by Gus Griffin
No matter how many armchair coaches and talking heads try to give you a basketball-based explanation, resist. It was not about the X’s and O’s of basketball, it was about understanding the psychology of teams in the moment. On Tuesday the maddening Wizards went into Cleveland and beat LeBron and the defending conference champs. It was their first home loss of the year. On that same night my Lakers were beaten soundly by one of the worst teams in NBA history, giving those Sixers their first win of the year. So all logic tells you that those same Wizards should have little trouble with my Lakers, right? Vegas saw it that way, installing the Wizards as 10 point favorites. Wrong! This game was not only a classic letdown spot for the Wizards, it was a letdown spot on steroids. It was neither some brilliant tactical adjustment made by Byron Scott, nor some great coaching blunder by Randy Whitman.
The script was a familiar one: Act 1: Kobe gets the ball; Act 2: everyone in the whole arena knows that he is going to shoot; Act 3: he single-handedly stops any semblance of functional half-court offense by dribbling and head faking with a defender on his back as if he were in the post, though he is now usually 25 feet from basket; Act 4: he shoots; Act 5: and this was the only outcome of all the acts that differed dramatically from previous scripts: THE SHOTS WENT IN. It was the old Kobe, pun intended, not the Grey Mamba, to the tune of 31 points to include two huge shots inside the last 2 minutes. Sure it took him 24 shots to make 10, but that’s not different from the Kobe that will be a first ballot HOF’er. Unfortunately for the Lakers, he cannot sustain such efforts. Last night’s Kobe was the norm for so many years, or at least 7-8 of every 10 games. They will be lucky to see him once every 12-15 games. I am fully prepared for my Lakers to return to being what we are: some shit! But hey, as a lifelong diehard fan of the mighty purple and gold, in a game that may as well have been in the Great Western Forum, it was nice to reminisce of the glory days.
Gus Griffin, for War Room Sports
Tags: All's Fair in Sports and War, Gus Griffin, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, War Room Sports, Washington Wizards, WRS