| Wednesday, March 1
By Mike Monroe
Special to ESPN.com |
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One of the pitfalls of being a columnist is the opportunity to commit a public pratfall in print (or pixel).
I guess that makes it the print pratfall pitfall. We get to express our opinions and we often get to prove, publicly and painfully, we are occasional idiots.
|  | | With Shaq making his freebies, you can't just send him to the line anymore. |
On the other hand, there are times we get to look pretty smart.
Let's see ... did I tell you here last week that the Lakers had supplanted
the Trail Blazers as the best team in the NBA?
After Tuesday, I rest my case. And I don't want to hear a word about Brian
Grant missing Tuesday's game.
I wonder how many e-mails I would have gotten from Oregon had the Trail
Blazers beaten the Lakers Tuesday night.
Tuesday's wildly overhyped showdown between the two teams with the best
records in the league -- and matching 11-game win streaks -- lived up to
advance billing.
And it proved my point precisely.
The Lakers won Tuesday's game because they have two MVP candidates and
because Shaquille O'Neal no longer can be relied upon to miss free throws
whenever the opponent needs a miss in a critical situation.
Oh, yeah ... the Lakers play pretty tough crunch-time defense, too.
First, though, let's talk about Shaq's free-throw shooting. He made nine of 13
Tuesday, two of four in crunch time. And he was on the floor for every
minute of the fourth quarter.
I've written (often) in past columns that the only thing between O'Neal and
his first MVP Award was the fact that when games came down to
possession-by-possession situations, the Lakers dared not let him touch the
ball for fear the opponent could choose to foul him with impunity.
Those days appear to be over, and so is the MVP race.
Call the engraver and make sure he knows how to spell S-h-a-q-u-i-l-l-e.
Free throws being such a mental thing -- to paraphrase Yogi, 90 percent of
Shaq's free-throw trouble is half mental -- it will surprise nobody if his 50
percent-or-worse foul shooting returns. But the other 10 percent is
mechanical, and it is clear Shaq has worked on his free-throw mechanics. He
has taken his left hand almost entirely out of the process, has developed a
comfortable routine and no longer walks to the line hoping only to draw
iron. The routine is the key, because in the past you could tell O'Neal was
thinking about each and every step in the process; now he focuses on the
routine and just shoots the shots. As any middle-handicap golfer will tell
you, the less you think about shots and just shoot them, the better off you
are.
(Next step: adding some arch to the shot. What is truly remarkable about
his recent success at the line is the fact each throw has to be nearly
perfect, because his arch is so shallow there is almost no room for error.
But for now, the rudiments he has developed will do fine.)
Now, about that Lakers defense. Perhaps you noticed that in the final three
minutes of Tuesday's game the Trail Blazers went scoreless until a
meaningless tipin at the buzzer.
There were reasons, including a sense of panic that seemed to grip the
Portland guards in crunch time, but mostly the Lakers tightened the
defensive screws, which meant, among other things, Glen Rice wasn't on the
floor until Phil Jackson needed his best free-throw shooters out there for a late inbounds play.
L.A. set up Tuesday's big showdown by winning all six of its games on the
Eastern Conference swing the Lakers made not long after the All-Star break.
They did that mostly by playing -- and it pains me to write this -- Eastern
Conference defense. They held the Bulls to 76 points, the Hornets to 85, the Magic to 88 in
regulation, the 76ers to 84, the Nets to 89. Included were wins at Charlotte, where the Hornets had been 20-3, and Philadelphia, where they held Allen Iverson
scoreless in the second half (0-for-11 shooting) as Kobe Bryant blocked
three of his shots and five altogether.
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"I think that's the difference in our ballclub this year as opposed to
last year," Bryant said. "We've always had offensive firepower, but this
year we're able to hold teams down. And that's how you win these ball
games."
Said Phil Jackson of Bryant's defense on Iverson: "When he focuses, and
keeps his mind on what he's doing, and he doesn't try to steal the ball and
just plays real solid, focused defense, he's extremely good. And this was
it."
Of course, with the Lakers, there is always a subplot, and on this team
Bryant is it. Talk continues to bubble, even under the surface of recent
success, that Bryant remains isolated from his teammates, certainly off the
court and often on it.
There was a reported incident, more than a month ago, to be sure, when
O'Neal refused to participate in a postgame huddle in the dressing room
(and this was after a comeback win) because he saw no need to act like a
team in the locker room when the Lakers hadn't acted like a team on the
court.
Jackson knows he has to have both O'Neal and Bryant functioning
relatively seamlessly on the court if the Lakers are to make a run at the
championship. He has been frustrated with Bryant's individual sorties, at
the expense of his beloved triangle offense. He knows O'Neal is The Man on
his team.
And he also knows Bryant is one of the most gifted offensive creators in
the game, clearly a go-to guy for crunch time, and one who shoots 84 percent
from the foul line.
"Kobe's a bit of an enigma," Jackson told an L.A. Times reporter. "He's a young man that has really got certain intriguing things
about himself. It's going to be interesting to watch as a coach, and I'm
looking forward to it. He's not totally formed -- nobody is at 21.
"Kobe's a real smart person. He's got a good intellect and he can be
reasoned with. When you have that ability, you can make decisions on the
court that are reasonable. And you don't have to play impulsively. And
that's what Kobe gets caught in sometimes. I don't know if it's egotistical
or whatever.
"The rest of the players know that sometimes he's more interested in
putting his head down and dribbling the ball than moving the ball, and moving
himself, and doing the things that I like to happen in our offense."
Nothing, though, engenders the team concept more than winning. The Lakers now
have won 12 in a row as they head for two more big regular-season matchups,
Friday's game against the East's best team, the Pacers, and Sunday's game
against the Heat. Win those two (yes, I'm conceding the Lakers their
Wednesday night "putt" against the Grizzlies) and it is not hard to
envision a 17-game win streak heading to their March 12 game against the
Kings.
Nothing Bryant does (or doesn't do), on or off the court, can undermine
that kind of momentum.
Mike Monroe, who covers the NBA for the Denver Post, writes a Western Conference column for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him at monroe128@go.com |  |
NBA West: Lakers look to stand pat
