Larry Stewart of the Los Angeles Times reports that the Lakers are bigger in Los Angeles than the Super Bowl.

Sunday?s Game 7 victory over the Kings produced a 36.9 rating in L.A. which translates to nearly 5 million viewers. This year's Super Bowl, in which the New England Patriots upset the St. Louis Rams, 20-17, on Feb. 3, got a 36.4 L.A. rating. Sunday's Laker game had a 60 share. The Super Bowl, because of an earlier start time, had a 61 share.

The 60 share is the highest for the Lakers in more than two decades. Keith Harris, the Lakers' executive director of multimedia marketing, could not find a higher share in his records. The 36.9 ratring is the second highest ever for a Lakers telecast. Game 6 of the 2000 finals against the Pacers produced a 39.2 rating.

Nationally, Game 7 Sunday drew an overnight rating of 16.9 with a 27 share. Those are the highest overnight numbers for the non-NBA Finals in four years and also represent a 66% increase over the 10.2/16 overnight numbers for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals between Philadelphia and Milwaukee last year.

A rating represents the percentage of all television households tuned into a particular program, and the share is the percentage of households where television is being watched. So Sunday's game, according to Nielsen, was watched in 36.9% of all TV households in the L.A. market and 60% of those where television was being watched.

Since each rating point represents 53,542 homes in L.A., Sunday's game was watched in nearly 2 million homes. The estimated 5 million viewers comes from figuring that there are an average of 2? viewers per household.