If you’re a Lakers fan, it’s hard to see the beauty in what the Dallas Mavericks did to completely dismantle the Lakers to take a commanding 2-0 series lead without ever playing a single game on their home floor. It’s difficult to set aside your own biases and just watch a player like Jose Juan Barea weave his way in-and-out of the Lakers defense and come up bigger for his team than his physical stature would suggest. How much time has to pass for Lakers fans to appreciate the excellence in what Dirk Nowitzki has been able to do offensively against their team? He at times takes the most difficult shots and makes them look so effortless.
Maybe the Lakers have us fooled, spoiled even with their enormous size and strength that’s said to be unmatched. Now it’s looking like the scaled down, championship-Lakers-like model Mavericks have the defending champs right where they want them—completely baffled on offense and ineffective on defense. The Lakers’ length is the reason why they have won two titles. However their inability to get the ball inside, acts more like a curse than a blessing when they opt to take long jumpers and three-point shots—something they haven’t been good at all season.
Yes the Lakers are down, but they’re not out. If their current game execution could inspire at least a smidgen of confidence, I might say they could be the fourth team in NBA history to come back and win a seven-game series after dropping the first two at home. Unfortunately that’s not the case.
Next: Lakers must find a way to get Gasol going
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Maybe the Lakers led us to believe that their inherent size would lead them to four-straight finals appearances and three-straight wins. As if it was automatic. Everyone just figured they’d bog down Dallas by executing their sophisticated offense to perfection. The problem is the Lakers haven’t quite figured out how to play consistently and it stems from way before the opening tip of the playoffs.
That failure to be consistent falls upon everyone on the team, but none more obvious than the one guy the Lakers rely upon to be most consistent—Pau Gasol. For the season he averaged 18.8 points and 10.2 rebounds per game while shooting 52.9-percent from the field. Over the course of these playoffs he’s averaging 13.6 points and 7.8 rebounds per game on 42.7-percent shooting.
“I wish I could have been more productive. I wish I could have been more effective,” Pau Gasol said after the Lakers’ 93-81 loss to the Mavs.
Kobe Bryant can’t do it alone and all season he’s been employing Gasol to take on his role as the No. 2 option for the Lakers with more assertion. It was as if Bryant knew that the Lakers success would hinge on Gasol’s production late in the season and into the playoffs. In late January he challenged Gasol to engage his inner Black Swan and drop his White Swan side. During the last series Bryant claimed Gasol needed to assume the responsibility that comes along with being the team’s second in line. Last night however, he sang an entirely different tune.
“You can’t just dump the ball off to him or me and expect us to beat double- and triple-teams all night,” Bryant said. “He’ll be fine. We’ll go up to Dallas, get him some easy looks, get him some easy opportunities, draw some double teams and he’ll be alright.”
Next: Bryant defends Gasol, understands the game plan Lakers should execute
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Bryant understands that coming at Gasol after an abysmal performance wasn’t going to get him to play better. There’s no telling where his confidence is after being booed by fans at Staples Center for a stretch of the third quarter when he lacked any sort of rhythm on offense and couldn’t gain any ground defensively. Instead Bryant sat there in Gasol’s defense and stated the team needed to orchestrate the offense in order to get him some easy looks.
Andrew Bynum who ended the night with 18 points and 13 rebounds is another guy the Lakers might want to consider getting easy looks to. Post-game Bynum told the press he felt his team had “trust issues.” It remains unclear what exactly he was referring to—it could’ve stemmed the frustration of having to sit on the bench during crunch-time or as Bryant suggested, “the trust [Bynum’s] referring to is being able to help each other on the defensive end of the floor.” It could also be that what the Lakers aren’t putting much faith and trust into is their offense.
“I tried to be aggressive but there’s not much of a flow right now in our offense and that’s killing everybody’s rhythm and everybody’s confidence a little bit so we have to move the ball, change sides of the floor and make our triangle work for us instead of when the ball gets stuck too much on one side,” added Gasol. “That’s just giving too much of an advantage to [the Mavericks] defense. They’re set. They’re not working as hard as we’re working on the other end — second, third, fourth effort — it’s just basically having to do one effort. It’s something we have to think about.”
The offense will be something Jackson will certainly address over the course of the team’s quick turn-around to Dallas for a must-win Game 3. While giving up 93 points was neither great nor terrible, only posting up 81 was likely just as bad. Go ahead and give Dallas credit on defense, but the Lakers missed a lot of open looks and even some easy baskets at the rim.
Next: What the Lakers have to do to take back this series
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It comes down to how the Lakers will execute on both ends of the floor, how the bench will bounce back from a virtually non-existent Game 2, if the Lakers can utilize their length and go down low in the post to get Gasol and Bynum involved early and which one of his go-to game plans Bryant plans on going with—scorer, facilitator or a combination of both.
Maybe Kobe Bryant convinced us that he and his team were indestructible. Yes, he’s getting older. He doesn’t get the same elevation on his shots. He doesn’t drive as often to the basket. Yet for every shot he made during crunch time, the memory of the previous three potential game-winners he missed was erased. We could be talking about a series split if he had just made the go-ahead three-point shot to end Game 1, but that’s in the past. His insistent denial of his various injuries, each time setting the record straight that he was fine—Bryant doesn’t make any excuses. His fingers are fine. His knee is fine. His ankle—he’ll be ready.
Now he must rally his team to win four games in five tries.
Maybe I should remind you of Phil Jackson’s record when his team wins the first game of the series, or better yet, maybe I should inform you that there’s no record of how his team performs when they lose the first two games of the series at home. Just like there’s no record of his team winning the championship when they’ve lost four-straight games during the regular season.
Maybe we’re not satisfied with all the glory that accompanies two back-to-back titles, and let’s be honest no one would blame you. Trophies are hoisted when teams withstand the rigors of the game and are named the best in the world because they’ve beaten out the rest in the face of adversity. They don’t hand out hardware to teams that are the best on paper, turns out you have to be the best that night on the court. Last night against the Mavericks, the Lakers didn’t look anything like the previous championship teams.
The Lakers have little margin for error and they know it. Whether or not they’ll overcome it remains to be seen.
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