I give up

As someone who watches nearly every Laker game I'm really at a loss to explain their play last night or against the Rockets in general. At one point, after I had resigned myself to a Game 7, I thought the Lakers would come back and win Game 6. It was there. After the first half, or even first Q, Houston didn't play all that great. Unfortunately, the Rockets hit enough clutch shots late in the third and into the fourth to win it. After LA gave them that comfortable cushion.

I've written before on how the Lakers seem to add a degree of difficulty to their play this year. This has been highlighted even more in the Houston series. Take for instance Pau Gasol. I thought he was terrible in Game 6. Why he can't catch the ball deeper or back in Chuck Hayes (who is half a foot shorter) on every play is beyond me. Add in his awful defense against Scola and this was one of his worst playoff games as a Laker.

If you look at the stats, excluding their palty 80 total points, you might think LA didn't play that poorly. They took 13 more shots than Houston. They outrebounded the Rockets. They had fewer turnovers. And yet they never led. Take a gander at the Lakes' plus/minus numbers. Everyone gets an F on that one. For all intents and purposes, they were in the game for a few minutes in the third. Then Houston hit some big shots and it was over.

The biggest stat is that this was only the second time the Lakers have lost a game wire to wire. The first was Game 4. That's a telling stat. Even when they endured embarassing losses during the regular season, nearly all of them were close games that the Lakers had a chance to win (nearly every game against the Rockets this season was close). This was also a quality, if you can call it that, of last year's team. Sometimes they played down to their competition but they always were competitive. They never got blown out, with the exception of Game 6 in Boston.

So why are the Rockets such a difficult puzzle to solve? Are the Lakers really playing as poorly as it seems? And who is to blame? The best I can do is this: Despite their February trip through the east coast where they really played decent defense (see the second half at Cleveland), the Lakers have relied way too much on their offense. PJ basically threw the towel in on LA improving defensively early in the season. The caveat to this is they can defend, they're capable of defending against certain teams. The playoffs are about matchups and the Lakers match up well against slower methodical teams (Utah, Houston, Cleveland). That's why they were psyched to play the Rockets, who with Yao are a grind away team. Without him or TMac they are, as Charles says, a bunch of scrappy pit bulls.

The Lakers players are to blame in much of this but Phil Jackson's refusal to adjust to the Rockets new lineup I believe has cost them a chance of closing this out earlier. As was evident in Game 3, late in Game 4 and in Game 5, using Farmar and Brown to combat Houston's quickness on the perimeter is a good thing. So why is PJ so married to playing Fish, to starting Fish until he shows he doesn't have it. The Lakes bigs are bad enough rotating to a driving guard. But they have no chance with the way Fish has escorted Brooks to the basket.

Also perplexing is why PJ has stuck with Sasha throughout this series. Even in their forty-point win he sucked. Cut the cord. Play the players who are doing reasonably well like Brown and Jordan. I'm not even going to get into how Vlad might have helped this roster. Brown has played well enough. Give him more minutes and earlier. And pressure the Rockets ballhandlers. It works.

All this said, I and I'm sure most Laker fans, expect a win on Sunday. And should that happen I wouldn't be surprised to see the Lakers beat the Nuggets and the Cavs. The way LA played Games 2, 3 and 5 certainly means something, right? But for all the time I've spent watching them this year, I'm really struggling to explain what exactly that is. I'm not sure even Sunday will tell us but right now Sunday is all we have.