Just Win Baby

The NBA Finals are going back to Beantown, for one more game at least, and hopefully two. Forget objective journalism for a moment, I am writing this as a die-hard and long time Laker fan, who like many of my purple and gold brethren, have been through the proverbial emotional roller coaster with our beloved team this season. It started out with our hero and franchise player, Kobe Bean Bryant, demanding a trade. Screw the guy were my thoughts at the time, if he doesn't want to be a Laker let him go to some second rate team, (any team west of the 110 freeway) and live out his life in exile, what did we ever win with him as the leader, can't be any worse without him. But the season began and Kobe was still around, so pro sports today being what they are we overlook the lack of loyalty and move on. And low and behold, the Lakers actually started out halfway decent, maybe they'll finally get back to the playoffs, not that they can compete with the big boys in the west, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Dallas, but at least they're moving in the right direction.



Then the mid season trade with Memphis, the most lopsided deal since Manhattan Island, or at least since the Louisiana Purchase, brought The Spaniard, Pau Gasol to the left coast. Getting Gasol was like a baseball team getting a really good number two starter, not only did it relieve the pressure off of the main guy Kobe, but it allowed Lamar Odom to move to the number three spot, which is what he is better suited to. Along with solid point guard play from Derrick Fisher in his second go-round with L.A., efficient if sometimes sporadic role play from the Slavs, Radmonavich and Vuyacich, the Pac-10 pair, Luke Walton and Jordan Farmar, and the Lakers had a pretty good eight man rotation. Enough to secure the number one seed in the Western Conference playoff tournament, and enough to waltz through the first round against Denver, survive a hard fought second round series against a feisty Utah Jazz squad, and to rather easily dispose of the defending champ San Antonio Spurs in the conference finals. Dallas and Phoenix never materialized as serious threats, exposed along the way as soft defensively, physically, and mentally. When the Lakers won the Spurs series, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the title would be theirs, only the low scoring and overrated Celtics stood in their way, and as we were told all season long, the east was inferior to the west in every way.



As they say, somebody lied to us, because the Celtics as it turns out can play a little ball themselves. After struggling through their first two playoff series against Atlanta and Cleveland, they started to hit their stride by knocking off perennial bridesmaid Detroit in the conference finals, then proceeded to take it to the Lakers in games one and two in Boston. Not to worry though, things would get right back in the City of the Angels (I refuse to use the horrendous terms La La Land or Tinseltown to refer to my hometown) where the Lakers were unbeaten in the playoffs. And sure enough, game three was a victory, albeit with some flaws, but a victory nonetheless, and when game four started off with a 24 point lead for the home squad, it appeared that the ship had been righted and all was once again right with the world.



Then came the collapse of the century, the Lakers blew the lead, the largest blown lead, or if you are looking from the other side, biggest comeback, in NBA Finals history. What should have been a 2-2 series with momentum wearing Laker colors instead turned into a 3-1 Celtics lead. No one has ever come back from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals all the pundits told us. Of course these are the same pundits who reminded us a few years back that no baseball team had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a series, which is exactly what the 2004 Red Sox did to beat their vaunted rival, the New York Yankees in the playoffs that year. These types of stats may be of interest to bettors who try to predict the future based on the past, but they are of dubious value to me. History is always being made in sports, somebody has to be the first. Each series, and each game is a unique event, mostly independent of those that preceded it. In baseball they say that momentum is your next day's starting pitcher. If you flip a coin 99 times and it comes up heads every time, the odds on the next flip are still 50-50.



Which brings us to the present state of the series. The Lakers nearly blew another big lead last night, but held on to win and take the series back to Boston, with the Green and White leading 3-2. Again, we are told how no team has ever come back to win the last two on the road, and the commentators say the Lakers can't play enough defense to win on the east coast. They played enough defense to win two of three on the left coast, is the air thicker or the baskets larger on the other side of the country? And while we're at the no defense argument, how is that the Celtics are lauded for their defensive prowess while the Lakers are lambasted, yet the final score of game five was 103-98 in favor of the Lakers. What am I missing here? The Lakers hold Boston under 100, the Celtics give up over 100, and the Lakers are the team that can't defend?

In the interest of full disclosure, I picked L.A. to win this series in five games. I underestimated the Celtics, and thought that with the way the Lakers played against Utah and San Antonio, in particular the way that Pau Gasol, aka The Spaniard (Gladiator reference if you've seen the movie) and Lamar Odom produced that L.A. would win handily. I was wrong, and have thus sworn off making any more NBA predictions, at least until next preseason. I also picked the Miami Heat to win the Eastern Conference before the season started, to give a little background on just how bad a prognosticator I am, and thought that when the Suns traded for Shaq they would win the title. Mark the Serb I'm not.

But I do know this, the games are not decided based on what some ex-journeyman with no hair and a cheap suit think, or what some east coast blowhard with the middle initial A tells us will happen, just as they are not decided by what some wanna be writer with a blog read by a handful of close friends and family predicts. The games are decided between the white lines, by the players, coaches, and refs, but mostly by the players. Home court advantage is overrated, and the most talented team usually, not always, but usually wins out. Each game is an individual event. There isn't a whole lot of carry over from one game to the next, for that matter even from one quarter to the next. These are two good teams, pretty evenly matched, and anything can happen in the next game. The Lakers best chance to win game six will be if they get 20-10 nights from Gasol and Odom, a bit of production from their bench, and an MVP caliber performance from Kobe. That would produce a Game 7 on Thursday and once again, anything can happen. As the players would say and most likely have, they don't need to win the next two, they just need to win the next game, and then they can take it from there. In the words of the once legendary Al Davis, now is the time to forget all the analysis and predictions, buckle down, stay focused on the big prize, and just win baby, just win.