Twin cities

Detroit's Wings and L.A.'s Lakers are championship locks

If only the NFL would play along, we could be living in a dynasty dynasty: The Lakers, the Yankees, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Friends. We know who our winners are long before events take place. Even the Red Wings, while not quite a dynasty, have been de facto NHL champs ever since they loaded up on Hall of Famers last summer and then won a league-high 51 games.

To beat the Lakers you need to poison Kobe Bryant with a hunk of mad cow, then sic a couple of honest referees on Shaquille O'Neal. You need a home crowd going so ballistic you'd think the NBA was the only game in town. (It is.)

To beat the Red Wings you need Chris Drury, who has been making magic since his days in Little League, to pull a trick out of his skate boot. You need Peter Forsberg's continuing miracle and you need overtime, when, it seems like anything can happen. (It can.)

That's just to beat these teams once. Beating them in a series? Yeah, right. Stop them from winning a championship? Sure, and why not get the sun to rise in the West while you're at it. Once the Lakers get by the Kings they'll only have a juco team -- the upstart Nets or upstart Celtics -- to contend with. Once the Red Wings dispose of the Avalanche they'll only have a Junior A team -- the courageous Hurricanes or the grinding Maple Leafs -- to defeat.

I know, I know, there are those of you out there who imagine an upset. You remember Johnny Podres. You remember Buster Douglas. You remember the Namath Jets. If the unthinkable were to occur, which juggernaut would be the most likely to fall?

DETROIT? The Red Wings, after losing the first two games of the playoffs, rearranged the Canucks in four straight. They blitzed the Blues in five and, before Drury's sleight of stick beat them, they stopped Colorado handily in Game 1. Detroit finished the regular season with 116 points. That would be 17 points -- or about a month's worth of wins even for a decent team -- better than the Avalanche. While the Wings have been making their blue-line waltz through the playoffs, Colorado has had to slog through seven games in each of its first two rounds.

The Red Wings send out Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov and Brendan Shanahan. Then they send out Nicklas Lidstrom and Chris Chelios. Then they send out Luc Robitaille and Brett Hull. Then they send out Dominik Hasek wearing a mask. The guy sending them out, by the by, is Scotty Bowman. Any of these names mean anything to you? There's not a room large enough to hold the trophies they've all won in their NHL careers. And when they're not sending out Hall of Famers, they're sending out Darren McCarty, who simply had a natural hat trick in Game 1 against Colorado. A natural hat? In the playoffs. Only Mark Messier is supposed to do that.

OK, so the Avalanche do have a few Hall-bound players of their own: Patrick Roy, Forsberg, Joe Sakic, maybe Rob Blake. And they are going home for a couple of games. But the Red Wings are unbeaten on the road in the playoffs, and so far all that a postseason loss has done is get them a little angry. I put their chances of winning the title at 95 percent.

LOS ANGELES? Before Sacramento hung on to win on Monday, the Lakers had sneezed exactly once all playoffs. They didn't finish with quite the record that the league-leading Kings did, but that's only because after winning back-to-back titles, players tend to yawn a bit through the regular schedule. All Sacramento's record means now is that after splitting the first two games, the Lakers now have three of the last five at home, where they went a cool 34-7 in the regular season and where they have yet to lose in the playoffs. The Kings dropped a first-round home game to the old, eighth-seeded Jazz. (The Jazz!) And now Sacramento doesn't even have its star swingman Peja Stojakovic. Playing the Lakers shorthanded is NOT a recipe for victory.

The Lakers send out Bryant and they send out Shaq, which is about all you need to know. When 40 percent of your starting team is made up of the two best players in the league, you can sign Ws on the dotted line. The guy sending them out is Phil Jackson, who is running out of fingers for his championship rings. Under ultracool Phil, the Lakers treat the supposedly pressure-packed fourth quarter as if it were a exhibition romp; if they weren't running around so much, you'd never see them sweat.

OK, Shaq, who is 8-foot-8, weighs 750 pounds and believes he is sexy, has a wittle boo-boo. Actually, he's hobbled by painful arthritis in his toe. If O'Neal is slowed or if Bryant were to go down, L.A. would be finished -- supplemental Lakers Rick Fox and Robert Horry are good players, but they couldn't get by Chris Webber and Mike Bibby and Vlade Divac and the rest of the Kings without O'Neal and Bryant playing big. Does anyone doubt that they will? I put the chances of the Lakers winning the title at 98 percent.

You still have your doubts. You remember the '88 Dodgers. Tom Brady and the Patriots. War Emblem! Fine, but remember, those guys didn't have a dynasty to contend with.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides every Wednesday at CNNSI.com.

 

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