What the LA media is saying about the Lakers

[bruno sundov]

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-sim ... umn?page=2


The lakers just laid down after the first quarter. If I was a Laker fan I would be embaressed by my teams lack of effort. Thank God I'm not a Laker fan.

[Barry Lird]

God knows, I'm no Laker fan, but that writer is just over the top. Yeah, they laid down in that last game, and gagged away game 4, but honestly, they overachieved for the year. They just weren't ready for hard-nosed championship ball, but they were still one of the last 2 teams standing.

[Taget]

God knows, I'm no Laker fan, but that writer is just over the top. Yeah, they laid down in that last game, and gagged away game 4, but honestly, they overachieved for the year. They just weren't ready for hard-nosed championship ball, but they were still one of the last 2 teams standing.

No one at the start of the season picked the Lakers to go to the finals. And there they were and they took it to six games. The better team won. They have nothing to be ashamed of.

[DEEP3CL]

TJ Simers is a joke of a writer, all he wants to do is come off like he's some funny guy. Hey as a fan yeah I didn't like the way my squad went out but the Celtics were really hungry and wanted. But if I were you guys don't buy into the hype of most LA writers they hate the Lakers too, because none of them are actually from LA and don't understand LA to begin with.

I don't pay attention to the print media or TV media because neither knows what they're talking about any way. I know basketball well enough to make my on analysis. Simers didn't move to LA until like 88 anyway so he's not even credible.

[PPAW4Life]

The Lakers were a middle of the pack playoff team - talent wise, pre-Gasol trade. They overachieved even before they got Gasol and once they did get Gasol they were a legit contender to make the Finals.

However, you need to play both sides of the ball in order to win it all and the Lakers dominating offense really was ahead of their defense. I would say they lacked balance....their offense was probably 5x better than their Defense and that's not very good balance.

Once they hit pressure from a defensive team that didn't care anything else but to stop you from scoring the Lakers wilted.....it didn't matter if they had a 4 point lead, a 24 point lead, a 19 point lead, or were getting blown out by 20+ the Lakers didn't do anything to change the momentum.

You can take Game 3 of the Finals for example....the Lakers were coming back home and absolutely needed to win (to avoid going down 0-3) and more importantly they needed to get back into the series psychologically and plant the seed into the Celtics minds that they couldn't win on the Lakers floor.

What did they do?

They won by 6 points?

They didn't even have the lead going into the 4th quarter!!!

The only reason the Lakers even won that game was because Ray Allen was the only Celtic to show up for the C's and the Lakers needed Kobe to be efficient and dominant (he was) and they needed and got great bench scoring from Sasha (20 points off the bench).

The Cavs on the other hand blew the doors off the C's and made a clear statement. "We're not going down without a fight!"

The whole team, even Phil Jackson was not sure what to do and that was very strange.

Lakers were riding a high for being on top of the West, Kobe not traded - still wanting to be a Laker, Kobe winning the MVP, and the Gasol Trade. They rode this high into beating some tough teams out West who had major flaws of their own: Denver (played zero defense, considerably worse than any playoff team this year); Utah (sucked on the road; and played 0.555 defense); and the Spurs (getting older and inexplicably stopped trying to play defense on Kobe).

And then the Finals came and the over-achieving was clear as day.

On the grandest of stages when it's the final series both teams leave it all out on the floor and you can clearly see which team is imposing their will on the other.

It wasn't even close and the Lakers were lucky to win 2 games this series....absolutely fortunate.

[bruno sundov]

How can a guy live in LA for 20 years and not understnd the lakers?

Second, how could the Lakers have overachieved when everyone except BOS, said the Lakers were going to win in 6 games. The lakers lied down and quit. If that was my team I wouldn't be saying they overachieved. I would be railing them just like the writer did.

In life there are no garuntees and they sqaundered a good chance at a title. Between blwoing the 24 point lead and this last game I really don't know what is worse. Thanks God I'm not a laker fan.

[cisco]

How can a guy live in LA for 20 years and not understnd the lakers?

Second, how could the Lakers have overachieved when everyone except BOS, said the Lakers were going to win in 6 games. The lakers lied down and quit. If that was my team I wouldn't be saying they overachieved. I would be railing them just like the writer did.

In life there are no garuntees and they sqaundered a good chance at a title. Between blwoing the 24 point lead and this last game I really don't know what is worse. Thanks God I'm not a laker fan.

The Lakers didn't lie down until it was clear they couldn't beat the Celtics. They tried until the end of the 2nd quarter. Every time the Lakers made a small run of (usually only 3-5 pts in this game), the Celtics would come right back put the score right back where it was before the run and then even extend it. This deflated the Lakers and then they quit.

They could have saved themselves a lot of trouble and embarrassment if the Celtics had beat them in game 5. I guess the Celtics wanted to extend it to 6 games so they can embarrass the Lakers.

[bruno sundov]

They pretty much laid down half way through the second quarter. I don't know why you would say that is OK. In my mind they didn't want it at all. I mean to work so hard all year and just quit, I would be embaressed if I was a laker fan.

[Taget]

TJ Simers is a joke of a writer, all he wants to do is come off like he's some funny guy. Hey as a fan yeah I didn't like the way my squad went out but the Celtics were really hungry and wanted. But if I were you guys don't buy into the hype of most LA writers they hate the Lakers too, because none of them are actually from LA and don't understand LA to begin with.

Boston media with the celtics was similar but really not anything to do with "not understanding" Boston. They are a negative bunch who rarely paid attention to the team and measured everyone to a mythical Larry Bird who was long gone. You almost sensed they were annoyed to be forced to talk about anything besides the Red Sox and the Patriots. I remember Michael Smith condemning the hiring of Doc Rivers since if Doc was any good why would he want to coach for the Celtics? And we all remember Bob Ryan and Peter May at the start of the season.

[DEEP3CL]

I get where your coming from Taget, I just mentioned the "not understanding LA" partly in reference to the writers not being from here. For example If I were to write for the Globe or Herald in Boston but didn't grow up there or knew nothing about the city, I could easily put down or be negative about the teams in that city.

As far as players being compared to Bird I guess it's safe to say that will happen forever. At least these bimbos here in LA don't constantly talk about the "Show time "days maybe that's because none of these writers that write for the LA Times was here during that time. Well one guy by the name of Mark Heisler was, in fact he's the only reason I read the Times anyway.

[ParticleMan]

That writer, like a lot of media, bought into the hype.

The Lakers never should have been favored. They weren't the better team. They didn't have the kind of defense that wins championship. Everyone got caught up in showtime and forgot that defense wins championships.

The Lakers didn't choke, they got beat. They have nothing to be ashamed of.