R.I.P. Lakers

It was an enjoyable ride. The Lakers exceeded expectations and played themselves into the first seed in what was universally thought as the best conference in basketball. They rolled through the playoffs and took on the ESPN media darlings in the Boston Celtics. Everyone expected an epic series.

Instead, Boston leads 3-1.

Sure, it ain't over til it's over, and everyone has a chance until they're eliminated, but this isn't hockey, folks. There are no rabbits in the hat that can be pulled out Copperfield-style; this series is over. The only suspense is whether or not Boston will be celebrating in L.A. or at home.

How do you explain blowing a 24 point lead? How do you explain being up by 21 points at the end of the first quarter, a Finals record, and then going on to lose? Simple, really: the Lakers quit playing about halfway through the third quarter. Boston kept going because, you know, you get paid to play 48 minutes so you play 48 minutes. The Lakers eased up, Boston made a run, and then L.A. got tight. The last half of the fourth quarter was absolutely excruciating to watch if you were a Lakers fan: every player on the court was simply terrified to shoot or do anything with the ball, Kobe Bryant included. One trip down the floor, Kobe dribbled for a few seconds and then threw the ball to Sasha Vujacic. Kobe then stood alone at half court until someone threw up an off-balance shot as the shot clock wound down.

WTF?

After the game, Kobe said that the Lakers wet the bed. Hmm. Now, I am a big Lakers fan. There is no doubt. But one way to look at it is this: Kobe shot 4 times in the first half and the Lakers led by 18; all the other Lakers were involved, everyone was playing within the flow of the game, and all were getting open looks. In the second half, Kobe shot 15 times. The rest of the Lakers seized up, and look what happened.

I'm not saying that Kobe doesn't need the ball in his hands at the end of a tight game; there is no doubt that he's a hell of a closer in those situations. But last night you almost got the feel that Kobe decided "Well, this one's over; now I got to get mine." And in the process of getting his, he disrupted what up until then had been a fantastic basketball game.

Kobe doesn't really deserve all of the blame, of course; the rest of the Lakers became automatronic robots that couldn't move, dribble or shoot, so frankly it didn't matter if Kobe had been facilitating the offense or not.

All I can take out of this is that hopefully this will be a tremendous learning experience for the younger players on the Lakers. As I've said to friends before, my fear for this team was that it had no heart. You punch the Lakers in the gut, and oftentimes they don't punch you back; rather, they just roll over and take it. And that's exactly what happened last night in the second half.

The only silver lining I can take away from last night is that, as always, there is next year. I hope that the Lakers discover a bit of heart and moxie in the off season and make sure that a collapse like the one that happened last night never happens again.

Where are they now? E. Gay Baylor

Normally, I would pick some obscure person from a random point in history, but in honor of this week’s NBA Finals I am choosing one of the truly great players the game has ever known: Elgin Baylor.

Can you imagine how much different basketball history would sound if Elgin had gone by his middle name, Gay? That would be odd.

Elgin came to mind because he was a part of the first Lakers-Celtics finals series in 1959. Of course, the Lakers were in Minnesota back then…for those of you that always wondered why the hell a team was called the ‘Lakers’ and are nowhere near any kind of lake, there you go. The Lakers lost that series, but went on to be pretty good for a while.

Elgin was the #1 overall pick after a career that included stops in the Washington DC rec league, College of Idaho and Seattle University. All basketball powerhouses for certain.

He scored over 23,000 points and grabbed over 11,000 rebounds in his career before being elected to the NBA Hall of Fame in 1977.

In 1974, Elgin was hired as an assistant coach and later ascended to head coach for the New Orleans Jazz (yep, that explains the Utah thing, too…see, this is a history lesson folks!). He sucked as a coach and left after the ‘78-’79 season. He disappeared after that, but from what I can tell he made an appearance as the father of a dysfunctional family in the Chicago projects while starring in the TV sitcom Good Times. Like most big stars, he used a stage name…but that had to be him.

In 1986, he was hired as an executive with the Los Angeles Clippers where he still works today. They have had one good year in all that time, but I guess he’s waiting for the reunion movie before he gives up the basketball gig.

G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) - NBA Playoff Fouls

You’ll quickly be able to tell that I am a child of the 80s when it comes to sports (and everything else I guess). Since I was born in 1976, anything that happened before Magic and Larry got to the NBA isn’t on my radar. With that in mind, and the fact that we have Detroit vs Boston in the East finals (hopefully followed by L.A. vs Boston), I started to reminisce about the "golden years" of the NBA and what a real foul looked like. Nowadays it seems there is a foul called on every possession. The free throws and constant stoppages in play take so much of the flow and fun out of the game. Back in my day a foul was a foul (said in the voice of Grandpa Simpson). And the tradition was passed down like a passing of the torch: Philly vs Boston, Boston vs Detroit, Detroit vs Chicago, Chicago vs New York, New York vs Miami, with the Lakers thrown in along the way to represent the West. Some of the best fouls, and subsequent fights, came from these vicious series. Some examples:

Lakers vs Celtics (the McHale clothesline):



Nowadays, such an infraction will net you an ejection and at least one game off:



Celtics vs Pistons (particularly the third shot with Parrish clubbing Laimbeer over the head):



I think my favorite part of that one is that if you will remember, Parrish wasn’t even called for a foul and actually shot free throws as a result of the play! Makes you wonder how anyone ever won in the Garden...

Despite Late Meltdown, Lakers Have Spurs on Brink of Elimination

The Lakers won their Game 4 matchup against the Spurs last night, 93-91, but not without quite a bit of drama. As one viewer put it, the Lakers did their best to "monkey clusterfuck" their way to a loss. Let's review the final 56.5 seconds, shall we?

--Lamar Odom hits two free throws to give the Lakers a 93-86 lead with 56.5 seconds remaining.

--The Spurs run a play for Brent Barry (a good one drawn up by Greg Popovich in the timeout) and he misses a three pointer. On the rebound, Pau Gasol is fouled by Tim Duncan with 50.8 seconds left.

--Gasol misses both free throws.

--The Spurs come down and Ginobli hits a three pointer with 42.1 seconds remaining. Score: Lakers 93, Spurs 89.

--Here's where the monkeyclusterfucking really gets going: the Lakers inbound the ball, and it ends up in Kobe Bryant's hands; instead of dribbling around the court and waiting to get fouled so that he can shoot what will surely be two money free throws, he drives the length of the court, puts up a tough shot from the right block, and misses. This occurs with around 34 seconds on the game clock and 16 seconds left on the shot clock.

--The Spurs quickly push the ball back upcourt, and Lamar Odom's block of Tony Parker's layup is ruled goaltending. Score: Lakers 93, Spurs 91. 28.1 seconds left.

--After a timeout, the Lakers put the ball in Kobe's hands to run down the clock. He is double-teamed and throws to Fisher, who launches an airball that mercifully goes out of bounds off of Robert Horry's leg with 5.6 seconds remaining in the game and only 2 seconds on the shot clock. (Ed. note: Fisher's shot DID hit the rim, but the refs and/or the shot clock operator missed it.)

--After a timeout, the Kobe shoots a fallaway jumper with two hands in his face and misses. Tim Duncan rebounds and the Spurs call timeout with 2.1 seconds left.

--Popovich draws up a play for....you guessed it, Brent Barry! He tries a pump fake that gets Fisher about two inches off of the ground and then flings a shot from about 28 feet that misses. The game ends as Barry pleads for a foul call on Fisher.

That, ladies and gents, is how you go about completely pissing away a game you have completely wrapped up. You don't drive the length of the floor trying to be Superman when all you have to do is get fouled and make your free throws (that goes for you, too, Pau).

And as far as the final "no call" on Fisher when Barry had the ball, both Barry and Popovich said afterwards that it wasn't a foul, which is code for "You're damn right it was a foul! He fouled the everliving dog mess out of him!"

Ultimately, though, the Lakers are now up 3-1 and have a chance to close the series out Thursday night in L.A. BTW, as soon as I have a YouTube video of Tim Duncan's egregious four-step dunk from the first half last night, I'll post it.

Kobe Again Tries New Strategy; Again, Lakers Win

Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers erased a 20-point third quarter deficit and came back to beat the San Antonio Spurs last night, 89-85, in the first game of the Western Conference finals. Unlike last week when Kobe decided not to shoot in the fourth quarter of a game against the Jazz, Bryant this time decided not to shoot for essentially the entire first half (he scored a whopping 2 points on three shots). Kobe, however, was calm, cool & collected after the win:

Bryant insisted he was "Just managing the game."

"Defensively is where we slipped. I've had games or halves when I've done that and we had a 15-point lead."

Sounding a little sensitive to how he'll be criticized equally for shooting too much or too little, he said if the Lakers hadn't played better defense to accompany his late scoring burst, "Everybody would be talking about I shot us out of the game. Defense is where it gets down."

Either way, Kobe's Houdini impression in the first half was just plain weird to this Lakers fan. Maybe he has become the penultimate poker player, the NBA's version of a Doyle Brunson, sitting back and determining the suckers at the table (Bruce Bowen, et al), and then unleashing a barrage of offense that he knows they cannot handle.

Of course, the Spurs did sit on the tarmac in New Orleans for something like seven hours after their win over the Hornets on Monday night, so they might have been a tad bit tired and cranky. One would think that a 20 point cushion with a quarter-and-a-half of basketball left would've been enough to insure the win. As Kobe Bryant showed, however, there may be no lead that's safe when he's on the court.

Daily Dime: Lakers Rally Past Spurs

Tim Duncan and the Spurs Live to Fight Another Day

After a ridiculous three day layoff, the San Antonio Spurs did what only the Los Angeles Lakers and the Detroit Pistons were able to do in the conference semifinals of the NBA playoffs: win a game on the road. Their reward: the Lakers in the Western Conference finals.

Tim Duncan scored 16 points on only 5-of-17 shooting, but he was 6-of-6 from the free throw line and pulled down 14 rebounds. Manu Ginobili scored 26 points and had five assists. For the Hornets, Chris Paul scored 18 points, dished out 14 assists and had 8 rebounds in a losing effort.

Despite the home teams' dominance in this round of the playoffs, conventional wisdom was that the experience of the playoff-tested Spurs would eventually come to bear in Game 7, which was actually a close game in the final minutes, unlike the other six games of the series, which were all essentially blowouts.

Tony Parker revealed after the game that the Spurs had their bags packed and would be going straight to Los Angeles to prepare for the first game of their series with the Lakers, which tips off Wednesday night on TNT. I'm picking the Lakers in six. On TNT's postgame show, Charles Barkley said that the current Lakers team is better than any of the Shaq-Kobe championship teams from earlier this decade. So, we know which team Chuck is betting on! (Ed. note: Or, you know, not betting on; see post later today.)

Kobe Employs New Strategy; Lakers Win

The Los Angeles Lakers last night defeated the Utah Jazz 111-104 to take a 3-2 series lead in the Western Conference semifinals. That in and of itself isn't that newsworthy; most everyone expected L.A. to win. It was how they won that was unique: Kobe Bryant was a whopping 6-of-10 from the field and 13-of-17 on free throws (for 26 points). That's right: Kobe shot almost twice as many free throws as he had field goal attempts. Of course, Kobe was playing with a balky back and that certainly limited him offensively (and defensively, as the guy he was guarding, Ronnie Brewer, scored the Jazz's first eight points).

Even more shocking? The fact that Kobe didn't attempt a field goal at all in the fourth quarter. None. Nada. Zilch. Bumpkis. Instead, the Lakers' resident roster of David Copperfields magically appeared and contributed. Lamar Odom went for 22 points and 11 rebounds; Pau Gasol scored 21 points and had 6 rebounds and 8 assists; and Vladimir Radmanovich and Derek Fisher combined for 29 points. For those of you keeping score at home, that's all five starters in double figures, and when the Lakers have all five of their starters score in double figures, they rarely lose (17-1 in the regular season).

Oh, and Boston won too. Let's see...LeBron started off strong...then LeBron cooled off. Yep, that's how it went. Cleveland was up 14 at half and lost by 7 as James was a cool 4-of-11 in the second half.

Lassen: This time, Kobe didn't need to be spectacular
Lakers Keep Home Fires Burning