The Lakers Sure Had To Try Hard

Can a team be bored while winning a series? Yes, easily, which is what the Lakers were tonight in sending Utah to their room. The Laker crowd never seemed too into this, which, given how often they do this trick, is easily understood; the Jazz just hold no terror for this Lakers team, especially on the road. Tonight's confetti bucket moment came when Kobe Bryant tripped over referee Steve Javie on a break, then still corralled the loose ball and scored anyway. Just sad.

I don't think it says any less of me as NBA Fan that the second half of this game put me under, even as the Lakers were stretching their third quarter lead from 15 to 22 in a heartbeat while Jerry Sloan let the game play on, probably thinking that it was more important to teach his younger players to play through a run, rather than call too many timeouts.

Either that, or he wanted to get to the off-season as fast as Laker Fan wanted him to get there.

In any event, the Lake Show moved on with a 107-96 win that wasn't the complete coronation that was expected, only because the Big 3 of Bryant, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom didn't get a fourth wheel to add more than Trevor Ariza's 12.

With the notorious NBA first round schedule slowdown, the Lakers have just bought themselves many days off, and it's probably best that they didn't sweep the Jazz, just because having this many days off at this time of the year usually leads to trouble. Hanging over the entire wildly entertaining NBA playoff schedule is the fact that the Cavs and Lakers are just much better than everyone else, and each had no problem showing it in the first round. But hope springs eternal, and injuries do happen...