LOS ANGELES - It's a weekend to remember at Los Angeles' Staples Center, with six playoff games in four days, and Saturday, with the four best teams in the NBA's Western Conference on display, was looking very much like a day for the aged.
Jayne Kamin-Oncea, US Presswire, US Presswire
Oklahoma City Thunder center Kendrick Perkins (5) fouls Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant (24) in the first half of Game 4 on Saturday at Los Angeles.
Jayne Kamin-Oncea, US Presswire, US Presswire
Oklahoma City Thunder center Kendrick Perkins (5) fouls Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant (24) in the first half of Game 4 on Saturday at Los Angeles.
Until the last eight minutes of the nightcap, which was owned by Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant and the youthful Oklahoma City Thunder.
The day started with 36-year-old Tim Duncan, who is looking surprisingly spry in these playoffs, leading his San Antonio Spurs to a 3-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Clippers.
-
STORY: How did the Spurs rally past the Clippers?
-
COLUMN: The Miami Heat have nothing but questions now
-
PHOTOS: Top fashion statements in the NBA
It ended with 33-year-old Kobe Bryant, looking like Kobe Bryant usually looks (OK, minus the windmill dunks of his 20s), scoring 36 points and almost leading his Los Angeles Lakers to a victory and a 2-2 series tie against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Almost.
Bryant and the Lakers held a 13-point lead with eight minutes to go, and had everything going their way before Westbrook, who scored 37, and Durant, who scored 31, including a go-ahead three-pointer with 13.7 seconds left, led the Thunder to a late comeback and a 103-100 victory.
The way the Lakers played for the first 40 minutes Saturday night, they suddenly looked like a team that could be playing a while longer and not so much like the team in disarray that, quite recently, lost a combined four out five playoff games to the Denver Nuggets and Thunder.
Well, forget all that. They are officially in disarray again.
Game 5 is Monday, back in Oklahoma City.
In that game, the Lakers will miss their loyal fans, who showed they were paying attention Saturday night when, during one of those silly Laker girl profiles on the big screen, booed loudly when the poor cheerleader/dancer said she had recently graduated from Oklahoma City University.
For most of Game 4, the Lakers got the pace they want, the matchups they want and the results they wanted.
It was mostly due to Bryant, and that's just amazing, considering his age and the ridiculous minutes he has played this season. In the compacted, player-unfriendly regular season, Bryant played 38.5 minutes per game. In the playoffs, he's playing just a tick under 40 minutes a game.
(Duncan, by comparison, was limited by Spurs coach Gregg Popovich to an average of 28.2 minutes in the regular season and is playing about 31 minutes a game in the playoffs.)
Bryant scored 20 points in each of the first two games of this series. But in the last two games, he has taken over offensively, scoring 36 in Game 3, including 18 of 18 from the line, and 36 more in Game 4.
But none of that mattered when the lead crumbled at the end, thanks to - familiar - too little support from Bryant's teammates and one more overpass, which turned out to be a turnover, by passive 7-footer Pau Gasol.
The game was a physical one from the start, and Bryant engaged in a few wrestling matches in the first half with Durant and James Harden -- some hard bumping and body checking that seemed to stop just short of a shove and/or technical foul.
The bone-jarring play continued into the third, as the Lakers' preferred pace - slow - prevailed, and Bryant set up shop in the post against tough defender Thabo Sefolosha for some hard-earned and high-degree-of-difficulty fallaway jumpers.
The first half had ended on an ominous note for the Thunder, as Westbrook, changing directions on an inbounds play with just a couple of seconds left, slipped and fell awkwardly along the sideline. He lay there for a few minutes before walking very gingerly across the court and into the visitors' locker room.
He turned out to be just fine - better than fine, actually. He was jetpack-quick unstoppable in the second half.
So, the games were done.
A 36-year-old - Duncan - was happy.
A 33-year-old - Bryant - was brilliant in defeat and definitely not happy.
And a couple of young guns, Durant and Westbrook, had another notch on their belt.
No comments:
Post a Comment