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During the huge second and third match ups, i thought the team was a f ing joke. Soft, during both games, i had no worry Dallas could beat us in any big game.

I thought literally every one on the team would have to stink it up to lose to them.

Losing to Dallas in 4, ( i thought they could take us 7 and pull a huge upset if the yhit every shot) is the most shocking Lakers loss ever.

I was thinking about 1990 vs the Suns, but this one came out of no where. Dallas was the team everyone wanted.

Your thoughts? I remember when we lost game 1, i just stood at the computer in disbelief.

Lakers took their past success for granted, playing with that dumb "light switch" mentality which finally caught up to them.....even in the NOH series it was fairly obvious the team didn't rectify ANY of their Defensive problems throughout the season and Dall executed the same way as NOH but with much better talent.

The Lakers just looked completely uninterested in the playoffs. There was no hustle, no hunger to win, and the team was just flat out lazy on both ends.

We were an average team all year long. Aside from that stretch right after the All Star Break, we weren't anything special. I'm not surprised that Dallas beat us, I was only surprised that they beat us 4-0. After we witnessed Pau Gasol's disappearing act in the 1st round, I was prepared for the worst. Kobe's ankle getting **** up didn't help either.

The problem is that NO ONE could have predicted the failure/disappearance of Pau Gasol for nearly the entire playoffs. Also, games 1 and 3 should NEVER have been lost. If you want to go even further, Dallas would have absolutely played game 2 differently if they lost the first game. It's human nature to perform better when you have a certain level of comfort (i.e. when you're playing with "house money").

I don't even like using the phrase, but the only "silver lining" was that we would have lost to OKC or Miami. Gasol just wasn't going to come back in that post-season.

i moved on....i suggest you guys do the same

we were still playing with some chemistry in the regular season games against them. Something went really wrong by the playoffs and they didn't after it with teamwork, hustle, and conviction.

Shamizy wrote:We were an average team all year long.

Going to disagree there. The team was still good during the regular season. Don't let a disappointing postseason cloud that.

Danny Darko wrote:we were still playing with some chemistry in the regular season games against them. Something went really wrong by the playoffs and they didn't after it with teamwork, hustle, and conviction.

Something went very wrong right after we beat them in LA in the regular season. We stomped the F out of them.

I wonder if the team thought the only team that could beat them was Miami, and checked out.

The Mavs in the playoffs were far, far better than they were in March and early April (Beaubois hurt more than helped). Portland beat them twice during that stretch too. In the playoffs, they regained the form they had before Dirk went down in December.

And March Lakers > playoffs Lakers.

the mavs shooting better from 3pt than they did from the field didn't help.

We ran out of gas about a week or 2 before the regular season ended. I, like most around here, had hoped it was just a fluke and we'd be able to flip the switch come playoff time but as we all saw that never happened. Even in the NO series we were still half the team we were coming out of the all star break, a sizable portion of the team was completely gassed from trying to go for a 4th straight Finals appearance.

You can't compare how we looked against Dallas in the regular season with how we looked in the playoffs as we were a completely different(drained) team at that point.

I hate them with passion..That pretty much sums up my feelings about this series. I was pretty much devastated. I thought to myself...out of all the teams they had to get swept by the Mavs. I literally punched a hole in my wall for that.

Leor_77 wrote:The problem is that NO ONE could have predicted the failure/disappearance of Pau Gasol for nearly the entire playoffs. Also, games 1 and 3 should NEVER have been lost. If you want to go even further, Dallas would have absolutely played game 2 differently if they lost the first game. It's human nature to perform better when you have a certain level of comfort (i.e. when you're playing with "house money").

I don't even like using the phrase, but the only "silver lining" was that we would have lost to OKC or Miami. Gasol just wasn't going to come back in that post-season.

That pretty much sums it up. I was at Game 1 and just sat there in disbelief as that big lead slowly disappeared. Unexcusable and unexplainable, really (both those games and Gasol disappearing).

many factors that lead to that disaster. of course gasol becoming mediocre was a big one. another one is agree the lakers had no hustle legs or anything. burned out and it showed. what do you need to shoot perimeter shots? legs. its not all wrist. guess what happened. the lakers missed 22 3s in a row. the sadder part was the lakers could have easily and should have won 3 of the 4 games, despite horrific shooting

I wish we never made that statement in the reg season. It made the Lakers believe it would be cake. If we had lost and had a chip on our shoulder perhaps we could have made it a competitive series.

And Gasol wouldn't have played basketball like vomit personified.

It's not like DAL was garbage during the regular season. They underperformed, but everyone knew they had some solid talent, and if they put it all together and got on the same page (which they did, and LA pretty much did the opposite)...

Well, we see what that equated to.

If Dirk didn't get injured during the reagular season Dallas would have had the best record in the league for the regular season. Dallas was a better team then us and it showed.