Dallas Shots Keep Falling - Lakers Gone Fishin'

I was listening to a Laker game two nights before the end of the regular season, and something about Mychal Thompson's tone, and what he was seeing and describing made me think - "these guys aren't gonna make it this year. The thrill is gone."

Then New Orleans steps in and beats them a couple games, and I started dreading how the Lake Show might warm up, dig deep, and pass through the tests that were being thrown at them. Stop me if you've seen this before. Yuck.

Meanwhile in Portland, watching the Blazers fight the Mavs and watching Terry, Kidd and Peja step up and make huge threes in the first two games, I thought, "eventually those shots will stop falling, then the Blazers will win." But the shots never stopped falling. Between Tyson's presence in the middle and the Blazers' failure to post up, quarter after quarter, Dallas ended up being the better shooting team.

Fast forward to the Lakers. Not only did the shots continue to fall (including Dirk's unguardable circus fadeways), but the little guys clowned the aging Fisher and scrawny Blake, the triangle fell apart...and Chandler was roving the paint ready for blocks and oops.

And then a funny thing happened. When the Lakers' backs were against the wall, the shots didn't stop falling -- instead, the Mavs suddenly locked in and hit them all. In one magical, humiliating night, probably the end of the Phil Jackson era...suddenly all the yellow-bellies could do was watch or get ejected one by one...until time ran out, and the storybook ending never came to pass in La La Land.

So now Kobe's gone fishin', and Phil will likely be fishin' for good. I know when it's raining, the fish often bite better. Wonder if that holds true when it's raining threes.