These Lakers should have had it coming.

En route to their 16th NBA championship they merely disposed of one of the league’s most soundly run organizations (OKC), stomped on the grave of one its most important owners (the late Larry Miller), humiliated two of its most upstanding stars (Steve Nash and Grant Hill), and held off a gritty Celtics team anchored by a mostly passionate, hard-working starting five.

The stuff of legend for one franchise marked a nightmare for four others, proving that no banner is erected for personal conduct. No hardware awarded to those most deserving.  While Phil Jackson may profess to “come from a generation that believed in karma,” it was karma that the Lakers ultimately outran.  

In contradistinction to faith, karma initiates the cycle of cause and effect. In sports, there is no such thing. And if you thought there was, one look at how the 2010 Finals shook out should disprove it.

When Victorian-era novelist George Eliot wrote, “Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds,” she certainly wasn’t thinking of the NBA’s most recent first-time champion, Ron Artest, who three years before he starved several dogs and was arrested for domestic violence in Sacramento, starred in the biggest melee in American sports history.  But there was Artest in Game 7, holding Paul Pierce under 47% shooting for the fifth time in the series, nabbing five steals, and knocking down the most improbable 3-pointer of his career; his Christmas cluelessness a blip on Santa’s radar.

When American abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass said, “Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get,” he never could have imagined that the Buss family would exist. The patriarch, Jerry Buss, who was arrested for DUI in 2007 or his pseudo porn-slinging son, Johnny. Yet there they stood, entitled and gratified; basking in ABC’s gaudy, celebratory production.

Still, in this sport without karma, paying for a team with high-class, character guys, or a team of villains has remarkably little to do with winning.   

Kobe Bryant, the league’s finest player, has five rings. He admitted infidelity following the now infamous rape allegations in Eagle, Colorado. Seven years removed, most Bryant fans’ reaction usually lingers somewhere between the forgiving, ”everyone makes mistakes,” and the dismissive, “let it go, man.” Lest we forget, though, Bryant was recorded saying Andrew Bynum’s (expletive) should have been “shipped out”  in 2007 and shortly before embarking on a Lady Gaga-esqe media tour to denounce the Lakers organization with the kind of vitriol that he usually reserves for postgame tirades.

Without the acquisition of Pau Gasol in February 2008, Bryant’s legacy is forever Shaquille O’Neal’s sidekick. Three consecutive Finals appearances and two titles later, Bryant’s on-the-court greatness is cemented.

Lamar Odom, arguably the most dynamic mismatch in the Association, admitted to smoking marijuana in 2001. Eight years later, he confessed to a candy addiction and endorsed the “lots and lots in just one box” of Taco Bell. (Insert requisite stoner joke here.) And as much as he may be a sweetheart to people like Vic “the Brick” Jacobs, Odom has become known more for “milk carton games” than filling up a stat sheet. His celebrity cache is based most notably on his marriage to a profane, talentless socialite. Yet there was the self-professed “candy man,” committing zero fouls in 34 minutes of the deciding seventh game; a two-time drug offender, turned two-time champion.

In January, Jackson suggested that Clippers owner Donald Sterling could benefit from a “good mitzvah,” suggesting Los Angeles’ junior varsity franchise was cursed. Too many claims of racism against you will do that. However, aside from allegedly discriminating against everyone from Elgin Baylor to apartment tenants and an incriminating deposition about soliciting prostitutes, the rest of Sterling’s franchise has done little else to karmatically warrant what amounts to one playoff series victory per century.

Despite Jackson’s beliefs, his band of Lakers (sans Gasol and Derek Fisher–at least off the court) cannot presume to be more worthy of liberation towards nirvana. If anything, they are worse.

Proverbs 26:27 says, “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.” In that way, I suppose, the 2010 champions overcame Biblical odds.