Crunch Time

It seems that no matter what the Clippers do, the Lakers do it bigger, more dramatically, to greater notice. Those feel-good Clipper seasons quickly were forgotten once the Lakers began their championship push, and now the national debate about what's wrong with the Lakers has overshadowed the Clippers' own disappointing start. Not only have the Clippers failed to meet the high expectations for 2002-03, they're behind last season's 39-43 pace. Why? The "in" things.

For all the number-crunching that went into the state's new projected budget shortfall, the figure Gov. Gray Davis announced Wednesday is a political calculation as well. The governor has to lead the state out of its budget crisis, and he needs the Legislature's help to do it. Rather than downplaying the vastness of the budget gap, Davis announced three weeks before he was required to do so that he now expects the hole to be $34.8 billion.

It's a bad season in which nothing good happens for anyone but this one wasn't working out so well around here, where the local teams went three games before anyone won and then, let's face it, only after they played each other. And the lucky club is ... the Lakers? Yes, by a 108-93 score, your three-time defending NBA champions finally got into the win column Friday night, just as Coach Phil Jackson said they would. Well, sooner or later.

The debate centered on whether Troy Percival should have been left standing in that decisive eighth inning Tuesday night, watching from the bullpen, just one more spectator in a Yankee Stadium crowd of 56,710.

SAM FARMER'S NFL RANKINGS AND COMMENTS: *--* Rank Team (record) Comment (last week's rank) 1 NEW ENGLAND (1-0) Patriots have proven they can score, and often. (6) 2 GREEN BAY (1-0) Ahman Green should test solid Saint run defense. (4) 3 ST. LOUIS (0-1) Giants have played Rams tough in St. Louis. (3) 4 PHILADELPHIA (0-1) Defense sorely misses Jeremiah Trotter. (1) 5 SAN FRANCISCO (1-0) Terrell Owens took a Week 1 hiatus.

Columnist Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News was not impressed by Sacramento forward Chris Webber in Game 7 of the NBA's Western Conference finals. "The Lakers make the NBA Finals more interesting by being there again, certainly more interesting than they would have been with Webber, who made no baskets down the stretch in regulation and one in overtime. Webber is about as much a $100-million ballplayer as Allan Houston is.

Chalk this one up--actually, break out the extra chalk and give this whole series--to the Laker attitude. If the old "Wall Street" motto was "greed is good," then the new Laker mantra is "cocky is cool." It prevailed again in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals and helped the Lakers to a 93-87 victory to clinch the series.

Speculation intensified in the television news business over whether ABC News flagship anchor Peter Jennings is being asked to take a pay cut along with others in the newsroom, prompting both the anchor and ABC News management to issue statements.