SAN ANTONIO -- Before every Lakers game, this nut named Ronny Turiaf runs around near the bench shaking every teammate's hand.
He shakes every hand differently, a different finger wag or wrist motion for each player, and each player always remembers and responds.
By the time Turiaf finishes with the starters, he is standing at midcourt, music blaring, crowd cheering, at which point he dances alone back to the bench.
Not saunters, not jogs, but actually dances, different each night, swerving, shaking, unpredictable.
"It's all about feeling your flow," Turiaf says. "This team, we feel our flow, and we follow it."
You know, maybe that's it.
Maybe that's why this postseason feels so different from every other postseason since Phil Jackson's first title here eight years ago.
Maybe that's why these mostly ordinary Lakers are so much more fun than those star-studded Lakers.
They're not too big to do funny handshakes. They're not too proud to dance silly dances.
They're able to feel their flow, because it's still their flow, not some outside, uncontrollable stream fueled by absurd pressures and unreasonable expectations.
Maybe that's why this spring feels like such a gift.
Yeah, you know, a gift.
An unexpected present slowly unwrapped to reveal constant surprises, some good, some lousy, but all of them energizing in their drama.
Comebacks and collapses, Kobe Bryant banging greatness or buying dinner, Sasha Vujacic's stalk and Pau Gasol's stork, Jordan Farmar's cockiness and Derek Fisher's calm.
And each of them, every night, talking to Lamar Odom as if he were a skittish child at the end of his first long car ride, stay calm, stay focused, we're almost there, just one more game, just one more.
With each little triumph, these Lakers gesture and scream and pop their jerseys as if they just won a state high school championship.
With each failure, they acknowledge and accept their mistakes as if they were just cut from the junior varsity.
It's fun, it's unpredictable, it's real.
Since the innocence of that first Jackson title eight years ago, can you remember a great Lakers team being any those things?
In the final years of the Shaquille O'Neal regime, the team burdened with locker-room jealousies, even a couple of the championships felt like drudgery.
Next season, with Andrew Bynum returning to crowd the court while making the Lakers a certain championship favorite and target, there is a risk the place could turn sour again.
