[quote]The Savage wrote:
When I saw Boston coming back from a 19 point deficit I thought “Here we go again…” I thought the same thing again when Boston had a lead a couple of times. Lucky steal (foul?) by Kobe in the late fourth sealed it for them though. Boston is gona be pumped when they go back home. I thought that Perkins being out of the game(s) would have a bigger impact on Boston however they held their own, this shows the depth of the team.[/quote]
It did make a difference on the boards. The overall margin was negligible (37 total and 11 offensive for Boston vs. 40 and 10 for LA), but LA got a handful of extra possessions in the 2nd half because Boston’s small-ball lineup got outmuscled for rebounds.
Some of the talking heads were mentioning how Gasol and Odom really stepped up and came to play. They left out that part where they didn’t have to worry about that 6-10, 290 lb man in green in the middle in Game 5. It wasn’t a huge, game-changing effect, but Perkins was missed.
[quote]Malevolence wrote:
Lakers lack of consistency is killing them. It is incredible to me that they’ve gone on these tremendous scoring runs, offensively and defensively firing on all cylinders, and really looked like a championship team. But, they’ll only do it for 10 minutes… maybe.
…[/quote]
Some of that is Boston, but a large part of it is LA’s youth. They’re still pretty young, they haven’t yet figured out how to integrate Gasol well (he’ll score 10 pts on 8 FGA’s in the first ten minutes and then not touch the ball again for 30 minutes), and Gasol and Odom aren’t quite mentally tough enough to be the real secondary threats that Kobe needs. And then they haven’t had Bynum since January.
LA clearly has the pieces in place to be a great basketball team in the future, but they overachieved somewhat to even make it to the Finals this year and just ran into a Boston team that was better right now.
While it’s possible that they can still come back to win the title, it may be better for this team’s long-term development to get whacked by Boston this year. Let them taste defeat in order to refocus rather than have it all come too easily for them.
It was all the losing that Pierce, Allen, and Garnett experienced earlier in their careers that gave them such an edge this season. If LA’s young guys learn from this (potential) defeat, they could develop into something special.
