Results tagged “Steve Dilbeck” from The Sports Desk

I have to brag about something. In our baseball season preview section March 31, six of our writers made predictions about division winners, wild-card teams, pennant winners and World Series winners. My predictions turned out to be absolutely perfect. I went a perfect 0 for 8 in picking division winners and wild cards. That's hard to do, though I'd like to think I made it look easy.

Same topic, very different tones in today's columns by our own Steve Dilbeck (click here) and the L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke (here).

Nice column by Steve Dilbeck today -- highlight of a sports section reduced to bare bones because of the paper's computer problems overnight -- about how the last three seasons' failures have make the Lakers players hungrier in these playoffs.

I'm wondering what the effect has been on Lakers fans.

Usually, by now, somebody would have written that the team's surprising regular season means nothing unless it lives up to its No. 1 conference seeding and goes all the way to win the NBA championship. But that's a sportswriting cliche that doesn't feel like it fits this year. I'm guessing a lot of Lakers fans are simply enjoying this journey as it comes, not getting presumptuous about a title, the way they could in the Shaquille O'Neal era.

Tell me: In this turnaround season, by a young team with a future, would you be less disappointed with something short of an NBA title? Or is it too hard to shake the purple and gold's historic attachment to that golden trophy? How have a few years of struggle changed your emotions about these Lakers?