Tonight’s game at 10:30 ET / 7:30 PT against the visiting Oklahoma City Thunder is a must-win for the Los Angeles Lakers. I don’t like using cliche’s I know I’ll end up using again if LA does not actually win Game Three tonight, because I know I’ll end up using that same cliche’ again to describe what would then actually be a win or get swept Game Four for LA, but if Kobe Bryant and company have any hope of winning this series they need to get Game Three.
Game Two they had, all the way up until they let it slip away, and now they’re down two games to zero to the Thunder. A Thunder team that looks ridiculously good right now too. If it was me, I’d be devasted about all that as I staggered into the arena tonight for the Lakers. But I’m not an NBA player, not even a good rec league player these days to be honest, and I’m certainly not Kobe Bryant. An optimistic Bryant at that too, who even said he thinks his group learned a lot from the loss actually, and he thinks it’ll help moving forward.
This quote from Kobe via Thunderstruck:
Kobe Bryant on the Thunder comeback victory: “It’s a tough loss, but the biggest thing for us was that we found some things out defensively that we feel we can do that’s effective. They did a great job. It was a great comeback by them in the last two minutes. They got themselves a gritty win. Now it’s up to us to go back home and defend our home court.”
The Lakers point guards will have to step up if they’re going to defend home court tonight though, as I mentioned yesterday. Steve Blake is also going to have to specifically tune out the tragic fact that people went as far as lobbing him and his family death threats on Twitter over the last couple days too. There’s no place at all for that obviously, and it should be a crime of some sort I think, but I would also think it might weigh heavily on me if I’m Blake. I’m not him either though, as I previously discussed.
I’m not sure what Kobe figured out defensively either, but I hope it works. Unless it involves petitioning the NBA to allow a sixth player to play for the Lakers tonight, who’s job is to double team Kevin Durant for the duration of the game, I’m not sure it will though. I’d bet OKC keeps rolling, and prepares for a sweep later on this weekend, but we’ll see what happens.
