It seems like the Lakers love to make fans like me who were so confident that we’d win Game 4 look like a buffoon, idiot, imbecile, dummy, whatever you want to call it. In the words of Maino, ALL OF THE ABOVE. I guess I should have known better given our inability to play well on the road during the regular season. Hell, when’s the last time that the team played like “defending champions”?
Obviously, it’s premature to upgrade our concerns to Defcon 5 at this point, but after the last game, I’d consider it safe to say that the finger is definitely on the trigger. This isn’t even about repeating anymore. This series against the Thunder is realistically one that we can lose. All of the negative talk that’s been going around for the last few years about the Laker point guards and their inability to defend is finally reaching a crescendo against Russell Westbrook.
Last year against Aaron Brooks, we were pushed to the brink by having to play a Game 7, but Westbrook presents all kinds of additional problems for our defense – as he can easily finish at the rim or get to the line, which leads me to believe that another deciding seventh game is all too possible. I couldn’t have been more disappointed in our performance on Saturday night. While the referees definitely seemed to be working against us, the bottom line is that we must play better defense without fouling. I just don’t understand why the urgency and intensity is so absent with this Lakers team.
With the always dangerous “swing game” in Game 5 looming over the entire city of L.A., there’s a few things that the team needs to fix immediately if we’re going to get out of this series against OKC.
NEXT: The play of Pau and Drew
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