Final Reprise

The Sixers-Lakers final reignites a rivalry that dominated the league in the early years of the Magic-Bird era. Should the Lakers sweep, they will exact a measure of revenge on the greatest Sixer team of that era.

It was the defining moment of their careers. For Magic Johnson in 1980, an ebullient kid with a glinting smile making his first indelible mark on a game that would forever change under his touch. For Julius Erving and Moses Malone in 1983, two warriors waging a final desperate battle to reach the summit of their starry potential.

The Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers met in the NBA Finals three times in a five year span: 1979, 1981, 1983. It is something of a forgotten rivalry, buried beneath the glitz and glamour of the Magic-Larry Bird battles that followed it. Bird was in his ascendancy as Doc and Moses were in decline. But for five years, it was the Sixers who stood in the Eastern path of Magic's annual trek to the championship.

Now, a new century upon us, these two teams meet in the finals for the first time 18 years. In many ways they are hardly the same two teams. The Sixers colors are the same but the uniforms are vastly changed. And the complexion of this Sixers team couldn't be more different from the conservative character of the teams led by the articulate Erving and soft-spoken floor leader Maurice Cheeks.

Today's Sixers are themed by conflict. Allen Iverson and Larry Brown have each in the past year been hours away from exiting the city of brotherly love. They have patched up their differences with the emetic of winning, a tenuous fix, but one that is infallible when it's working.

There is also the perpetual battle between Iverson and his own body. The litany of injuries that he has foisted upon the public consciousness is staggering. Soldiers don't suffer such calamities. But he is always there, at game's end, moving freely around the court, clinching games with weightless jumpers and floating runners. He is a blur of perpetual motion that pauses ever so briefly to launch feathery daggers rimward as all clocks race to zero.

Like Iverson, whose catalogue of catastrophe somehow doesn't dampen the genius of his game, the Sixers limp gamely into the Finals, having lost seven times this postseason. They slipped luckily past Vince Carter and Ray Allen with what seemed to be a little help from officials. It would be startling if officials league wide weren't aware of the dollar disparity between a Sixers-Lakers finals and a Lakers-Bucks finals. And so Philly goes to the line more, the Bucks get into more foul trouble, and so on. It's nothing new. The Knicks vanquished the Pacers many a time via the same voodoo.

If the Sixers are ravaged by three tumultuous series, the Lakers come to the stage unscathed. Eleven and oh. Eyes set on the prize of an undefeated postseason. It has never happened. But in the Sixers the Lakers see the ideal victim: a team beset by injury, with a protein-deficient center and diminutive perimeter defenders, a perfect recipe for a Shaq-Kobe romp.

Bryant, when rested, can slow Iverson. Iverson, on his best day, could never stop Kobe. Nor could Eric Snow, particularly not with a fractured ankle (one, however, that miraculously does not cause him to limp). Add the flawless shooting of Derek Fisher and the inspired aggression of Rick Fox and the Lakers are a safe bet to sweep.

If they do, they'll rank as one of the very best teams ever. They've probably got the best one-two combination in history. Better than Jordan-Pippen, better than Magic-Kareem, Oscar-Kareem, or Russell-Havliceck.

If not the best, they are certainly the most distinctly different tag team the league has seen. One wins by implacable entropy. His body moves like a landslide against the will of enemies. Their resistance is shattered in such an unquestionable way that they are lifted up and carried away by it. In the end they can only watch their hopes expire. The beauty of Shaq is the overwhelming certainty of his actions: There is never anything to doubt.

Kobe's brilliance is of another kind. Something more tenuous, fast breathing on the brink of failure. He slips through fast closing crevices. He slides underneath arms that swing like scythes overhead. He shoots the most delicate of shots from angles that defy reality. The beauty of Kobe's game is that it seems ever on the edge of extinction.

Should they go 15-0, the Lakers will trump the Sixers' 12-1 mark from 1983, which is still the highest playoff winning percentage of all time. That was the year the Sixers swept a Laker team that had come through the West hampered by injury. And in the finals they discovered that even Kareem was no match for a Moses on a mission. But time has a way of turning the tables on us, and especially on NBA franchises. Like Kareem in '83, expect Dikembe Mutombo to endure a week of misery at the hands of his 330-pound nemesis. And look for the ailing Answer to find himself in a breathless race to outpoint Los Angeles all by himself. Barring the second coming, a second straight trophy will mirror smiles of purple and gold. Revenge is sweet, even twenty years after the fact.