Once again, the Lakers assert their dominance over a sub-par team, only to see the comfortable margin vanish into the thin, dry Santa Ana wind. I was never one to refer to our bench as the ‘bench mob,’ but that doesn’t mean I’m glad to see them struggle so much. Just as it seemed like Farmar might break out of his slump, showing some solid play on both ends of the floor in the first half - that notion painfully disappeared along with the 19-point fourth quarter lead. It is a shame that such an elite team as the Lakers should struggle against mediocre opponents, but it’s not a new development. The Lakers have historically, even during the championship years, had a tough time staying focused and putting lesser teams away without incident. There’s no doubt it’s exciting, entertaining and much more thrilling to watch a game that is decided by 3 points versus one decided by 30 - but it gives the skeptics credibility when they question whether or not the Lakers can with the championship this year.

What severely weakens the argument of the skeptics however is the Lakers’ winning percentage against elite teams. For the Lakers to have swept the season series against both Boston and Cleveland, they needed to be focused and play at the top of their game, and the games honestly weren’t even as close as they should have been for the most part. Perhaps this is due to a changing in the guard in the Eastern Conference, as well as the timing of the games within the season-long schedule. Regardless, those games demonstrated that when the Lakers click on all cylinders, they can look like the latest Formula-1 racer - just a streak of purple and gold to the basket. When they don’t, the look (and function) is more like an original Ford Pinto…present day. As we learned at the beginning of this season, the team functions the best when the defense is the priority. Even though the Lakers have been able to keep pace in the Win-Loss column since then, too many of the victories were decided by 5 points or less and in the waning moments.

This isn’t all bad news, as it definitely shows the ability to gut out victories and finish strong in the final seconds, but it is especially disturbing when that happens against teams who have no business beating the Lakers (sorry Clippers fans) in the first place. I do not mean to say that teams can’t occasionally have a bad game, and sometimes that bad game coincides with a good performance by an otherwise bad team. Those things happen during the course of a season, and that’s exactly why no team has gone 82-0. That being said, it seems to be a pattern with the Lakers, and unfortunately it’s neither a new or wanted one. As the playoff draw near, and it is decided who will have home-court advantage throughout, one thing is particularly clear…the Lakers will need to continue pulling out these types of tight victories if we want to finish at the top of the pile.

To many, Andrew Bynum seems to represent the Lakers’ sole chance of winning the NBA championship this year - and to that, I say: Balderdash! The naysayers point to the loss of a 24-point lead at home in last year’s game 4 against the Celtics and scream about lack of toughness all throughout that series, but they don’t talk a lot about whether or not they think the team has toughened over the course of this season - mainly because it’s clear that they have. Still, they nitpick the occasional bad performances by the Lakers, some against sub-par teams, and pretend that just because Bynum isn’t at 100%, somehow we’re not ready or deserving to be champions this year. That is utter nonsense, and here’s why…

Primarily, the reason that Bynum is not as crucial for this year’s playoffs is Pau’s seamless integration into the Laker’s organization. Last year, he had literally no practice or game experience with Phil Jackson’s system, and was thrust into the hunt for playoff seeding in a crazy western conference. This year, Pau is much better prepared and works even more fluidly within the offensive and defensive sets we run…and it shows. He is by no means perfect, but his spacing and anticiaption on both ends are much better, and his willingness to go hard to the rim has led to less missed “chippies” - although that definitely still happens. Are there times I would love nothing more than for Pau to dunk as hard as he can on whoever is in the key? Sure, but that’s not his game and I know that. In the european game, which of course is where Pau is coming from, there is much less emphasis on post play because of the trapezoidal key. Having a big man who can shoot from the outside is much more valuable, so that’s how Pau fashioned his game, only now he must add the inside toughness to it in order to be an effective center on an elite team like the Lakers. In Memphis, it didn’t matter so much because any success he had was icing on the cake. In LA, it’s championship or bust baby!

Secondly, the resurgence of Lamar Odom (both off the bench and in a starting spot when Bynum went down) has been crucial in keeping the Lakers’ winning percentage virtually identical with or without Bynum on the floor. This has happened even as the production of other key bench players has fallen, most notably Sasha Vujacic and Jordan Farmar. One may point to the fact that Lamar is in a contract year as his motivation, but that one person probably hasn’t watched too many interviews with the man or met him personally. This year, more than any other in his career, has been solely about winning the championship and whatever that takes. His willingness to sacrifice his body has led to a number of great situations for the Lakers. This shows primarily in the defense and rebounding. When someone gets 17, 18, 19, and 20 rebounds in consecutive games in the NBA, it shows a desire to win that is fiercely intense, which is precisely what the Lakers were criticized for lacking last year.

Finally, and probably most surprisingly, DJ Mbenga is fast becoming a legitimate interior defender and capable, if not talented offensive option. I say this is surprising, not because I thought Mbenga couldn’t make this kind of impact, but definitely I was in the minority to think so last year and at the beginning of this year. I’d been pleading with an imaginary Mitch Kupchack to trade Chris Mihm for years, and when he finally did I knew that Josh Powell and Mbenga would get those minutes and be much more tough and productive . Admittedly, when Mbenga seemed to take over a short stretch of the 4th quarter on both ends of the floor about a month ago I was surprised, very happily surprised.

Essentially, this all boils down to the fact that the Lakers are a championship caliber team and having Andrew Bynum certainly adds significant weight to that argument, but removing him from the equation doesn’t necessarily mean that the Lakers are dead in the water…only that some people will be more surprised than others when Kobe and DJ Mbenga are holding up the Larry O. Brien trophy and smiling for the camera. I have no doubt that moment would seem eerily familiar to years not-so-far past,  but it will certainly be more exciting to me as potential foreshadowing of future glory. Maybe that’s because I’d get to say “I told ya so!”

Allow me to begin with an admission: I have met Jordan Farmar and he is one of the nicest, most personable professional athletes I’ve encountered. He’s got some automatic points with me because I’m Jewish, and he’s half-Jewish with a step-father who played professionally in Israel. I love his story because I’m also from LA and love basketball and the Lakers, and I’ve been happy with him in purple and gold from the start. All that being said, and with all the talent on the Lakers’ roster, the point guard spot seems to be the one glaring inconsistency. Don’t misconstrue - I love Derek Fisher and the “0.4″ moment will be burned into my memory forever because it happened on my father’s 50th birthday - but that’s not who I’m talking about. In an NBA that seems to be shifting emphasis to guard play from the grind-it-out post game, it’s more important that ever that the Lakers are able to go two or three players deep at the point, like we seem to be able to do in every other position on the roster. The Lakers have weathered the Andrew Bynum injury relatively well, but I doubt they’d be able to do the same should Fisher go down for a spell. In fact, D-Fish is playing such brutal minutes (30.7/game - 4 over his career average!) at the age of 35 because Phil Jackson clearly knows that Farmar is not ready to lead a team like the Lakers.

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With two losses behind us and a game against Milwaukee tonight, our exhausted Lakers need to shape up if they want to retain home court advantage in their first game of the play-offs. Although there are plenty of issues that we could mull over in our minds as to what would really aid the Lakers at this point in time, three areas dominate my critique:

1) Our Sputtering Offense Needs a Tune-Up

Of course a bucket is what a basketball team usually strives for on offense, and making the shot is only half of it. We can’t continue thinking that Kobe is going to be the savior of our ball club, because to be honest, he isn’t the solution the vast majority of the time (Hence why Allen Iverson is referred to as “the Answer” and not Kobe Bryant). That one extra pass from Kobe to someone else, someone who isn’t getting double teamed whenever he steps foot on the floor, could be the points we were looking for to begin with. Not Kobe forcing shots up trying to draw the contact (an upwards of 50 times a game). Or Sasha Vujacic trying to hit every open 3 pointer he has the opportunity of shooting. Sasha desperately needs to work on his jump shot. If you haven’t noticed, his shots have been almost too strong as they leave his fingertips. The reason? He jackknifes. If you watch his jump shot,
instead of going straight up and down (like a textbook jump shot),his feet kick forward,which causes his body to become imbalanced, and he is forced to rely on his arm strength. Sasha isn’t a bad shooter, he’s actually pretty accurate, but would be more efficient if he perfected his form in that manner.

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