Lakers-Rockets Game Four: Phil Jackson Is Letting Them Play (Badly)

Today in Houston, with neither of their top (and vastly overrated) stars, the Rockets jumped to a big early lead on the visiting Lake Show and refused to let up, tying their best of seven series at 2-2. Give credit to the home team for big effort and great ball movement, along with terrific on the ball defense. No one wants to say this out loud, but the Rockets are just better on defense without their big man, because while he's good at weakside help and rebounding, you can more or less kill him down low. But that's for another day.

Rather, it's time to give it up for the home team in refusing to just accept their role as tragically undermanned. With Aaron Brooks and Shane Battier leading the way, they more or less controlled this one for all 48 minutes.

How bad was it? I wrote the lede 90 minutes before the game ended. I had no fear of the Lakers coming back and making my work irrelevant. I polished it as the Lakers went on a 13-2 run to start the fourth, because that run made it an 18-point game. And that faith was rewarded, even though the Lakers did make the final score a lot closer than the game.

Not to overreact to a single loss, but today was one of those moments where you have to wonder why, exactly, Phil Jackson is universally regarded as a genius. If you want to chastise the Lakers for not showing up for this game, how about their coach? It was 17-4 in the first quarter with Philip sitting on his ass, refusing to call a timeout or make a substitution. Shane Battier rained down three pointers, Chuck Hayes was never exposed on offense, the Lake Show couldn't keep a handle on the ball... and the ABC/Lemur team gave Phil the mouth job for letting his team play through it.

Um, well, OK... but at some point, does anyone want to note how he never wins unless he's got the best player on the planet? The Lakers are still going to win this series, because they've got home court, Team Rocket's role players won't show on the road, and Testy will eventually take the bait of Kobe Bryant putting him on the express train to Crazytown.

But very good teams don't play extra games in the playoffs, because people get hurt: halfway through the third quarter, Lamar Odom went down in a heap on a charge, on one of those scary to watch plays that could make him less effective in the coming weeks, and he didn't return to the game with back spasms. They also don't have their coach more or leas telling their players to just take their lumps, as Jackson did to Odom late in the third. And finally, they actually have some semblance of planning on their rotation. Right now, the Lakers rotate three not very good point guards, keep giving minutes to a helpless Andrew Bynum, and have no idea who will show up on a game to game basis after Bryant and Gasol.

Today's Confetti Bucket Moment came from an inbounds play to end the third quarter. Testy threw the ball from 60 feet, finding Brooks at the rim. Brooks caught the ball up high, then made the short one... and if you are wondering just how in hell the Lakers allowed a six foot guard to catch a 60-foot pass with a second left in the quarter, well, you haven't watched enough Laker basketball. There's a reason why the team with the best offensive bigs and Kobe Bryant doesn't win championships, and the answer is heart. They just don't have one.

Also this aside: the halftime showed clips from Spike Lee's mouth job on Kobe Bryant. Let's just say that between this and Stuart Scott's continuing pimping of Vitamin Water -- seriously, can he just wear their swag now and get over it -- let's just say the Association and the Lemur have had better moments. They do realize that many Association fans actually hate the Black Mamba, don't they?

Finally, there's this: so long as Battier wants to outplay Bryant, sweat all over the sideline reporter and basically be the best player on the floor, I'm willing to forget that he went to Duke. Dude is on the verge of becoming lovable, really.