The run is over. The Lakers lost to the Spurs 82-110; I guess a better description is they were DRILLED by the Spurs.
While the Lakers shot an acceptable .450 from the field, the Spurs shot .557. Seemed that no one was playing any defense on the Laker team. From what I saw (only saw about midway through the third quarter on) Kobe decided that defense was for someone else. However, he was not the only one playing “Olé” defense - you know, kind of wave at them as they go by you to the basket.
Tim Duncan proved he deserved the MVP tonight, scoring 37 and grabbing 16 rebounds. Not only that but he was scoring on everyone; Shaq, Robert, Slava, it didn’t matter - he was in another zone. Tony Parker stepped up tonight also, with 27 points. Looking at the stats, you really couldn’t say that even one Spur had a bad game.
Not so with the Lakers. While Shaq carried them with 31 points and 10 rebounds, no one else really stepped up. Kobe all but disappeared. He ended the game with 20 points and I think I saw him score only 5, and he took 19 shots to score 20 points - very Jordan-esque. Robert could not break his shooting slump, only going 1-6 tonight. Slava scored 12 and generally did a nice job off the bench. But there simply is no other way to put it - the Lakers were humbled tonight.
The team now gets a much longer off-season than they are used to. Questions will linger here. Are they going to break up some of the team and try to rebuild? Are they going to stick with the team they have now and get after them to improve? Are Rick Fox and/or Brian Shaw going to retire? Are they going to dump Samake Walker (I hope so)? Is Phil going to coach next year? If so, is he going to talk to Kobe to try to teach him how to play with the rest of the team? Rumor also has it that Robert Horry wants to move back to his home in Houston to be closer to his family; could this happen? It will be an interesting off season. Lets hope the guys take off a couple of weeks to a month just to heal up and then begin training for next year. They should draft in higher spot than they have in the past few years; maybe something will come of that