Killer instinct.(Los Angeles Lakers)

The Lakers have it, and an unprecedented perfect playoff run is now down to one series--four straight victories--away

Leave it to an actor, one who also is a starter on the hottest team in sports, to find killer instinct in a movie. Rick Fox was bunkered down one day during the Lakers' rampage through the Western Conference playoffs when he was urged to check out Natural Born Killers.

Watching a lovesick couple go on a murdering spree would be the perfect preparation for an NBA playoff game, a buddy assured him.

"My friend always tells me you have to have a Natural Born Killer mindset," says Fox, making it clear he's talking strictly about hoops. "You have to think malicious thoughts, you have to be aggressive. You have to give that sense to the opponent that you're here to disrupt his day."

Disrupt, demoralize and dismantle, Fox and the Lakers have done all that and more in an 11-0 run to the NBA Finals. It was not supposed to be this easy, especially not in the conference finals. The matchup against Tim Duncan and the Spurs was billed as the real finals, a potential classic between the past two NBA champions.

Instead, the Lakers splattered the Spurs like a bug on their windshield. In the sweep, they outscored San Antonio by 22.3 points a game--only one of the four games wasn't decided by double figures--and made the Spurs look like, well, "babies," to use a line by a surfer dude in an L.A. grocery store.

The Spurs put up such little fight in Games 3 and 4 at the Staples Center that both fourth quarters were nothing but garbage time. Coach Gregg Popovich admits his players might have lost the belief they could beat the Lakers, a team the Spurs finished ahead of in the regular season and swept two years ago on theft way to a title.