LOS ANGELES -- A moment of silence, please.

Not for an unfortunate passing or anything like that.

Just because we need some silence.

Please!

	Shaquille O'Neal should be doing more dunking and less complaining.

The basketball team of Sacramento talks about how Shaquille O'Neal gets away with everything, as if releasing "Steel" upon an unsuspecting public wasn't bad enough, and the basketball team of Los Angeles turns the Western Conference final into a spelling bee and talks about how the refs are tilting toward the Kings, and countless fans of both places prove there is little difference between regions that work so hard to claim they are opposites. Not everyone in two great lands, of course, but enough to show that oversensitivity isn't measured by population.

Lakers. Kings. Coming to a Whine Cellar near you.

Wait.

Kings. Lakers.

Now at least we have escaped the e-mails from Northern California about putting the Lakers first. In the end, it won't make a difference, no matter the outcome. The side that loses will slink away without follow-up, about how maybe there were some valid points made along the way or how they overreacted. You know. Like in Portland.

It would be one thing if it was just the fans. That's understandable and expected and normal. Fans have passion. Great. Fans are not always grounded in reality. Not great. Each side sends accusations about favoring the other or about how a headline one day was soooooo unfair toward their team. Except that all that would be acceptable if the return addresses weren't starting to be tracked to the inside of the teams' locker rooms.

Your stomach isn't turning because you had a room-service cheeseburger in Sacramento with Kobe Bryant. (Diagnosis: Mad Cowbell Disease.) More likely, it's because these are the days of whine and roses.

Sure the media loves it. It's something to report on the off days, such as now between Game 2 on Monday at Arco Arena and Game 3 on Friday at Staples Center, or at least something besides Bryant hurling more than Randy Johnson. ("Several bouts of vomitting" was the word from the Lakers after Kobe had to leave practice early Wednesday. You're on your own if you want more details.)

Sure Phil Jackson loves it. He's not complaining in the aftermath of the Kings' victory that evened the series, right? He's working the referees for Game 3. Everyone knows that.

Sure the fans ... um ...

It's a series with a sense of rivalry -- same division, same state, same playoff matchup for the third year in a row -- and all the energy that should come along with that. Not only that, it's for a trip to the Finals, at which point the winner here would be considered heavy favorites against the East representative. The season is at stake. So why can't everyone just let the outcome be settled on the court.

That statement shouldn't have to sound so naive. Then again, that's the only sound that hasn't come out of Sacramento and L.A. in the last week, so what the bell. Lobbying. Spinning. Tweaking. Prodding. Those are all great and normal and even some fun. Taunting and boasting are also acceptable when one team has won two titles in a row and loves the idea of calling out the team it has beat two years in a row, flat-out daring the Kings to do something about it. But when it becomes nonstop, we can hope it will stop.

The Lakers used comments from Vlade Divac during the season that L.A. won't win the title without home-court advantage, and someone even taped a picture of Divac and the exact quote to Shaq's locker. The Lakers fired back. Sacramento had brief responses but tried to stay focused on the business at hand because the Kings would never do anything like get deep into the trash-talking. They certainly would never throw the first punch. Something like, oh, a starting center calling it a series one game into the first round against Utah, and a game they had barely won at that. So this must all just be a rude, obnoxious, big-city thing by the Lakers.

	“	It's just ironic. If they lose a game, suddenly there's something wrong out there. To me, it's get a life. Move on. Play the game. ”
		— Rick Adelman

"This team has been known to fold," L.A.'s Samaki Walker, the sometimes-starter at power forward, said of Sacramento. "I watched on TV last year and have basically seen them give up when they were down 0-2."

"If Samaki Walker wins a championship, it'll be on the coattails of someone else," Chris Webber said. "He was the one who gave up playing against the Lakers last year (while a member of the Spurs). I'll leave it at that. How's that? Cool."

"We will win the next round," Rick Fox said. "A guarantee? I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it was true."

And that was before the series started. Then, the Lakers won the opener.

"It was quite the interesting start of the game," Fox said, "when you have an arena going for the Guiness Book of World Records as the loudest crowd, and then five minutes later it's the quietest crowd."

Then, the Kings won Game 2.

"Those who understand the game know what really went on," O'Neal said. "We had a couple chances to win. We just missed a couple of shots. So we feel good about that. In order to beat us, you have to beat us fair and square. There is only one way to beat us. It starts with a C and ends with a T."

Exactly how the Lakers lost because of a cat was not immediately clear, but the series prepared to move to Los Angeles in full-gripe mode, with Jackson noting how the referees had been unfair to O'Neal because of foul trouble. Not that he was trying to lobby the crew that would work Game 3 or anything. Or maybe it was just his turn.

"I don't think he said that to me," Scot Pollard, the Kings' backup center, said of the O'Neal commentary. "I think he said to somebody else on our team with a different number on his chest that ended in one. I'll use (O'Neal's) kind of language. It started with a two and ended with a one."

Telephone call for Vlade Divac.

"It's just ironic," Sacramento coach Rick Adelman observed. "If they lose a game, suddenly there's something wrong out there. To me, it's get a life. Move on. Play the game."

Exactly.

Scott Howard-Cooper, who covers the NBA for the Sacramento Bee, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.