The reports circling the league have Pau making his 2009-2010 Laker regular season debut tomorrow…and might I be the first to preemptively welcome the ‘Big Spaniard’ back. The Lakers have subsisted well enough on Andrew Bynum, but the team struggles noticeably when Kobe’s shot fails him, as it did in the two losses prior to last night’s victory. It’s not a matter of whether or not everyone is caught staring at Kobe put up a bunch of bricks, but that the team is still young enough, and with the insertion of Ron Artest fresh enough, that they need the two top scorers to be leading the way in this opening stretch of the season. Granted, 8-3 isn’t terrible and there’s every reason to believe that the Lakers will continue to pick up steam as a team even without Pau coming back now, but I sure am glad to see him playing basketball and not the random celebrity suspect of the week on CSI: Miami.

That being said, I must admit the Lakers were fun to watch last night. Not only did Kobe get it going in a big way after an ugly 1-for-6 start, but the Lakers moved the ball, hustled and of course let an inferior opponent back into the game late just to make it exciting for all those fans who may have forgotten that the Lakers love drama for drama’s sake. There’s a certain feeling I get when the Lakers are totally blowing a team away and the end score is a moot point well before the 4th quarter…and last night’s game against Detroit was not one of those games. The most difficult thing for the Lakers to do, it seems, is keep their focus for 48 minutes straight. No matter how much talent or drive a team has, if they lose focus even for 30 seconds in this league it can change a game…a series…an organization. Granted, those incredibly important moments very rarely happen this early in the regular season, but if the Purple and Gold don’t work on their mental stamina along with the triangle the chances of a repeat will slip away rather quickly.

Kobe knows this, and so do Ron Artest and presumably the half a dozen other Lakers who helped bring home the championship last season, but for some reason it’s really not showing on the court. Perhaps Kobe’s off shooting just put everything else under a more intense microscopic view, but I’d prefer to err on the side of caution. I do, however, tend to agree with what the Laker players have been saying in interviews: that once Pau comes back and the rotation goes back to normal everything will fall into sync once again. While that may be true, it should not be counted upon to be the magic pill for the Lakers this year. If we want to pull off a second repeat in the span of a decade, the Lakers are going to have to start working at it now with every possession, every free throw and every defensive stand…can’t take any mini-vacations.