Keller @ Large: No One Likes A Classless Loser

BOSTON (CBS) - What do we mean when we say someone has "class"?

Listen to Jon's commentary:

The way I most often hear it and use it, it means they have good manners, dignity, a sense of fairness and propriety and higher purpose that contrasts with the selfish, boorish behavior that it so often the norm in our culture. You don't have to be from the upper classes to have class; in fact, it seems the two are sometimes mutually exclusive. But when you do have class, you have something that will always set you apart from the pack, and always earn you the respect of others.

Sports can be a great platform for displaying class, or the lack of it. You fight hard to win, and sometimes the things that go on in the process aren't very genteel.

But when the fight is over, the record shows you either won or lost with class or you didn't.

And so it's a teachable moment for all of us who follow sports to see the two-time NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers get knocked out of the playoffs yesterday while re-writing the book on how to lose with no class.

If you missed it, the Lakers lost a couple of close games on their way to going down 3-0 in the playoff with Dallas, and before the fourth and potentially eliminating game, Kobe Bryant was talking big talk about coming back to win.

But then he and the rest of the team came out and laid an egg, with Kobe in particular offering little resistance to the 36-point shellacking they took.

Down the stretch of the game, when all was obviously lost, two key Lakers got ejected for flagrant fouls on Dallas players. In the end, their much-admired coach, Phil Jackson, proved incapable of even imposing the most basic control of his players, a poor reflection on his own self-discipline.

The Lakers as a team made fools of themselves with the way they lost, and left a permanent stain on their own legacy.

They showed no class.

Watch and learn, kids and others. Nobody likes a classless loser.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.