Git On Up, Youngblood!

I was streaming Game Three of the Thunder-Memphis series on my computer, and I kid you not, when Sam Young threw down this old skool powerjam, my computer froze.

Barkley Was Right

You know how it smells when rain first starts coming down, in that brief, quaint pitter-pattering stage that occurs before regular downfall?  You know, when the gritty but beautiful aroma of asphalt, dust, and microscopic rubber tire fragments is unlocked by fresh drops of precipitation making their landing?  That is what Southern California smells like after the Lakers gave up a fourth quarter lead to the Mavericks to lose Game Three and go down 3-0 in the Western Conference semi-finals.  Tonight, the falling drops hitting the pavement are Laker tears.

On paper, it doesn’t make any sense.  The Lakers are the most talented team in the NBA, no question.  Their five best players (Kobe, Gasol, Bynum, Odom, Artest) are far, far, far more talented than any other NBA team’s five best players—and they’re all in their prime, or slightly past their prime.  On paper, the Mavericks are a team comprised of former all-stars, have-nots, a “soft” German, and Jason Terry.  Yet, they’ve dominated the Lakers in a way that’s not been outright, but gradual, winning all three games of the series in the fourth quarter.  Ironic, isn’t it?  The Mavericks beating the Lakers the way the Lakers are used to beating them. 

If you’ve been watching the series, what you’ve seen is the Lakers total inability to make defensive stops at key moments.  And then you’ve seen Dirk Nowitzki taking over late in the games with his repertoire of bootleg moves.  Or five-foot-nine J.J.Barea bustering fools, getting into the paint at will, like he's Derek Rose.  I hear a lot of chirping coming from Laker nation, about how the Lakers are not hustling.  That’s kind of what people say about a team anytime a team is playing bad defense.  But watching Game Three tonight, it was painfully obvious—or sometimes just painful—that the Lakers were playing as hard as they could.  For the love of god, Bynum was more impassioned about playing basketball during Game Three than he’s ever been.  Did you see him yelling murderous threats at Phil Jackson when Phil sent Gasol to check in for him after he picked up his fifth foul mid-way through the fourth quarter?  The Zen Master was forced to take Odom out instead, because in all his mystical clairvoyance, he knew that Bynum would knife him in the throat if he came back to the bench.  There were players yelling at each other, players yelling at Phil Jackson, Phil Jackson accosting Pau Gasol.  Those flare-ups occurred all game, but the Lakers intensity was there.  The frustration never let up, because the Mavericks never let up, and the Lakers ran out of answers.

There were a lot of us who watched Game Three thinking the Mavericks are still the Mavericks, they can still lose, the Lakers are still the Lakers, they can still win, a 2-0 series lead isn’t concrete, even if the Mavs are back in Dallas for the next two games.  I’ve always discounted the Mavericks because of my belief that they’re merely a regular season team.  But now I see what has been clear all along, what Chuck Barkley loftily proclaimed even before the Mavs won Game One.  Regardless of how they’ve played on a game-to-game basis, the Lakers were never capable of beating the 2011 Mavericks.

Rick Carlisle’s offense is too sophisticated for the Lakers’ straight-forward defense that’s predicated on their physical superiority.  The Mavs, aside from Nowitzki, took few contested shots in Game Three, even though most of their possessions were well-contested by the Ron-Artestless Lakers.  The Mavericks have too many options, and they use all of them.  They all pass well, they don’t over-dribble, they play the pick-and-roll with all positions, they have iso options with Nowitzki and Jason Terry, they don’t go off on self-righteous shooting tangents or take heat checks, they're smarter than the Lakers, and most importantly, in the fourth quarter, they get Nowitzki the rock on the wing, where he wants it, where he knows what to do with it, no matter how ugly it looks.
 
It was brazen of the Lakers to walk into the playoffs without knowing how to realistically defend the most basic, most utilized offensive strategy, the pick-and-roll.  Now, the Lakers have until noon on Sunday to devise a plan for defense by committee.  My suggestion is that they watch tapes of the Mavs swarming defense and copy that.  But most likely what will happen is that the Lakers will lose on Sunday, or maybe Tuesday.  Then twenty minutes later, everyone around me, here in Southern California, will become obsessed with Dwight Howard.