Lawrence O’Brien trophy in the coming days.

And just like the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant teams that won three straight titles, the Lakers’ two-star system of Bryant and Pau Gasol has them on target to become the first team to repeat since Shaq and Kobe.

Coming into these Finals, everyone knew that Bryant would the best player on the court, every night.

But the big development came right away, in the opener, when Pau Gasol announced himself as the No. 2 star in the Finals.

Do the math: The Lakers have two superstars. The Celtics don’t have any.

In almost every case over the past 20 years, the team with the top two players in the championship round always wins. The one exception came in 2004, when the Shaq-Kobe Lakers were upset by a Pistons team that didn’t have a superstar. But that was as much about the warring Lakers coming apart at the seams, in Shaq’s final season in L.A., and with Phil Jackson ready to leave, as anything else.

Otherwise, the Finals math is always the same: The team with the most superstars win, QED.

The last time that didn’t apply was 2008, when Boston’s Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen were too much for Bryant, while Gasol was pushed around and came up small in his first playoff season.

But after seeing Gasol go for 23 points, pull down as many rebounds (14) as his top four bigs combined and block three shots, Doc Rivers had this to say about the Lakers power forward:

“I thought he was the best player on the floor, at points.’’

Rivers wasn’t seeing things.

If Gasol holds onto that position over the coming days -- and Bryant continues to be Bryant -- it’s going to be too much for the Celtics to overcome.

Unfortunately for Boston, it’s not as if they can turn the clock back to 2008, when Garnett, Pierce and Allen were all younger and when they intimidated Gasol and held him to 14.7 point per game, with a series high of 19.

“The first year we got him, he hadn't been out of the first round, and all of a sudden we're in the NBA Finals playing against a great team like the Celtics,’’ Bryant said on Friday. “So I think that was great experience for him. And, as he got his feet wet, he started understanding more and more how we need him to play to get to a championship level. That's all it was because he had all the tools and all the skills.’’

Now, he has the experience: two full seasons in L.A. and three playoff seasons learning how to play with Bryant, with 48 playoff wins out of 61 games. As Gasol has learned the ropes, the Lakers have lost only one playoff series. It might not have always looked that way against Boston in '08, but with their title against Orlando last June and now with Gasol playing at his highest level, it's a perfect union.

“You know,’’ Bryant said, “it's important for me, at this stage in my career, to have bigs that can shoot the ball and can also post the ball, because then they can stretch the floor and I can penetrate and do things like that. And also it's important to have other guys that can make plays. At this stage of the playoffs, you can't have one guy that's creating shots for everybody. You have to have other players that can make plays for others, and he does that.’’

At this stage, it would be more surprising if Gasol falls off the No. 2 rung. After all, he’s coming off a breakthrough season. In his ninth campaign, he finally made one of the three All-NBA teams, getting voted to the third team, at a position that has been stocked with a two-time MVP, LeBron James, future Hall of Famers like Garnett, Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki, along with talented younger players like Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant.

By comparison, Garnett failed to make an All-NBA team for his third straight season and picked up only one vote. He was once a fixture on the teams – he made them eight out of nine years – so it’s yet another sign that he’s on the decline.

So Gasol is on an upward trajectory, while Garnett is falling. It happens. Now, Gasol is giving the Lakers the same kind of one-two punch all championship teams have needed in recent years. Throughout the Bulls’ reign in the ’90s, Michael Jordan always had Scottie Pippen. Then Shaq needed Kobe.

Only teams with more than one superstar ever pull off a repeat. Just ask the Spurs. But the Lakers had to endure a couple of disappointing seasons before Bryant got his second star. The night Gasol joined the team and helped the Lakers win a game in the Meadowlands, Bryant was asked immediately afterward what he thought.

“There is a God,’’ he said.

Seeing what has happened since, that might have been an understatement.