How Dodgers can take some cues from 2002 Lakers in

Can you dig it? Can you hear it?

They’re getting louder, the echoes from 2002, when Lakers flags flapped above car doorways all over L.A., and for a third consecutive 12 months, residents paraded, gleeful and triumphant, with another championship to have fun.

As properly as any place, Los Angeles understands: Great groups win championships. Exceptionally great groups repeat, back-to-back it up. But only the best groups three-peat.

We haven’t witnessed a profitable trifecta in North American sports activities since those Lakers beat the Indiana Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Nets in successive NBA Finals.

But can historical past three-peat itself now? Can the Dodgers hit the three?

Take a look at the blueprints of former Laker coach Phil Jackson’s three three-peats, particularly the one in L.A., and inform me, do you see it too?

Do you acknowledge the acquainted notes and comparable focus? The symmetry in what both groups say about what it took and will take to pull off the fifth three-peat in their respective sports activities? You see all the indicators pointing to yes?

“The mistake that championship teams often make is to try to repeat their winning formula,” Jackson wrote in his 2013 guide, “Eleven Rings.” “The key to sustained success is to keep growing as a team. Winning is about moving into the unknown and creating something new.”

Funny, Dave Roberts said a lot the same factor: “There’s a core group of players, but things play out so differently every year. I think it’s to be able to separate it and look at it by itself.”

It helped the Lakers, of course, that that they had two of the best gamers who ever lived, in Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. And that the Dodgers have Shohei Ohtani, the best singular baseball expertise ever — flanked on all sides by baseball A-listers.

Yes, they produce. They also spur manufacturing.

“It was about winning championships, that was the expectation and I think everyone in that locker room felt that pressure,” said Mark Madsen, whose first two NBA seasons have been on Lakers title groups. “I felt that pressure as a role player, and that made me better.”

“It’s easy to come here and work hard,” said Ben Casparius, the Dodgers’ 27-year-old third-year reliever. “I want to perform well for Freddie (Freeman) and for Mookie (Betts) and for these guys who’ve been doing it for a long time, who deserve that level of focus and adapting to be able to win.”

The Lakers always had stars in their roles align: Big-shot makers like Horry and Derek Fisher. The Dodgers have big-hit-makers like Kiké Hernández and Miguel Rojas.

The Lakers had Jerry West set issues in movement then; the Dodgers have Andrew Friedman doing it now.

The Lakers had Jackson, the Dodgers have Roberts — championship gamers who’ve excelled as managers of males.

But, pay attention, that’s only toeing the sting of the rubber.

“It has to do with management,” said Robert Horry, one of seven gamers who was half of all three of those Lakers’ title groups. “If they find the best massage therapist, the best trainers, the best nutritionist, all those things play a part. You want to feel like you’re being taken care of … and athletes, we want to be pampered, we want to be loved, you want to be appreciated, and I think both organizations strive to do that.”

Only a jumpball to open play.

“There’s a lot of glitz and glamour around the Dodgers and L.A.,” Casparius said. “But I don’t think people really understand the amount of work that goes into (it). From our nutritionist to our trainers to our head of strength and conditioning to our pitching coordinators, everybody’s working hard. People aren’t happy when we lose spring training games. People aren’t happy if we make a couple errors or pitchers aren’t throwing strikes. The bar is high everywhere.”

Sure, it’s basketballs to baseballs, and not a good comparability; just think about how high Ohtani’s usage could be if you would spam the pick-and-roll with him.

And the Lakers’ three-peat was nearly a quarter of a century in the past; their complete participant payroll was $53 million — about $4 million less than Kyle Tucker will earn this season.

Oh, but tomayto, tomahto.

If those Lakers — flamable and bored but constructed better than every other staff on the planet at the time — may flip the triple play, so can Roberts’ drama-free superteam.

But the first rule about three-peating is that you don’t speak about three-peating, or as third baseman Max Muncy surmised: “The biggest challenge of a three-peat is not treating it like it’s a three-peat.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Horry said. “When we were going for the three-peat, we didn’t talk about it. We just said we wanted to play the best ball that we could.”

The Dodgers perceive, Hernández said, because “whatever happened last year and the previous year, that’s already paid for, that’s already history. You’re not trying to win three championships in one year, you’re just trying to win this year.”

The magnificence of that considering is that it transcends three-peats and begins to be about life more broadly.

“I remember,” Madsen said, “what George Mumford would always say, our team psychologist: ‘Don’t live in the past, don’t live in the future, only live in the present. If you make a mistake, don’t dwell on it. And don’t get consumed with thinking about the future. Only be in the present, be the best version of yourself in the present. The rest will take care of itself.’”

Mark Madsen was drafted by the Lakers in 2000 and was half of the 2001 and 2002 championship groups. He later served as a Lakers assistant coach, above.

(Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

Of course, opponents are also going to need badly to be the best variations of themselves in those moments they’re dealing with the Dodgers.

“Each and every night, you are the measuring stick for every team you play,” Horry said.

Echoed catcher Dalton Rushing: “You have teams that come to town and they could’ve lost their last 13 games, but if they take two from the Dodgers, their whole month’s complete.”

Gotta love that, though, these guys say.

“I take it as a compliment,” Hernández said. “I take it as a privilege.”

Kiké Hernández, above during a 2024 sport, has gained the World Series thrice with the Dodgers, including the earlier two seasons.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The privilege is strain, strain is a privilege and the likelihood of making such rarefied historical past, with of us at FanGraphs giving the Dodgers 27% odds to win this World Series, is something but computerized.

“We can see why the third time is the hardest,” Fisher said on June 12, 2002, after the Lakers swept the Nets to win No. 3, capping a season in which they completed tied for second in the Western Conference.

“This started as a foregone conclusion. It didn’t look that way as we went forward. So, for our basketball team, the fact we didn’t give up makes it special. We fought.”

L.A. remembers it. L.A. appreciates it.

“(The Lakers) had some great teams, and this city loves winning,” Hernández said. “And we’ve done pretty good at winning the last couple years, so we’re trying to keep doing it.”

L.A. digs it.