How to Repeat a Championship, Starring the Phillies and Lakers

There’s only one thing more difficult than winning a championship.

Winning two championships.

Incumbent champions start the season with a target on their backs. They have nowhere to go but down, and their season is one of if’s: if they can stay healthy, if the can deal with the expectations, if they can keep their focus… if they can do all these things, their shot at repeating as champions is still marginal at best.

The Philadelphia Phillies, beating both the odds and the Dodgers, have clawed their way back to the World Series. They’re joined by the Los Angeles Lakers in attempted title defense in their respective sports.

And they’re doing it the right way—by not being afraid to make changes.

First, some back story.

The Phillies didn’t start the 2008 season favored to win a World Series; or even, for that matter, their division. Only two of ESPN’s panel of 19 baseball experts picked them as division winners. Baseball Prospectus placed them third in the NL East, behind the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves.

But we know how the story ends. The Phillies not only won their division, but made quick work of the playoffs, beating the Milwaukee Brewers 3-1, the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-1, and finally the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 to bring home Philadelphia’s second World Series win in history.

The Lakers’ story, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different.

Kobe Bryant and company started the season squinting in the bright lights of expectation. They’d just lost an NBA Finals to Kevin Garnett’s Boston Celtics. All eyes were on Kobe to win a title without Shaq.

And they had the personnel to do it. With Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Derek Fisher, and Trevor Ariza providing Kobe’s Greek chorus, the Lakers went 65-17 on the season, finishing just one game behind LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

They hit some bumps in the playoffs, requiring seven games to beat the Houston Rockets and six to finish off the revitalized Denver Nuggets, but everyone watching knew the end from the beginning. The Lakers feasted on Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic, winning a title for Kobe and giving coach Phil Jackson a full two hands’ worth of championship rings.

Now, fast forward a year.

The expectations for both teams have been, again, opposite. The Phillies were only picked by three of 21 ESPN experts to make it back to the World Series; none of them picked Philly to win it. The Lakers were a unanimous ESPN expert choice to win the Western Conference, and nobody doubts their chances of beating whichever team survives the East playoffs.

The temptation exists to try to keep the title-winning team exactly how it was. They won a title once—they should be able to do it again. But every other team in the league, having fallen short of their championship goals, has made every effort to get better. Even a world champion isn’t foolish to make some changes—even risking the chemistry with which they won it all—to stave off the next season’s challengers.

The Phillies and the Lakers have both done this. Well.

Philadelphia beefed up their offense in the offseason by bringing in Raul Ibañez to play left field. He hit .272 and pounded in 34 homers en route to an All-Star game appearance, providing a solid hitting upgrade for the Phillies.

Not stopping there, the Phillies made one more move—a move that arguably won them their second-straight National League pennant. They picked up starting pitcher Cliff Lee in a trade with the Cleveland Indians. The left-handed ace’s ERA in this postseason is 0.74, and the Phillies have won all three games he’s started.

Cliff Lee will be a crucial part of the Phillies’ World Series. Just as he’s been crucial in getting them there.

The Lakers’ offseason move has taken more criticism, but the thinking is the same. The purple and gold, even without any changes, would have started the season with indisputably the most talented roster in the NBA.

But the Lakers knew what was in the rear-view mirror. The San Antonio Spurs would later add Richard Jefferson to their already-stacked roster. The Cleveland Cavaliers would trade for Shaquille O’Neal to pair with LeBron, the Orlando Magic would add Vince Carter to a Finals team and the Boston Celtics would add tenacious depth in the middle by acquiring Rasheed Wallace.

So the Lakers made a move of their own. They let highly-regarded small forward Trevor Ariza slip away to free agency in favor of signing Ron Artest—a former All-Star, a four-time All-Defensive Team pick, and a capable offensive threat—onto a team that was already loaded top-to-bottom.

The acquisition has taken its share of criticism. There’s a chance that the oft-troubled, oft-spotlighted Artest, most famous for his role in the The Brawl while with the Indiana Pacers, will disrupt the team’s chemistry or provide distraction from the titular goal.

But if not? The Lakers stack the deck for a repeat.

Neither team has finished the repeat yet, however, and even the Phillies still have a long way to go to get there. The last MLB team to repeat was the Yankees, who won three championships from 1998-2000. Repeating in baseball is clearly the exception; the 1992-93 Toronto Blue Jays are the only other team to win back-to-back World Series in the past 30 years.

It’s been more common in the NBA—sort of. There have been six repeat champions in that same 30-year period; three of them were Phil Jackson-coached teams.

But the moves that the Phillies and Lakers made have set the table for their repeat attempts. If the upgrade experiment works for the Lakers, they’ll be a heavy favorite come June.

And in a few weeks, we’ll see if it worked for the Phillies.