It’s over for the Lakers. It’s over and what’s even more daunting is that the Lakers’ abrupt end at a bid for a third-straight title ended just as catastrophic as their journey began on the parquet floor of the Boston Garden.
In all of Phil Jackson’s time coaching, coaxing and motivating his players, all he ever wanted them to accomplish, besides winning, was living in the moment—to be present in each and every moment and not just when things were going their way.
Nothing ever seems to go your way when you’re on the wrong side of a sweep.
For the majority of the game the Lakers had one foot in Dallas and the other in their preferred vacation destination. It must’ve been difficult to watch Jason Terry shoot them out of the playoffs or Peja Stojakovic shoot himself back into the greatest-shooter-of-this-decade discussion. Times sure got tough in the Mavericks 122-86 point defeat of the Lakers. And when times got even tougher, when Dirk Nowitzki established his shot was going to continue to fall and J.J. Barea worked effortlessly to unravel the seams of the Lakers defense, Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum decided neither of their feet belonged on the maple-bleached floor of the American Airlines Center.
Odom and Bynum took themselves out of the game physically, though they had already mentally checked out long before opening tip. They did so in the most embarrassing, un-impressive and egregious of ways imaginable.
In short the Lakers were just plain bad. No one, not Kobe Bryant, not Phil Jackson and certainly not the rest of the players deserves to be excluded from the list of who’s to blame for the Lakers early playoff exit.
Next: Lakers never regained that championship edge they had
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Just like Jackson isn’t a rah-rah type coach, the Lakers aren’t your atypical go-with-the-punches, dig deep within the depths of themselves and win despite facing adversity type of team. In reality that last characteristic of teams isn’t atypical at all. It’s something the Lakers had carried with them after they were bounced 39-times over by the Celtics in 2008 and apparently shrugged it off somewhere between now and then.
“When I think about this series and I think about this game,” Odom said, “[Dallas’] bond on the basketball court was better than ours, it seemed like. They were able to come back from 16 [in Game 1]. Come back from seven or eight with three minutes to go, and there was something missing [from us].”
The warning signs, the red flags were all there. They were so abundant during the regular season that they would’ve outnumbered the Laker flags seen riding on the cars along the Interstate-405 freeway 36-to-1. The Lakers had losing streaks of five games, four games and three games (twice), something they hadn’t done in the previous 217 games since acquiring Pau Gasol. Each time they had a perplexing, disheartening loss they never came back with the same fire and fervor that they had during their two previous runs at the title.
“I don’t know where we lost it. That certain drive and bond that we had, that we had in the past. That cohesive drive in order to overcome adversity,” Odom said.
They had an opportunity to bring the Heat back down to earth on Christmas Day in front of their home-crowd, but failed. They beat a lowly Cleveland Cavaliers team by 55 points and then lost to that same team by five points the following month. They had two consecutive double-digit defeats at home by teams with a sub-500 record. Their post All-Star break run of winning 17 games in 18 tries, that once appeared incredible now looks more like an illusion.
Next: More signs the end was near
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Bryant needed a heroic three-point shot to send the Lakers’ last game of the regular season against the Sacramento Kings into overtime. It was a game that would end up making a difference in the standings. As it turns out, there was a bigger disparity between the second and third seeds in the west. Dallas was certainly the better team in this series against the Lakers and their complete shellacking of the two-time defending champs definitely merits them an ample amount of credibility.
But what of the Lakers credibility heading into an off-season of potential changes to their once potent lineup?
To say that Gasol had his worst career playoffs is at best, an understatement. Derek Fisher is a low-impact player who seems to always deliver the timely high-impact shots, but that momentum swinging shot never came. In what was his most consistent year in a Lakers uniform and resulted in a Sixth-Man of the Year Award, Odom could do little to spark any chemistry and cohesion with his bench-mates. On paper the signings of Matt Barnes and Steve Blake were said to be sure-fire hits off the bench, but in practice they never really lived up to the hype when it mattered. Ron Artest has come a long way from the player everyone thought he was going to be when he joined the Lakers in 2009 and in Game 2, a cheap shot in garbage time no less, made some revert back to the same antics that he’s tried so hard to detach himself from.
Everyone watched and faded into the background as Bryant went to work, but players don’t get paid to be spectators. Bryant took over, he facilitated and did a combination of both—nothing seemed to work. He missed a last-second shot in Game 1 that ultimately could’ve played to the psyche of both teams, but that’s in the past, the Lakers couldn’t or wouldn’t live in the present and now they must look onto the future.
Next: What’s in store for the Lakers?
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It’s a future that may not include the presence of Bynum, a player that for the latter part of the regular season and some-what in the playoffs anchored the Lakers defensively. He made a decent impact for the Lakers in their final series and certainly out-played his fellow big man Gasol, but in the end the only thing fans will remember is how he made his exit in Dallas. Lucky for Bynum certain memories are ephemeral. Just like everything else in La-la land. He merely needs to look towards Gasol and how fans have managed to throw him under the bus after everything he’s done for the Lakers.
The one constant the Lakers had all season was Jackson and he’s the one person they can bank on leaving. Maybe he was the problem. For whatever reason the Lakers just didn’t get the motivation they seemed to be seeking throughout the regular season and into the playoffs.
In the end maybe winning one game at a time wasn’t as simple as just living in the moment. Perhaps it was the “trust” that Bynum suggested. The Lakers needed to trust the system that had gotten them two-straight titles, trust each other and most importantly trust themselves.
Even though they may not be staring at the same familiar faces next year, one thing is always for certain.
“We all know they always come back and get themselves back in the race,” Jackson said. “The Lakers are going to survive.”
[phpbay]Los Angeles Lakers, 3, “”, “”[/phpbay] Amen.