Hell has frozen and pigs are flying after last nights loss to the Dallas Mavericks. The Los Angeles Lakers are indeed down 0-1 in the series and now have to play catch-up in Game 2 at the Staples Center on Wednesday.
Many factors contributed to the loss: defensive errors, turnovers (11), lack of team ball, and most of all, mental mistakes at the end of the game. Some of these, if not all, could have been limited or avoided if the Lakers would have played at their regular level of play, but that obviously wasn’t the case in Game 1 and now the Lakers have their backs against the wall.
But let’s give credit to the Mavericks for the win; they outshot the Lakers, shooting 49.4 percent from the field in comparison to the Lakers 42.9 percent. Jason Terry who had 15 (PTS) and Dirk Nowitzki who had 28 (PTS), seemed to be too much for the Lakers to handle down the stretch and it eventually ended badly for the Lakers.
Heading into the locker room, Coach Phil Jackson said, “We went in the locker room and felt like we gave a game away.” Coach Jackson knows that the Mavericks are inferior to his Lakers and so do the Laker players themselves.
Kobe who had a deceivingly good game in the stat books, had 36 (PTS) and 5 (REBS), along with 0 (ASTS), something that hasn’t happened often to say the least. Shooting 29 times in a Playoff game was one of the major reasons why the Lakers lost this game; it took Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol out of the game, taking away the Lakers biggest advantage, which is their post game.
But the Lakers still had many chances to win–unfortunately Gasol fumbled the ball with about 3 minutes left in the 4th and Bryant missed the potential game-winning shot, shooting an open three-pointer just a tad long.
When asked about missing shots in late game situations, Bryant said, “I’m not clutch.” Wait what? Did I read that right, or have I temporarily blind? The “Black Mamba” is all of a sudden, “not clutch?” Wow.
The man who shot his own team out of Game 1 of the second-round of Playoffs decides to get sentimental and say something as outrageous as “I’m not clutch.” Not exactly the answer we were looking for Bryant, but what can we do, we have to take it and move on–the question is, what were you trying to say?
I hate to say this, but expect Bryant to take a minimal amount of shots in Game 2–something Bryant does to show people that he isn’t selfish–and if the Lakers aren’t ready for that, it might be the end of this year’s run for the Lakers.
Bryant obviously hasn’t learned over the years (16), that winning a championship means sharing the basketball, and though he shot very 48 percent from the field, 29 shots is just too many, especially for a team that has the second best center, the most skilled power forward, and the Sixth-Man of the Year.
If Bryant and the Lakers don’t wake up, this could be the end of the Playoffs, and it could well be the near end of Bryant’s career. Bryant will retire as a Laker and one of the NBA’s Greatest Players, but that doesn’t mean his career will end quietly and if he doesn’t realize that now, he never will.
