wildyams

Well it's not over yet, there's actually still about 6 minutes to go in the game, but the Lakers are down by about 20 points, so effectively it is over and the Lakers will go back to LA tied 1-1 when, in my opinion, they could have easily won today's game. The main problems today were that for some reason, Kobe wanted to take it over in the first half, and as a result, the Lakers never got Shaq going; which makes no sense since the TWolves have absolutely NOBODY who can play him. Additionally, Karl Malone had foul trouble for a lot of the game and didn't play that much, and didn't play well when he was in there. The Lakers in general looked like they were either really tired, or just disinterested. Such are things with the Lakers: if they have things in control, they ease up and get lazy. In my opinion a lot of that attitude comes from Shaq, who is a very dominant player, but who is not a hard worker; and being that he's a leader of the team, the team most likely emulates his personality somewhat (since Kobe is such an isolationist that they can't really emulate his personality, cause they probably don't know it too well). Last year against the Timberwolves the Lakers won Game 1 handily, then lost the next two games (including Game 3 in LA), before LA won the last 3 games and won that series in 6. Hopefully LA will return to life in Game 3, because the most frustrating thing for me as a Laker fan is when they play like this, like they just don't give a damn. It's not a new thing with them though, they've been like this for the last 5 years or so, so it's not too terribly surprising, but it always frustrates the hell out of me. If they would have just played smart today and played with some effort, they would have won the game, and effectively demoralized the Timberwolves to the point of accepting that the series was over. Instead, it's a series now, and even though I think the Lakers will still win this series, they just made it a lot tougher for themselves than it ever needed to be. :nono