The Lakers looked tired and uninspired in their 120-101 Game 4 loss at the Pepsi Center. You can't blame Kobe Bryant or Pau Gasol or even Andrew Bynum. The bench was atrocious.
A year ago, we talked about the vaunted "Bench Mob" with Luke Walton, Sasha Vujacic, Jordan Farmar and Rony Turiaf. This year, it's the "Bench Mopes." Farmar shows flashes of greatness still, but Luke is lost and Sasha should be locked up (Turiaf, of course, left as a free agent). In the first half, Denver's bench outscored the Lakers' bench 20-3, which helped the Nuggets to a 7-point halftime lead.
You would think that having free agent-to-be Lamar Odom as part of the so-called "Mob" would actually improve the Lakers bench, but LO has been a disaster, and tonight was his worst performance yet. Odom played 30 minutes of yawn-inducing basketball with 5 points on 1-8 from the field. He managed only 8 rebounds (and the Nuggets got all of the contested ones) with 1 assist and 0 blocks.
If the Lakers have to choose between retaining Lamar Odom or free agent Trevor Ariza this summer, is there anybody that would choose LO? Gimme the guy with the hustle.
Is there any Laker bench player capable of "going off" like JR Smith did tonight (24 points with 4 treys)? Who is the Lakers answer for Chris Birdman Anderson with 14 rebounds off the bench? They don't even have somebody of Linus Kleiza's caliber.
Derek Fisher had another awful night with 2-7 from the field including
1-5 from beyond the arc. Everybody always says, "He won't stop
shooting" like it's a compliment. Stop shooting DFish. It 'aint there
right now. For the playoffs, DFish is 36-106 (33%) & 11-48 from 3 (22%). Not to be a
broken record, but Fisher has the Lakers' 3rd worst Player Efficiency
Rating in playoffs. Only Sasha and Mbenga are worse.
But the Nuggets suffer from what I'm calling "The Punk Factor." Dahntay Jones is a punk. Glad Phil Jackson called him out after the game for tripping Kobe. He should be suspended. (Phil says the tripping thing happened in 2 other games.) And, JR Smith celebrates every 3-pointer like he just cured cancer. Seriously, you don't get a ring every time you make a shot JR. And, Kenyon Martin has a short fuse and acted like a 3-year-old when he tangled Pau's arm and got blown for a technical late in the game.
There's a maturity problem with the Nuggets, and George Karl knows it. During the postgame, Karl said he yelled at JR tonight and he "wasn't saying nice things." But he also said "That's who JR is." Smith and KMart and Dahntay don't know the difference between aggression (which is good) and stupidity (which is bad).
In the same way that LeBron's "Shot Heard Round the World" on Friday night may have helped to feed Kobe's voracious appetite for a championship, leading to his 41-point explosion in Denver on Saturday, tonight's tripping and taunting and technicals may serve the same purpose. I don't expect the Lakers bench to suddenly outplay the Nuggets reserves. I'll be surprised if DFish starts playing like a 25-year-old (or even a 30-year-old). The odds are against Lamar Odom waking up from his postseason nap. But Kobe is going to find a way to close this series in 6 or 7, and Pau and Ariza will give him just enough help to seal the deal.
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