When are These Guys Going to Wake Up?

As these kind of losses piles up, the championship will start to slip away before all of us even know it.

This should have been a great night for the Lakers but as we have seen so many times this season, a supposed to be great night turned into a nightmare of confusion. It started out as the Lakes annual trip to South Florida with as usual in Laker road games in the East Coast, a big turnout of Laker fans with fans even chanting M-V-P for Kobe Bryant in where is supposed to be Dwyane Wade's house. All of these plus an article by Vince Thomas on NBA.com about how the fortunes of Kobe and Wade have switched will surely irritate and pump up the Heat. On top of that the Lakers are the defending champs and well, they are the Lakers so they will always have a target on their backs. But as usual with the arrogance of the Lakers, they were again lackadaisical at the start of the game thinking they could take it easy and still march over against the Heat while the Heat are playing hard and dictating the tempo which they dictated for almost the whole game.

The Lakers should have won this game, their still fresh as it is the first road game of a road heavy schedule in March and overall they are just the better team; well at least in paper. But they lost and it was a tough one on overtime and they will have to deal with it on a late flight to Charlotte and play again tomorrow against a team that has their number. Now in miles away, Lebron James was watching this game studying the Lakers and he knows he and his team are in the driver seat right now for this year's NBA Championship because they have the Lakers just were they want them. With this loss, the Lakers fall a game and a half against Cleveland for the best record in the NBA. Now, most likely on the rate things are going the Cavs will have the best record and have home court advantage throughout the Playoffs as they have an easier schedule remaining on their calendar compared to the remaining schedule of the Lakers. Now, it will be a tall order for the Lakers to face the Cavs in the Finals with home court advantage belonging to much hungrier Cleveland team and I hope they have the humility to consider that fact after what we have seen so far this season.

I remember the title of the credits here when we lost to Cleveland at the Q. The title was "Our worst nightmare has happened" or something like that. Well I tell you that we haven't seen it yet and I will spit it out before it ever happens and here it is. "Lebron James is the NBA MVP, NBA Champion, the most sought after free agent in NBA History, and really supplanting Kobe Bryant as the games best player". ESPN even made it their headline the other day, well at least the part where "he could be champion and the most sought after free agent in history in six months". But that my friends is our worst nightmare and I can speculate that that is Kobe Bryant's worst nightmare; where his legacy is again at stake courtesy of Lebron James taking it away from him. Lebron even wants to take away the No. 1 jersey title from him. So I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having the home court advantage throughout the Playoffs especially with the way these Lakers are playing and their consistent bad habits and it will be tough to get that advantage if they continue to lose games against lesser talented teams.

It's been a difficult season to say the least and our record does not reflect on that but its been difficult considering the league's other elite teams always getting the better of us and of course the plague of injuries. So I hope the Lakers will realize the sense of urgency that is required in this moment and not keep on repeating statements after losses that "we got pick it up" and things like that over and over again without actually applying those things that they've learned. This part of the Lakers reminds me of the William Butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming" were the Lakers can't do anything about their problems.

But they have to find a way and they've got to change and if it takes for giving Farmar more minutes than Fish then so be it. If we have to make Pau Gasol eat bicycle tires for breakfast then so be it. I know that the NBA season is a marathon and not a sprint contest but the finish line is already visible and the Lakers has got to start sprinting. So far, I would like to commend Ron Artest another great defensive effort. He made life difficult for Dwyane Wade and the trade for him is finally paying dividends, let's just hope the other guys can really pick it up and go on a nice winning streak for this month and most importantly to stay healthy.