Lakers In Bay Area For Tough Back to Back
Lakers play the Warriors in Oakland on Monday night. The Warriors lead the season series 2-1.
Safe to say, the NBA schedule makers didn’t anticipate a Hawks-Warriors back to back, one-two punch, pushing the Lakers further into their season of hell. But, here we are. Back to back games pit the dreadful Lakers against the Eastern Conference and Western Conference top seeds in less than 24 hours time.
After a less than inspiring performance against the Hawks “B” team, the Lakers roll into Oakland and the raucous, crazy place that is Oracle, and try to not let the Warriors drop 150 points on their pathetic defense, that at this point, isn’t even going through the motions of trying. As has been stated a million times, this is audition season for the players, but what future coach wants a current player who doesn’t exert himself defensively (or care for that matter)?
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And yet, the Lakers can play as hard as they want, blood can come out of their pores in batches, they can leave the court on stretchers because they wrung every ounce of energy they had from their bodies, and they still would not be able to beat the Warriors.
The Lakers pulled the upset on December 23rd. They dropped 115 points on the Warriors because the Warriors packed it in that night and decided not to play. Just for the hell of it, they let Ronnie Price shoot 60%, and Wayne Ellington shoot 55% and Ed Davis make everything he tossed up, he went 7 for 7, and Carlos Boozer shot 72%. This was a schedule victory for the Lakers; the Warriors were focused on their Christmas Day game with the Clippers and, frankly, they just didn’t give a damn.
The Warriors have the best record in the NBA because of Steph Curry and their guard oriented offense that has taken the pedal off of their shooting brilliance and added ball movement, driving to the rim and contesting shots to their already very good team of last year. First year coach Steve Kerr is a hybrid of Phil Jackson and Greg Popovich, and with those as your tutors, plus 5 NBA titles, it’s not surprising that with the immense guard talent Kerr inherited, the Warriors are sitting where they are.
Curry’s name is tossed around as MVP because of the Warriors record but he is a distant third to Russell Westbrook and James Harden. Curry has loads of help and the Warriors lineup has been in tact all season long. They have not had to readjust because of injuries, outside of David Lee, so the team you see now is the team you have seen all year, one that has had very little adversity.
That said, the Warriors are trying to do something impossible, history making in fact. They are trying to get to the NBA Finals as a team that led the league in scoring. In 15 years of title games, no NBA champion has been the regular season leader in scoring. In fact, scoring leaders have had a better chance of losing in the first round than in even getting to the Finals.
It’s happened to the Warriors once before. They led the league in scoring in 2008 and didn’t even make the playoffs much less get to the Finals. Last year the Clippers led the NBA in scoring and lost in the second round. The Nuggets, Suns and Dallas led the league in scoring 11 times and had 4 first round eliminations, 2 semi-final eliminations and 4 conference final eliminations.
The Lakers title teams, the Spurs title teams, the Mavs title team never led the league in scoring.
The Warriors are a lock for the #1 seed in the West and they just want to keep everyone healthy. Against the Lakers, they’ll give a lot of Steph and Klay Thompson and then pull back. The Warriors have a tough upcoming road schedule at the end of March. 7 teams, all in the playoffs, all in the West except Milwaukee.
The Lakers have had two of their worst games of the season (Knicks, Hawks) as far as effort, interest, execution and desire are concerned. As evidenced by their play, with the exception of Jabari Brown who has something to prove, the rest of the Lakers seem to be going through the motions, not particularly caring. One thing you could count on them for was playing hard. They have not done that in about a week. And if anyplace will make you feel bad about yourself, it is Oracle.
The fans are rowdy and vicious- Lakers fans who live in the Bay, Cal and Stanford and USF students, will come out and show support- but the Oracle rank and file will mock the Lakers at every turn. After so many years of Lakers abuse, the Warriors finally have their revenge.
And the Lakers hope, they’ll finally have a top 5 pick.