CHAMPS NOT ESTEEMED.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

What's a team got to do to get a drink around here?

By here, I mean the saloon where the NBA's victors and vanquished repair after the buzzer to dampen their emotions.

What do the Lakers have to do to get the rest of the league to buy them a beer, to raise a toast to their two championships going on three, and to sing a chorus of ``For They're a Jolly Good Bunch of Fellows''?

How many titles do the Lakers have to win before the basketball world beyond Los Angeles acknowledges they deserve to win?

You know, it's not just the Sacramento Kings of the sport that should be driven by a thirst for the respect they're due. The Lakers, too.

Two years ago, they won the title in Shaquille O'Neal's and Kobe Bryant's first attempt under Phil Jackson's coaching, yet as far as some people are concerned, they were the beneficiaries of friendly refereeing in their Game 7 comeback against Portland in the Western Conference finals, and they failed to distinguish themselves in all those elimination-game defeats.

Last year, they won again, and you'd think that would silence the critics of the year before, but no, there were people in the East who accused the Lakers of skating to their 15-1 playoff record on sheer talent without displaying the blood-and-guts toughness that basketball reveres.

This year, they're in the NBA Finals again, opening tonight against the New Jersey Nets at Staples Center, and you'd think by now their detractors would get the idea, but no, still echoing are Sacramento's squeaky complaints about the refereeing in the conference finals.

Portland, did you help Sacramento to polish its conspiracy theory, or would that have constituted a theory conspiracy?

``It's pretty obvious what happened,'' Kings coach Rick Adelman said after the Lakers won games 6 and 7, the latter in overtime, to take the series. ``The game changed in the way it was officiated in the last two games.

``If you want to say they (the Lakers) are a better team, you say it. But I won't.''

Won't somebody, please?

Maybe it's not respect, exactly, that the Lakers are going without. Maybe esteem or approval is the right word. Admiration.

The rest of the NBA will acknowledge Shaq and Kobe are a heck of a 1-2 punch, that Jackson sure knows how to pick the right teams to coach (how's that for diminishing a man's accomplishments?), that the Lakers are the team to beat until that threesome breaks up.

It's all so grudging, though.

Let's see, now.

Two years ago, Portland can't make a basket in the fourth quarter of Game 7. This year, Sacramento can't find the basket in the fourth quarter of Game 7. The Lakers keep hitting the big shots they need. They get it done, whenever, wherever, however.

Yet the world doesn't run out of ways to jibe at the Lakers, those Hollywood pretty boys.

Is it something about the Lakers? About Shaq and/or Kobe and/or Jackson? About Los Angeles?

What will it take before this team is exalted like the 1950s-60s Boston Celtics, the '80s Showtime Lakers, or the '90s Chicago Bulls? Maybe it's just a matter of putting in the time and racking up the titles. Maybe it's about putting together a great regular season and a great playoff run. Maybe it's about acquiring the roster depth to answer the charge they're a two-man team.

Maybe the reverence won't be pouring out of the tap until Red Auerbach is gone, until Pat Riley is retired, until Michael Jordan is re-re-retired - all those reminders of greatness past.

For most of this season, the Lakers played as if they weren't sure they really needed to win a third consecutive NBA championship, a feat accomplished by only four teams in the history of the league. They played as if two might be enough to assure their stature.

If two were enough, the Sacramento Kings would have walked away from Game 7 saying the Lakers have a champion's special ability to find a way to win.

Winning two is not enough. For that matter, winning three might not be enough.

If the Lakers want the rest of the league to raise a glass to them, there might be no such number as enough.

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Photo:

Shaquille O'Neal's performance in the last two games against the Kings has the Lakers poised for a third title in a row.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer