It’s Still Just a Game

Of course, the assumption was, it all had some Larger Meaning. Nothing happens in Los Angeles without Larger Meaning. Not anymore. The question was, which Larger Meaning was largest? The expensive championship won by celebrity athletes? The timing of that championship, in a moment of civic scandal? The degeneration of downtown L.A. into an urban mosh pit afterward?

Some said the larger meaning was with the fans--”the real fans,” as they were piously termed by the municipally upright. So, in the wake of Monday night’s mini-rampage, maybe the lesson lay with the working stiffs who called in sick to their jobs to attend the big Laker parade. Maybe the lesson was in the many-hued crowd that cheered, pouring sweat, outside Staples Center as the team wended its way down Figueroa. Maybe it was in the joyous blowing of horns and waving of big foam No. 1 fingers and hoisting of clueless toddlers for the JumboTron.

But then again, most scenes of mass leisure here mean nothing. So maybe the larger meaning was in the background somewhere. Maybe it was in the parking lot where a bare-chested bum in boxer shorts trundled by with a shopping cart and a Laker pennant. Two tattooed guys leaned against a truck, tossing him their empty beer cans. The truck was slathered with bumper stickers, some extolling the Lakers, others saying things like, “My Kid Can Whip Your Honor Student’s Ass.” “Whassup, bay-bee?” the drunks bleated to the bum and the throngs and the honking traffic. “Whassup?”

Maybe the meaning of this Laker victory was in the sky, where a white heart graced the sporting masses--skywriting! Although, right beside it, a small plane pitched the same demographic, advertising a strip joint in Orange County someplace. So maybe the meaning was in the numbers. The parade was said to have outdone the last Laker championship parade, the TV ratings to have outdone those of the last NBA playoffs. Then again, the last NBA playoffs didn’t set much of a record, and if memory serves, that was a pretty laid-back parade in ’88.

Pictures might have told the story. But the week had so many pictures, with so many meanings: The movie stars ringing the court. The mob ringing the bonfires. The truckloads of young guys in Laker jerseys yelling on the freeway on Wednesday morning on their way into downtown. LAPD troops with riot batons, jogging--or not jogging--into position. Jack Nicholson and Larry Bird shaking hands at the final buzzer. Shaq, the supposedly humble and ordinary sports star, caught unawares by one camera crew as he addressed another, in what was perhaps the week’s only revealing postgame conversation:

“I’m going to Disneyland!”

OK, Take 2, Shaq.

“I’m going Disneyland!”

Take 3.

“I’m going to Disneyland!”

Take 4.

“I’m going to Disneyland!”

Take 5.

“I’m going to Disneyland!”

*

There have been times when a professional sports team said something about its city, and there are cities where this probably remains true. Los Angeles, at this moment, is not among them. The exquisite ambivalence with which Southern Californians view all things civic has, over the years, developed its own special embrace for nationally televised sports franchises. It is utterly in character that L.A. would cheer for its home team and then trash its headquarters. It is utterly typical that young, pumped-up guys here would do what they saw young, pumped-up guys in Chicago and Detroit and Denver do in past years, namely, smash things for the cameras. It is utterly L.A. that the first act of the Lakers’ star player--even before showering--would be to make a commercial for Disney. Aside from college football, it has been a long time since L.A. regarded sports as anything but another mass entertainment venue.

And yet, the convention has persisted that this week’s Lakers’ championship “said” something about L.A.--that the city, somehow, “needed” it as respite from the Rampart scandal and disunity and assorted other municipal woes. No, it didn’t. Municipal scandal is part of life here. Half the people in L.A. moved here because they couldn’t play well with others. The championship was fun to watch on TV, and certainly was lucrative for bookies and the rich people around the team and Staples Center, but it was what it was, nothing more.

And that’s OK. This metropolis is vast, and its influence can be more so, but not everything about L.A. is a lesson to us all. Some good things have no larger meaning. Sometimes an NBA championship is all about . . . basketball.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.