Sacramento Kings Basketball Team

It's just like college, when one day you wake up and realize you're a senior. You wonder where the years went, look at the energetic freshmen and remember how it felt to be that young and excited. That's the way it is for the Lakers, who have been transformed into upperclassmen this year, trying to keep pace with those new kids on campus, the Sacramento Kings. In plainest terms, the Kings are what the Lakers were only last year: a talented, youthful team.

The Sacramento Kings are feeling the flutters, the beating hearts, all the good sensations of spring. It has nothing to do with love, and everything to do with the possibility of advancing to the second round of the NBA playoffs for the first time since the franchise was in Kansas City 20 years ago.

After defenseman Aaron Miller had scored his first two goals for the Kings in Sunday's 3-2 victory over the Mighty Ducks, the second in overtime, it was noted on the telecast that he had started his career as a winger. Not exactly, Miller said with a laugh before Tuesday night's game against the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Air Canada Centre.

The Sacramento Kings won a game, stopped a streak and gave a dispirited league some hope Friday night. The Lakers lost, the kind of thing that happens almost every month now, it seems. Shaquille O'Neal stood afterward in royal blue, head to foot, and sighed, impatiently. The Kings were 97-91 winners at Arco Arena, without Chris Webber, their best player, and beat Philadelphia and the Lakers, June's NBA finalists, in the same week.

Philippe Boucher, once lightly regarded by the Kings but now a stabilizing force along the blue line, is enjoying another solid season. The 6-foot-3, 221-pound defenseman has earned praise from Coach Andy Murray and respect from the opposing forwards he has left crunched along the boards. "I think it's a sense of knowing where he wanted to be and how he planned to get there and how he planned to stay there," Murray said of Boucher's emergence since his recall from the minors late last season.

Goaltender Felix Potvin, who watched without complaint as backup Jamie Storr made three consecutive starts and four in five games, returned to the lineup Saturday and stopped 20 shots in the Kings' 4-2 victory over Nashville. No save was more important than the one he made on a breakaway by Greg Johnson early in the second period with the score 1-1. It led to a goal by Lubomir Visnovsky seconds later and the Kings never trailed again. "I thought Felix was solid," Coach Andy Murray said.

With or without Chris Webber, the Sacramento Kings are difficult to beat at home. Peja Stojakovic scored 19 points and Webber returned from a three-game absence with 16 points and 13 rebounds Wednesday night as the Kings easily handled the Portland Trail Blazers, 89-74, at Sacramento. The Kings scored the final 13 points of the first quarter and held a double-digit lead the rest of the way in improving their home record to an NBA-best 15-1.

The injuries continue to mount for the Kings, who found out Tuesday that Randy Robitaille will be sidelined for as many as six weeks, but Coach Andy Murray said the team's problems go beyond the disabled list. Winners of only eight of 26 games after Monday night's 2-0 loss to the Calgary Flames, the Kings are nine points out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference and only two points out of last place in the Pacific Division. Some of the blame for that, Murray said, lies with the coach.

Kobe Bryant returned to Los Angeles late Friday night, not long after scoring 36 points in a Game 3 victory against the Sacramento Kings, to tend to a family matter. He was expected to rejoin the club Saturday night, according to club officials. Bryant was stoic before Game 3 and missed 12 of 15 shots before driving the Lakers to the brink of the Western Conference finals by making his last seven attempts. Afterward, he took a private jet to Los Angeles.

It figures that a team that plays in the capital of plastic surgery, in the midst of a Hollywood culture that airbrushes or digitally alters what can't be fixed with a scalpel, would owe some of its success to transformations. In the Lakers' case, however, the important change has been the willingness of several players to go from the limelight to the background. And now they're starting to flourish in those roles.