CONTRAST MIGHT BE COMPELLING.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

The Lakers are Goliath. The Pistons are David.

The Lakers are Hollywood. The Pistons are blue-collar.

The Lakers score. The Pistons don't.

There's ABC's array of storylines for its coverage of the NBA Finals starting Sunday, cliche and all. Got anything better?

``I like the idea of having both ends of the spectrum, the favorites and the underdogs,'' said Mike Pearl, ABC's executive producer. ``This plays up to that.''

Allow Al Michaels, the Emmy Award-winning storyteller, to move this plot along.

``Even if it's perceived to be a one-sided series - and I'm not sure that's the case here - you need an underdog and a favorite and the stories will develop without requiring a lot of hype,'' said Michaels, doing his first NBA Finals broadcast for the network after seven World Series, five Super Bowls and a Stanley Cup finals.

``Those who say the Pistons don't score to me is a dichotomy. If you watch their games during the NBA playoffs, every single shot is hotly contested. There are guys breaking their butts on every play, playing fantastic defense.

``This series will have enough contrast that if it goes six or seven games, it might be one to recall for all time.''

The fact that the Lakers soap opera has bled this far into June obviously makes for some good TV, whether or not viewers across the country have come to become as bored with this collection of superegos as the team has sometimes with performing on the court.

Recent cable ratings bear out that enough people outside of L.A. actually seem interested.

TNT reported that Game 6 of the Western Conference finals between the Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves was seen in 6.5 million homes during a Memorial Day barbecue, the biggest audience ever for an NBA contest on cable TV and matching the Game 3 audience. For the series, TNT saw a 38-percent increase (6.3 rating versus 4.6) over the Lakers-less 2003 Western Conference Finals. The NBA overall helped TNT, which had 43 playoff games in 44 nights this spring, become the most-watched cable channel during May sweeps.

On the other side, ESPN boasted of having more viewers - 4.4 million homes - for Tuesday's Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals between Detroit and Indiana than any other basketball game in the all-sports channel's 25-year history. The 5.0 rating for the game was ESPN's biggest draw so far in 2004, and the East finals averaged a 3.8 rating, up 36 percent from last year.

So what happens now if the Lakers decide to flip the switch and start thumping Detroit in Games 1 and 2? Do the viewers lose interest before everything heads back to Motown?

``From my vantage point, we'll get compelling basketball,'' said Doc Rivers, who will leave as the ABC analyst to coach the Boston Celtics starting next season. ``The Lakers are a story unto itself. People will watch them if it's a one-point or a 30-point game. You don't worry about that.''

Oh, someone in New York whose job it is to lose sleep over ratings will, that's for sure.

--More Finals housecleaning: From the technical side, ABC will go with a full-court press of 25 cameras (eight stationary, six hand-held, eight robotic that include those in the floor and above the rim, two digital hand- held and one indoor blimp cam), plus three ``super slo-mo'' replay machines, 75 microphones (some embedded in the court) and more than 250 people employed for ABC's production.

The Finals also are available for the second consecutive year in high-definition TV (which uses 22 cameras independent of the standard production). And it will also have a Spanish-language call on the SAP signal provided by Ernesto Jerez (play-by-play from ESPN International) and Diego Balado (analyst from ESPN Deportes).

ESPN's Stuart Scott has been added as a courtside reporter on the ABC telecast, joining Michele Tafoya. And the half-hour pregame ``Hangtime'' show, Mike Tirico will host with analysts Tom Tolbert and Byron Scott, with Ahmad Rashad sprinkled in for features, interviews and references to Michael Jordan.

Fox Sports Net 2's special edition of the Southern California Sports Report plans to start at about 8:30 p.m. after each game with live press conferences and analysis.

--For the record: Jim Lampley, already slotted to host NBC's daytime coverage of the Athens Olympics, also will step in for Keith Olbermann as the USA Network coverage host. Olbermann was named the lead cable host in February 2003 - six weeks before the launch of his ``Countdown'' show on MSNBC. But with the show's momentum building, MSNBC didn't want to lose Olbermann for a month, and he agreed. ...

As predicted, Fox's coverage of the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 (a 5.0 Arbitron mark) drew a larger national audience than ABC's Indianapolis 500 (4.1) last Sunday for the third year in a row. But the Los Angeles market reversed that, giving Indy almost twice the audience (a 4.5 rating and 11 share) compared to NASCAR (2.6 with a 6 share).

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no caption (``Los Angeles Lakers: The Complete History'' DVD)

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SOUND BYTES

By Tom Hoffarth