Los Angeles Lakers need to be desperate in game-4
Phil Jackson is a legendary basketball coach and the Los Angeles Lakers are a legendary franchise. The team is two times reigning NBA champion and have arguably the best player since Michael Jordan in the shape of Kobe Bryant.
The Dallas Mavericks are also a good team and boast off some great players like Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd. But, Dallas are also perennial playoff underperformers too.
Before the series started, no one could have predicted that Dallas will be leading 3 – 0, including two wins at the Staples Center.
The manner of these victories couldn’t have been predicted either. Dallas have outperformed the Lakers down the stretch, in all three games. The much vaunted big game players of the Lakers have gone missing, time and again in the
final quarter and Kobe Bryant has not been an exception to it.
Consider another fact, no team has ever come back from 3 – 0 down to win a playoff series in NBA history. Any team in danger of going 3 – 0 down, would naturally be expected to put up a spirited fight, to play hard and leave everything
on the floor. But that’s not how the Los Angeles Lakers played in their game-3 loss to Dallas. They were lazy again. Not only were they slow and clumsy, they didn’t help each other out and stayed in the game simply because they have one of, if not the, best
rosters in the league.
After the game Kobe Bryant was as calm and confident as ever,
“I might be sick in the head … because I still think we’re going to win the series,” Bryant said. “I might be nuts.”
Did somebody not tell him that the Lakers are 3 – 0 down now, that they are staring at elimination from the playoff? Surely a team, and a man, chasing the legendary 2nd three-peat, would be more fussed, more worried
and more realistic?
Their performances on the field and their demeanour off it are both astounding to say the least. The Lakers are not playing with any commitment and they are as cocky and confident as ever.
There is belief in your ability and then there’s simple denial. And the latter seems to be the Lakers’ current state.
Pau Gasol seems incapable of having a good game. Ron Artest’s acts of stupidity over shadow his play more often than not and the latest suspension was no exception. Andrew Bynum says the team has trust issues and then Kobe Bryant
comes out after every game to tell the world that everything is great in the Lakers camp and they are going to win the series. His confidence and calm in issuing these statements convinces one that he really does believe it.
The Lakers are a supremely talented unit. They could perhaps even do what no team has done before, come back from three nil down. But, this will not happen if they keep playing like they have played so far and if they keep telling
everyone that everything is fine, like Kobe Bryant has been.
The Lakers need to address the issues they have, and the biggest one at the moment seems to be their arrogance. They seem to have so much confidence in their own strength, that they have possibly forgotten when to step up and play
hard basketball.
At this juncture of the series, if they are to save themselves from elimination at the hands of the Mavericks, they have to act like a team on the brink of elimination. They have to play like one.
If Phil Jackson cannot get his team to play like the underdogs, to fight for every ball and hustle all game, to simply be desperate, then Los Angeles will find themselves in a truly desperate situation come game-4.
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