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.)