The San Antonio Spurs have won four NBA titles since 1999 (their most recent in 2007) and Lakers fans are worried what will happen when L.A. plays in San Antonio a week from Thursday and face off against the Spurs sometime in May (as projected) for the NBA’s Western Conference Finals. During last season’s conference finals the Lakers won the series, 4-1, but the Spurs had a chance to make it 2-2 when Derek Fisher toppled over a shooting Brent Barry in the last few second of a two-point games.
Basically the Lakers have to get past the Spurs (and their 6-foot-11 tower Tim Duncan who averages about 20 points per game) in order to get to the Celtics. Other key Spurs players are Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and newbie Matt Bonner. The Spurs beat the Clippers 106-78 last month and Clippers head coach Mike Dunleavy weighed in on a Lakers-Spurs Western finals, telling the Los Angeles Times, “With Andrew Bynum, the Lakers seem to have the edge because they’d have the big presence in the middle for Parker’s drives.”Let’s hope Bynum’s back in action by then.
Get all your Los Angeles Lakers tickets at StubHub.com.
Just three days after the Lakers beat the Suns by 26 points, Phoenix got their revenge on their home turf, beating L.A. 118-111 with Shaquille O’Neal scoring 33 points. Despite being undermanned, with Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire missing from the lineup, the Suns came away with a big win last night at U.S. Airways Center. After 45 points against Toronto Friday, Shaq continued his streak with 33 points on 13-for-18 shooting.
Kobe Byrant sought to explain the loss to the L.A. Times, “We’re going through a period right now where everybody’s just kind of tired. It happens. We saw Boston kind of go through it. Everybody kind of goes through it. These two games, we’ve been playing lethargic. It’s that point in the season and we’ve hit it.” The Lakers posted a season-low in points Friday in a 90-79 loss to Denver. Pau Gasol was befuddled as so why their margin of loss against the Suns was so large, saying “It’s tough to understand how you can beat a team by 30 and then, next game, lose by 10. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Home court is not that important. We didn’t come out the way we were supposed to. I don’t know exactly why, maybe because it was an early game or we were still thinking about the 30-point win we had a couple of days ago.”
Get all your Los Angeles Lakers tickets at StubHub.com.