A Battle Royal

The Western Conference finals start today in a meadow near downtown Sacramento, where people dressed as Elsie ring bells and a co-owner dances after second-round victories.

It is a quaint place with a sporty basketball team, one good enough to have won 61 regular-season games and to draw national attention to a series many had expected since September.

The Lakers, twice-defending NBA champions, will play beneath a banner at Arco Arena this afternoon that proclaims the Sacramento Kings this year’s Pacific Division winner. It is a presumptive curtain, given that two of the remaining four teams in the playoffs are the Boston Celtics and the Lakers, for whom dozens of banners stand for astonishingly more.

But the once run-down Kings have taken long, large steps to get here, to a series that will determine which team plays for the NBA title. They were eliminated two years ago by the Lakers in the first round, and last year by the Lakers in the second. They have home-court advantage and an underdog’s fight, no matter the regular-season records, whereas the Lakers have a sense of entitlement that lately has made their foes wilt and fourth-quarter shots fall.

“It’s a rivalry for them,” Laker guard Kobe Bryant said. “It’s a huge challenge for them. I’m sure they’re looking forward to it, and we’re looking forward to it too.”

Unspoken is that the Lakers don’t yet recognize the rivalry, because they don’t yet recognize the Kings, not at this level. The Kings are in the conference finals for the first time in more than two decades, since they wore Carolina blue and played in Kansas City.

That’s not to say the Lakers don’t see the changes in the Kings. They swept the Kings in four games last year, when Chris Webber, the Kings’ skilled power forward, was rarely a factor. He seems more confident. The Kings have traded up in point guards, from the unpredictable Jason Williams to the collected Mike Bibby, whose game not only translates to closely played postseason games, it flourishes.

And then, Vlade Divac, their center, predicted doom for the Lakers if they were without home-court advantage against the Kings, which they are.

“We had to do the same thing last year,” Laker forward Robert Horry said of the Lakers’ sweep of San Antonio. “In the Western Conference final, we had to go in there against the top team in the league and get a win. So, hopefully, that experience from last year will carry us.”

If the Kings feel overlooked, possibly it’s because, for going on three years, they have been. If they believe the Lakers are arrogant champions, it’s because they are. And although the players spent the week poking at each other’s frailties, none of the talk would seem to mean much today, when hundreds of people will clang cow bells and the rest will try to watch basketball.

Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban was so enamored of the bells in the last round that he bought them for everyone, and it didn’t translate into a single home victory for his team.

The fans can rattle their hearts out, and the series still boils down to the Lakers, and whether the Kings have caught them, just as the Lakers once caught the Celtics, as the Detroit Pistons once caught the Lakers, as the Chicago Bulls once caught the Pistons.

The Kings are improved. The Lakers, for a variety of reasons, have not been as dominant. Shaquille O’Neal, their powerful center, played the season with an arthritic toe and the playoffs with a sprained ankle or two and a stitched shooting finger.

“The emphasis is how you learn to defend against teams that are sitting in front of you,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said, “so, your players can match them psychologically, and emotionally and physically. That becomes the problem you’re trying to face. Offensively, you’re always trying to find a trigger point or an escape point or a release valve or something that will open up so you have more than just one or two guys that are contributing.”

The Kings are deeper from three to 12 on their roster. The Lakers are deeper from one to two. Often enough, that has been plenty for the Lakers.

“Shaq presents a problem that nobody else has,” Jackson said. “Vlade is a great center. He has a lot of skills, all-purpose skills. The mentality is, can he stand up to Shaq? [Portland’s Arvydas] Sabonis gave an effort a couple years ago in the playoffs. He prevented Shaq from going where he wanted to go on the floor. I think that’s one of the keys. How can you defend him? Can you defend him with a team? Can you defend him with more than one guy?

“That’s the way you have to do it, I guess. You have to figure out what’s going to take the team ahead of you down.”

Lately, with O’Neal a bit down, particularly against San Antonio, the Lakers have turned to Bryant, who has carried the scorer’s burden.

“That’s not a burden,” Jackson corrected. “It’s not a responsibility. Some of it’s an honor because you get to take the shots. Some of it is a license. I think that’s where we have to step into a different realm against Sacramento to be able to survive in this series. That is to find other people that can score for us, because we know this is a team that is going to key on Kobe and Shaq and we have to have two or three other players who step up game by game.”

Then it could be a rivalry. And then the Kings could get themselves a real banner.