Don\u2019t dare claim you knew the Detroit Pistons were going to kick the stuffing out of the Los Angeles Lakers, not unless you\u2019ve got it in writing and notarized by at least three solemn souls.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t have known a seven to one underdog was going to pound Hollywood\u2019s favorite team, and pride of NBA brass, in five games, and would have swept in four without a last second shot by Kobe Bryant in game two.\u00a0 You damn well didn\u2019t foresee a team with the game\u2019s most dominant player, Shaquille O\u2019Neal, the game\u2019s most compelling athlete, Bryant, and two other distinguished future members of the hall of fame \u2013 Karl Malone and Gary Payton \u2013 being outrun, out-rebounded, out-defended, out-hustled, and outscored so decisively.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t have imagined the undefeated guru of finals basketball, Phil Jackson, not being able to motivate, berate, and cajole his players into his tenth championship.\u00a0 You were either picking the Lakers in five or six, or you knew more than most of us and said the Pistons might be able to stretch it to seven.<\/p>\n
In fairness, one must emphasize that Malone, who had so recently used muscle and guile to limit Tim Duncan\u2019s scoring and manifestly contribute to the Lakers\u2019 victory over San Antonio, was on the bench in street clothes during the final-game debacle, and perhaps should have been resting his injured knee a game or two earlier.\u00a0 So these were not quite the Lakers that had been rebuilt to win a championship this year.\u00a0 Payton, the legendary \u201cGlove\u201d who had long smothered shooters, was also not present in the form anticipated.\u00a0 While his role as a mere supporting actor for the Lakers limited his offensive opportunities, one cannot explain his defensive ineffectiveness without positing age \u2013 he\u2019s in his mid-thirties \u2013 as a factor.<\/p>\n
But what the Lakers failed to do is not nearly as significant as what the Pistons succeeded in doing, and doing with startling efficiency. \u00a0Ben Wallace continued his muscular assertion as the league\u2019s best defender and rebounder, and was a supreme force in the second half of game five, capturing seventeen rebounds.\u00a0 In a series that was supposed to feature Shaq and Kobe, the oft-rejected and much-traveled Chauncey Billups earned the Most Valuable Player trophy as he averaged twenty-one points and five rebounds.\u00a0 Billups\u2019 interviews after games one and three should have told us where things were going.\u00a0 He made it clear.\u00a0 He was going to continue to be aggressive, to take it to the Lakers, and if he happened to be off it wouldn\u2019t matter because Rip Hamilton or Rasheed Wallace or someone else would be on.\u00a0 Sharp-shooting Rip, undeterred by defenders and the extraterrestrial mask protecting his twice-broken nose, nailed many important jumpers and, like Billups, put the ball on the floor and got some layups.\u00a0 Rasheed Wallace, more often criticized for verbal outbursts than praised for fine scoring and rebounding throughout his career, was a steady and talented contributor since joining the Pistons in mid-season.\u00a0 He\u2019d also been a key player on the Portland Trailblazers that in 2000 led the Lakers by 15 points in the fourth quarter of game seven of the Western Conference finals.\u00a0 His team couldn\u2019t hold off Shaq and Kobe then.\u00a0 Now, the two Wallaces and Billups and Hamilton and others, guided by the intense and heretofore title-less Larry Brown, sustained a clinic on fundamentally sound and tough basketball, prompting Shaq to say, \u201cAll the credit to those guys.\u00a0 They really outplayed us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laker owner Jerry Buss, who proudly and publicly collects photos in scrap books of almost all his young female friends, was within days forced to return to the scientific thinking of his earlier career and conclude that Kobe, at age twenty-five, is the man to build the team around rather than thirty-two year old and frequently-injured Shaq.\u00a0 Shaq, not coincidentally, is a Phil Jackson guy and Kobe is not.\u00a0 So Phil Jackson, as his agent said, \u201cwas not invited to return.\u201d\u00a0 After meeting with Jackson, Buss proclaimed him the greatest coach in history and thanked him for three NBA titles in five seasons but didn\u2019t say what he\u2019d told Jackson while shoving him out the door.\u00a0 The Lakers also announced they would try to accommodate Shaq\u2019s request to be traded.\u00a0 He\u2019d bring a lot right now and would lighten the Lakers\u2019 payroll by thirty million bucks a season.\u00a0 It\u2019s likely Buss envisions bringing in a couple of players who, with Kobe, could form the foundation of a quick, young, aggressive team like the, well, the Detroit Pistons, of course.<\/p>\n
That might work.\u00a0 But unless trading Shaq would promptly put the Lakers in position to compete for another championship, the team should keep him for another season or two.\u00a0 Despite his age and tender feet and frequent problems with Kobe, Shaq is not the Lakers\u2019 problem.\u00a0 The big guy can still dominate some games, still shoots well over fifty percent from the field \u2013 far better than Kobe \u2013 and during the Detroit series certainly contributed more to his team than anyone. \u00a0What the Lakers need is to get some guys who can compete with the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth best players of other contenders. \u00a0Of course, if free agent Kobe went to Buss and stated \u2013 as he\u2019s publicly alluded to all season \u2013 that he wouldn\u2019t re-sign unless Shaq and Phil departed, then the scientist made the logical long-term choice to retain youth and vigor in La La Land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don\u2019t dare claim you knew the Detroit Pistons were going to kick the stuffing out of the Los Angeles Lakers, not unless you\u2019ve got it in writing and notarized by at least three solemn souls.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t have known a seven to one underdog was going to pound Hollywood\u2019s favorite team, and pride of NBA…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,69,66,65,68,67],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n