The one great thing about basketball is that the game has superstars. You have your LeBron and your Derrick Rose and your Dwyane Wade and your Paul Pierce. You have your Blake Griffin, your LaMarcus Aldridge, your Amare Stoudemire, your Chris Paul and your Carmelo Anthony. NBA Basketball is a game of loud music, celebrity fans and star players.
That’s why, when a team like the Los Angeles Lakers starts to lose basketball games, it’s easy to hate on Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. Heck, it’s so easy, even the Lakers are hating on the Lakers.
It is amazing. Pau Gasol “doesn’t get the ball enough,” Andrew Bynum says “no one has his back and the team has trust issues” and everyone hates Kobe because they think he shoots too much. Day after day we hear loud complaints that Kobe keeps firing up shots and everybody else on the team, stands around and watches.
Gee, well whose fault is that? Could it be that the Lakers have stopped listening to the Zen Master on the bench and they’re just out there free-lancing? Probably.
Every great thing comes to an end. We might be in the process of watching the Lakers “dynasty” coming to an end. And, frankly, it’s not because the Lakers are all that dysfunctional — despite what the Lakers and their fans would have us believe.
Here’s a scoop: The Dallas Mavericks are a good basketball team. After all, they finished the season with the same record as the Lakers, a record that would have been signficantly better if their own superstar, Dirk Nowitzki had been healthy for the duration.
Wednesday night, the Mavericks won Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinal 93-81 in Los Angeles. Nowitzki had 24 points and seven rebounds and was the best player on the floor as Dallas led at the end of every quarter. With two straight wins in L.A., the Mavericks have a 2-0 series lead heading home.
Sure, when your ego is as large as the combined egos of the Lakers and their fans, it’s very hard to admit that some other team is better than you. It’s a lot easier to say, “We aren’t playing well and we should be whuppin’ those slugs that are whupin’ us. I mean, c’mon, they can’t be better than us.”
Sorry, they are.