I managed to hang in there for about three quarters of the game last night.
There was a certain spectacle to it, akin to a high-speed car wreck where
one vehcile is much more massive than the other. Competitive basketball
it
was not; that was left behind after, oh, four minutes into the game.
Most distressing in a sea full of things to distress Coach Cheeks was that
for the second time in two games, Lakers center Andrew Bynum totally
abused
Sammy Dalembert. Bynum just did whatever he wanted; Sammy could not do a
thing except foul. The talent gap looked huge. In fairness to Sammy,
neither Calvin Booth nor Jason Smith did any better.
Sixer shooting in the first half was incredibly poor. The two Andres went
9-29 for the game. New guy Giricek got a lot of minutes, and wasted them
with an even colder 2-11 effort. However, bad as the offense was, the
defense was even worse. It started out bad and remained horrible, maybe
nonexistent the whole game. Lakers scored 124 points, and shot 66% from
the
floor; that about says it all. Frankly, I didn't see anyone even trying.
Coach Cheeks gave the bench players a lot of minutes in the second half,
when the game was already decided. Williams, Young, and Smith did some
decent shooting and rebounding to keep the game at the thirty point
margin,
but at that point the Lakers were not playing any serious defense either.
The Lakers aren't this good. Our boys were getting stomped by the likes
of
Ronny Turiaf, Derek Fisher, and Jordan Farmer [who?]. Back to the drawing
board.
----- Kurt Straub
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