Columnist Dean Juipe: Only question is whether 76ers win one

Dean Juipe

Monday, June 4, 2001 | 10:10 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

It's an axiom that long shots and underdogs have heard since the beginning of organized sports.

Reach a championship game or series against a vaunted and heavily favored opponent and the team that's facing the greater challenge motivates itself by saying "We can't be content just getting this far."

The implication: Regardless of how tough it was to get to the threshold of the summit, it's no time to let up.

As an inspirational tool, it's a good one.

And it's a sentiment the Philadelphia 76ers will be hearing for a few days, if not telling themselves as they prepare for Wednesday's opening game of the National Basketball Association finals with the Los Angeles Lakers.

But in this peculiar case the Sixers may as well give in to temptation.

They may as well rest on their laurels.

Because the Lakers will not only win the series and retain their championship, they're looking for a sweep that will whisk them into history.

Since the NBA went to its current playoff format in 1984, no team has won each of its playoff games. San Antonio in 1999, Chicago in 1991 and Detroit in 1989 each went 15-2 to establish a record that's clearly in peril.

The Lakers, who have been off since May 27 and who have been leisurely awaiting the Philadelphia vs. Milwaukee Eastern Conference winner, are 11-0 in the 2001 playoffs and have won 19 consecutive games overall. They haven't lost a game of any sort since April 1.

Given the facts of the matter -- that the Sixers have to be feeling the effects of grueling back-to-back series that went seven games, and that the Lakers have already steamrolled greater threats such as San Antonio and Sacramento -- few basketball fans beyond the city limits of Philadelphia expect the final series to even see a fifth game.

The Sixers can take comfort for having outlasted Milwaukee in seven vicious games, the last of which was Sunday's 108-91 scrum in Philadelphia. But they're thrust into the role as bait for a Lakers team that not only is hitting on all cylinders, but that has ample incentive to put a quick end to the season.

Los Angeles has won its 11 playoff games by an average of 15.4 points, including 39- and 29-point wins over the demoralized Spurs, and it is very much aware of the mark it can make in the record books with a sweep of the 76ers.

It's a reflection of the Lakers' prowess that no one is giving Philadelphia a shot to win the best-of-seven series and that the only interesting point of contention is whether the Sixers can even win a game. Have you ever seen a final playoff series in any sport that looks so predetermined -- if not out and out lopsided -- before a single play has been run?

Most fans like the Sixers and credit Allen Iverson and Dikembe Mutombo for carrying them this far, and those same fans will enjoy seeing those guys battle the great L.A. tandem of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. The games -- or at least Game 1, given how San Antonio crumbled after losing its Western Conference opener -- could be interesting.

But the Lakers are not about to lose.

Not to the Sixers.

Not even once.