My, how quickly an NBA season seems to go when one is chasing championship glory, a bit of history and ultimately redemption. For a franchise so filled with all the intrigue and drama that has become the trademark of their Hollywood backdrop, this season will be one of the most remembered in their annals. All of these ingredients were present for the storied Los Angeles Lakers in their quest for their 15th NBA championship during the 2008-2009 NBA season.

Backtrack to around the year 1999: Del Harris was coaching the Lakers and he had quite a team. Two Hall-of-Fame superstars in Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, then still relatively young and full of boundless energy had the likes of All Star types in Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones and Cedric Ceballos surrounding them. Yet for all their talent they just couldn’t seem to get out of the Western Conference Playoffs. They always succumbed to Karl Malone and John Stockton and the rest of that great Utah Jazz team. In 1999 they couldn’t get past the coming of age of one Tim Duncan and the date with destiny of David Robinson and that first San Antonio Spurs championship squad.

Harris, a great basketball teacher who also coaches the Chinese national team of Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, was eventually let go, and in came the sublime Phil Jackson at the start of the new millennium. Jackson had just come off a year in retirement. He had engineered two amazing title runs with the Chicago Bulls and cemented the legacy of one Michael Jeffrey Jordan as the one true god of basketball. Jackson commanded the respect of the game’s greatest player ever, the most misunderstood sidekick in the history of hoops, and a bunch of complementary mid-level stars and delivered six NBA titles to the Windy City franchise. Jerry West, Jerry Buss and the rest of the Lakers top brass obviously thought no one else would be better able to finally make champions of their young team than Zen master god-maker out of Montana.

Jackson delivered: with him calling the shots, O’Neal and Bryant won a grand slam of their own, ruling the NBA from 2000-2002. But then in 2003 things began to unravel. Bryant was emerging as a superstar on his own, averaging over 34 points per game in the three times they made the Finals. In one game against the Indiana Pacers, with O’Neal fouled out, he literally carried the Lakers in overtime to take that crucial win and eventually the crown. He was becoming more and more vocal about assuming more responsibility and playing the lead role in the Lakers soap opera. Fans ate it up and came up with all manner of catchy terms like “As The Lakers World Turns” and “All Phil’s Children” as an homage to American daytime TV drama.

O’Neal of course was the undisputed big star of the team then, being truly unstoppable in a league that still had quite a few big-name big men. In the West he had Duncan and Robinson, and at various times he had Arvidas Sabonis, Vlade Divac and Chris Webber, as well as then-greenhorn Yao Ming. In that Indiana series he had to take on Rik Smits, Dale Davis and Antonio Davis. He had all-time defensive player Dikembe Mutombo to deal with twice, first with the Philadelphia Sixers and then the New Jersey Nets. For all of Bryant’s obvious all-world talent, O’Neal and Jackson were the real foundation of the team. Unfortunately there was no longer enough room on the team for all of those egos as big as all outdoors.

They tried it one more time in 2004 when they brought Gary Payton and Karl Malone and they still lost to the Detroit Pistons. Detroit had nowhere near the star power of those Lakers but they did play better as a team. Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton and Ben Wallace were clicking so well together they practically erased all the brightness from that star-studded Lakers squad with defense, great ball movement, making the extra pass and essentially disrupting the Jackson triangle offense by cutting off passing angles and jamming the passing lanes.

When O’Neal was traded after that Detroit finals debacle, Jackson also went on a personal hiatus from the NBA. Bryant got his wish and the Lakers finally became his team. But the inevitable fallout was expected: everybody from fans, to sports writers, to basketball pundits, to fellow players, other coaches and team executives ripped Bryant and Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak for letting O’Neal go. “This is going to come back to bite the Lakers in the ass for a long time to come,” said a rival Western Conference general manager when the decision to trade O’Neal was announced.

When O’Neal won his fourth NBA title in 2006 with Dwayne Wade and the Miami Heat, it made matters even worse and cast Bryant as an even bigger knucklehead more interested in him self than in the team concept. O’Neal was instrumental in getting the Heat over a 2-0 Finals deficit to eventually overcome the Dallas Mavericks. O’Neal looked lethargic and slow and his age seemed to show too much in Games 1 and 2 of this series. But when the series shifted, it was as much due to the emergence of Wade as a true NBA superstar as it was about O’Neal showing all and sundry that back then he was still very much a force on the NBA’s biggest stage. He powered his way down low against the helpless Dallas frontline. Hs strength off the boards and in swatting or altering shots on defense gave Miami all the insurance and all the confidence they needed to make one of the biggest comebacks in NBA Finals history.

Rewinding a bit to the 2008 Finals and the Lakers, Jackson and Bryant returned to the Big Dance. It was a heck of a retro finale for the league as the Purple and Gold squared off against their longtime rivals the Boston Celtics. LA had just come from practically strolling through the Western Conference Playoffs, and had a surprisingly easy time disposing of then-reigning champion San Antonio. Boston rode on the immense leadership and star power of its new Big 3 – Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen – and so thoroughly embarrassed the Lakers in those Finals with their selflessness, defense, patience and focus. While Bryant tried, in vain, to carry the Lakers on his own, the Big 3 got their entire team involved and led by example. After that Finals loss, Bryant understood how difficult it would be to make a return trip. “No excuse, they (the Celtics) deserved the win and the championship. We just blew it,” he said dejectedly in one post-Finals interview.

This season the Lakers did indeed return to the Finals, and it was here that Bryant finally decided he would do everything in his power to give the Lakers their 15th NBA championship. After anxious semifinals and finals in the Western Conference Playoffs first against the Houston Rockets and then the Denver Nuggets, the Lakers looked primed and ready to collect the gold basketball trophy. He never admitted it, but these Finals were as much about his finally moving out of the “if only” questions that have hounded him since O’Neal was traded as it was about cementing his own greatness. He always took the O’Neal-centered questions with undisguised disdain, referring to such questions as “idiotic” and “ridiculous”. “I don’t even think about it. I think about nothing but winning the championship,” he said during a media availability session before the NBA Finals began over a week ago.

When the Finals rolled around the Lakers opened with a bang – a 100 – 75 blowout of the Orlando Magic in Game 1. In that opening game it looked very much like the Lakers would finally fulfill their destiny. They did everything right, got every one involved including valuable reserves Luke Walton and Jordan Farmar. Andrew Bynum, the young 7-foot center Bryant once wanted traded, played strong defense against superstar Dwight Howard and helped control the boards. Pau Gasol, the Spanish 7-footer who took the most blame for the Celtics loss a year earlier after Bryant, shook all of those “too soft” tags off with every dunk, block and strong move in the post. Trevor Ariza, who came to LA from Orlando, made his former team pay with beautifully set treys, constant incursions into the gut of the Orlando defense and scrambling the Orlando offense with his relentless defense.

In Game 2 the Magic were one play away from pulling off something they had pulled all throughout this post-season: a miracle of a win. All the lessons these Magic had learned in their run throughout these playoffs came to the fore. They made their adjustments on defense, set better screens and used them to the hilt, stayed toe to toe with the favored Lakers. Unfortunately Courtney Lee was just a little off to an angle and flubbed an alley-oop play with six-tenths of a second remaining in regulation. LA hung on for the close overtime win and came up 2-0.

When the series shifted to Orlando the Magic claimed Game 3. It was a morale-boosting win and once again the sins of Bryant were magnified. In the last minute and a half of this game he forced a drive into the middle of two Orlando players and was stripped just when the Lakers looked like they might win Game 3 and pull off the sweep. Instead the Magic hung on for their first ever franchise victory in the NBA Finals. They came alive again in Disney World, as Howard, Rashard Lewis and Hidayat “Hedo” Turkologku defended their home court and made it a series again.

Little did the Magic realize that was about as good as it was going to get for them. In Game 4 they took control early on, and looked set to equalize the series at two games apiece. Then they crumbled at the freethrow line. Turkologku, one of the best shooters in the game and a steady veteran, bungled three of four in consecutive trips to the line with about three minute remaining in the game. Howard clanked four of his own that could have iced it all. Jameer Nelson, a guy who played superb career-making basketball before going out with a shoulder injury prior to the All Star Weekend, gave nine-year veteran Derek Fisher about a meter’s worth of space. Fisher nailed a pressure trey to seal overtime at 87-all. In the overtime, Fisher again nailed a trey that made it 94-91 for LA in the last minute or so in overtime. LA eventually hacked out the W and a commanding 3-1 series lead, a lead from which no opponent ever returned.

Game 5 was all about body language, and after the first quarter, when the Lakers machine began to hum, everybody in the stadium knew it: the Magic had given up, and the Lakers would have their 15th NBA championship. From 39-40 late in the second period, Bryant Ariza, Bryant, Odom and Gasol made it 52-40. Orlando cut it to 53-58 early in the third period. The Odom nailed back to back three-pointers to make it 64-53 for the Lakers, and there was no coming back for Orlando. When the final buzzer sounded it ended at 99 – 86 in Game 5. This might have been all about Bryant, Jackson and coming full circle, but Ariza had his own personal victory as well. “This really was special, to win it here in Orlando,” said the guard after the game. No doubt he made his old team pay for not believing in him enough to keep him, and here he was, back in their old building, celebrating a championship as a starter on a talented Lakers squad.

Over the off-season the Lakers will have to make some very important decisions about Ariza and Odom. Ariza will make $ 3 million next year, and deserves a raise for the season he has had. Odom, the All Star who shows up maybe three out of four nights, still had a heck of a post-season, and the Lakers surely would not have won it all without him. He makes $14 million next year, but will have to take a pay cut to stay on and keep this team intact. Arguably the biggest piece of this puzzle is Jackson, who made $12 million this year and had surgeries on both hips. Kupchak and Buss need to think about all this over the summer.

For now though it is all about savoring this moment. And the redemption that came with it.