NBA Western Conference

I cannot believe Lakers coach coach Phil Jackson would complain about the foul differences after Game Four of the Western Conference Finals with the Nuggets last night.

The Nuggets have gotten to the line in this series more than the Lakers in every game but Game Three; that much is true. In Game One, the Nuggets attempted 35 free throws. In that same game, the Lakers only attempted 24. Moving on to Game Two, the Nuggets attempted 37 free throws to the Lakers' 35, the closest game in free throw attempts in this series.

In Game Three, the Lakers finally got an edge in free throws when they attempted 45 to the Nuggets' 31 attempts. In Game Four, the roles reversed, with the Nuggets getting 49 attempts to the Lakers 35.

I know Jackson is trying to get calls for his players, but from the outset of Game Four the Nuggets were the team driving the ball and working harder to rebound the ball. The Lakers attempted 31 three-point shots. That is not the kind of thing that is going to get you to the foul line.

All shooting from the outside does is give long rebounds or one-and-done offense if you do not make the shot. This is what happened to the Lakers most of the night. Especially since they got outrebounded by 18 in the game and the Nuggets took 11 of those offensive boards for second-chance points.

If you, and I mean Jackson, think that Luke Walton is his father Bill and will get calls to go his way, then you have been drinking too much of your own Kool-Aid. Walton got a technical foul for not shutting up after a play and going after Kenyon Martin. He should have walked away, and maybe the officials would have given him a call later in the game.

If you’re a jump-shooting team and the only players you have going to the basket are Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, you’re not going to get many fouls called. On the other hand, the Nuggets have Nene, Martin, Chauncey Billups, J.R. Smith, Chris Anderson, and Carmelo Anthony all moving toward the basket. That's how you get more calls: Playing in the paint rather than on the perimeter.

The second thing Jackson brought up was dirty play by the Nuggets in the game. I cannot say that Dahntay Jones meant to trip Kobe Bryant. I do know that I have see Bryant push other players to the ground to grab rebounds and hold on to other players so they cannot get to rebounds. Neither type of offense was called on Bryant.

Officials do not like to call plays when they have to figure out intent. If it was clear that Jones had tried to trip Bryant, they would have called the foul. Looking at it myself, I could not tell if that is what he meant to do. Jones clearly looks down at his foot as Kobe falls, wondering why he fell.

He did not stretch his leg out any farther than he did or he would have fell since he was out of position already to try to guard Bryant. Jones might have been trying to trip Bryant, but why would he do that and possibly be ejected from the game?

Jackson is just trying to get calls for his team, and I understand that. He just has to understand he has a soft team and they will not get many calls in this series unless they play tougher inside the paint. You cannot camp out at the three-point line and hope to get calls. The Nuggets will keep getting calls because they keep going to the basket.

Jackson does have a right to complain about the foul situation, but only if he looks at the way his team has played first. Then he will see that the only complaining he should be doing is to his team on how soft they are in the paint.

Mainly, he needs to look at Andrew Bynum and Trevor Ariza, who are constantly in foul trouble and have committed almost 30 fouls in this series (14 for Bynum and 15 for Ariza). Not good for your big men inside.

For the first time in the Western Conference Finals, the team that imposed its will during the outset of a game didn’t fall into the pitfalls of complacency, laziness and dulled focus.

No surprise then that with the Denver Nuggets carrying out their game plan for a full 48 minutes, they were able to go over, around, and through the underwhelming Los Angeles Lakers for a commanding 120-101 Game Four victory.

The Denver win didn't involve a strategic adjustment or Herculean individual exploit—the Nuggets simply kept doing what they’ve been doing throughout the series for a full 48 minutes, instead of the 18 and 32-minute stretches they mustered over the initial three games of the series.

The Nuggets buried the Lakers in the battle of the boards, with the Nuggets front court trio of Nene, Kenyon Martin, Chris Andersen outrebounding Los Angeles by themselves. Overall the Nuggets retrieved 58 missed shots to the Lakers 40, but the most damaging rebounds came after their own missed shots.

Because the Nuggets were hellbent on attacking the hoop at each and every opportunity, players who would normally be boxing out their assigned men were forced to rotate over and help on the penetration leaving throngs of Nuggets with free paths to the basketball.

Also, because the Lakers continued to employ their strong-side flooding defense to contain Carmelo Anthony, the Lakers were assigned to box out areas instead of bodies, a perilous flaw that can be taken advantage of by diligent glass-attackers. So despite Anthony missing every single one of his eight first-half field goal attempts, the Nuggets grabbed the rebound after six of those misses.

While those two factors above give softening excuses for LA’s pitiful board presence, the hard fact is the Nuggets simply out-hustled and outworked the Lakers. Their strong men played stronger, their quick jumpers jumped quicker and played harder than their Lakers counterparts who seemed to hope missed shots would fall into their hands, instead of taking the effort to get into the fray, find a body, box out, and jump strong to the ball.

Andrew Bynum‘s landlocked knees prevented him from jumping for boards, Pau Gasol was often blasted out of position by the original penetration and unable to get back into position, Lamar Odom was lazy, and the Lakers guards felt that rebounding wasn’t part of their job description. Even Kobe Bryant was simply bulled away from the basket by Anthony on a second half battle.

With the Nuggets attacking the rim and tattooing the glass, they tallied 52 points in the paint and 37 more from the line. So even though their jump shooting as a team was spotty (7-24 3FG), and even though they got virtually no production from Anthony (3-16 FG) until late, the Nuggets were still able to build a lead that was never seriously threatened.

While Nene and Martin were duds in Game three, they responded in full force in Game four.

Nene, when he wasn’t doling out assists on the break, was crashing the boards, menacing the baseline, and dive-cutting into dunks or assist passes when the Lakers would load up their zone.

Martin hit most of his line-drive push shots, and played exceptional defense whether on the perimeter, the post, or when helping at the rim. It was Martin’s ruthless rebounding and quick-footed defense that made Lamar Odom vanish into thin air.

Chris Andersen made a pair of spectacular blocks, slammed in a pair of high-flying dunks, and played with the same kind of boundless passion that supercharges the fans and his teammates.

When the Nuggets were patient, extra passes, and subsequently, open layups and jump shots, were the routine. To show how efficient Denver’s offense was, they recorded 23 assists on 38 baskets with the unassisted hoops mostly accounted by breakaways, put-backs, or J.R. Smith’s one-on-one adventures. More impressively, opposing those 23 assists were only six turnovers.

If Chauncey Billups never found the stroke aside from a home run ball early in the fourth, he took great care of the ball (zero turnovers) and had a knack of waiting for a screen to arrive and bring a defender away from the basket, before going away from the screen and simply beating his man to the rim.

Plus Billups’ ability to organize his team into proper defenses as well as his ability to motivate, understand, and relate to each of his teammates’ specific needs on the court are invaluable. He’s the rock that keeps the Nuggets’ potentially combustible team steady through the highs and lows of playoff basketball, and is proving that he’s worth much more than his terrific on-court talents.

Other than a stretch from late in the third into the early portions of the fourth, J.R. Smith quelled his desire to make high-risk, high-reward plays, instead concentrating on blowing by his man, getting to the hoop, and making either a tough finish or a slick pass.

With J.R. making plays at the hoop in the first half (4 AST), no doubt his confidence would soar and the jumper that had abandoned him throughout the series would return. And lo and behold, Smith hit four shots from behind the arc over the final 13 minutes to vanquish the Lakers.

Linas Kleiza and Anthony Carter didn’t make many mistakes (aside from Carter’s customary home run outlet-pass-gone-awry), and knocked down their jumpers—4-6 FG, combined.

The Nuggets attacked Kobe Bryant’s roaming help defense on back-to-back plays in the second quarter. With Kobe failing to trap Anthony Carter, the Nuggets ran a cross-screen in the middle of the paint. With Andrew Bynum confused and forced to guard two players one-on-one, a lob to Linas Kleiza resulted in a layup. On the next possession, Kobe was in no-man’s land on an a Carter drive, leading to a wide-open three for Kleiza.

Dahntay Jones’ goon ball tactics visually frustrated Kobe Bryant and led to Bryant’s decision to try and win the second half all by himself. Of his 26 shots, many were forced and rushed, and he settled too often for ten threes, many of them standstill jumpers early in the shot clock.

When Kobe did post up, he was either doubled or had a dominating mismatch on any defender aside from Billups or Anthony. However, Bryant rarely posted himself up, instead electing to abandon the triangle and elect to try and shoot his team back into the ball game.

And contrary to belief, he had help. Whenever Gasol posted Nene, good things happened, whether on his own—8-11 FG—or for others—4 AST.

Why did the Lakers so rarely look to initiate their offense with Gasol in the post?

Andrew Bynum—6-7 FG, 14 PTS—likewise had success in the pivot but wasn’t featured enough.

Whenever any big man attacked Andersen’s inferior post defense one-on-one and prevented him from soaring from the weak-side, the Lakers would get a layup, or a foul, or both.

Luke Walton made excellent decisions with the ball throughout the game, reading the Nuggets’ switching defenses and recognizing Andersen defending Bynum in the post, or attacking off the dribble forcing Andersen to step up and feeding Bynum behind the Birdman for an uncontested dunk.

While Walton was whistled for six fouls in his 12 minute shift, some of the calls seemed absurd after he drove the lane early in the fourth and got smacked across the face with no call. When he went to argue, he got slapped with a technical.

But hey, the Nuggets were clearly the aggressors, clearly executed better basketball than the Lakers, and were playing at home. Of course the Nuggets would be the beneficiaries of a few judgment calls. But the one call the refs egregiously missed was a blatant trip of Kobe Bryant by Jones on an attempted backdoor cut, a play which deserved to be at least a personal foul, and more appropriately a flagrant foul.

Is it dirty? Who cares for Denver, it’s clearly working. But underhanded tricks like blatantly tripping a person and shoving him from behind while he’s in the air are ways to do serious damage to a player—much more than mano-y-mano shoving at least—because of the player’s loss of control of his body.

With all the unwarranted flagrants and technicals that have been issued this postseason, Jones is the rare breed who deserves a harsher penalty while other players get tooted for having arms locked up, or having their face in front of a player’s elbow.

But while David Stern and his cronies may be able to do something about Jones, he can’t do anything to stop the muggings the Nuggets are putting on the Lakers’ interior frontline.

Finally, the Nuggets were able to maintain their edge for a full 48 minutes. If the Lakers’ don’t follow suit, they’ll be beaten and bullied out of the playoffs for the same fundamental reason the Celtics knocked them out last season.

The parallels between Los Angeles’ 103-97 victory in Game Three of the Western Conference Finals and the shape of the first two games of the series are so similar, one must think that the team’s are following a premeditated script.

Consider:

• In each of the three games, the winning team has played completely lackadaisical, uninspired basketball over the initial 18 minutes of each contest.
• In this case, the Lakers’ bigs time and again lollygagged in transition, allowing the Nuggets to feast on 19 fast break points.
• Kobe Bryant completely disintegrated the triangle in the second quarter to call his own number. A few easy layups (mostly generated by Denver’s own sloth in transition) were balanced out by a number of forced, missed jumpers.
• The Lakers' interior rotations were deplorable until the final quarter. Worse, their habit of loading up the strong side zone to stop Carmelo Anthony was picked apart by a complete lack of communication. When top-side cutters would sprint down the lane, the weak-side guard (usually Sasha Vujacic), would neither carry the cutter to a help defender, nor would he even announce the cutter entering open space alerting the weak side help defender to step up. Because of this, Chris Andersen recorded 13 first-half points.
• Like Game One, Denver couldn’t so much as complete a simple inbounds pass late in the game. While Anthony Carter has an excuse for his gaffe (A 6'2" guard should never be asked to inbound the ball due to his lack of height and ability to be shielded from the action by a larger defender), there’s no excuse for Kenyon Martin’s pathetic attempt to get the ball to Carmelo Anthony late in the game.
• Like the first two games, J.R. Smith made a handful of brain-dead decisions that undermined the Nuggets, in this case committing a boneheaded taunting technical after a three to end the third quarter, and later, trying to strip Kobe with a minute left, allowing him to sink a go-ahead three ball with no contest and only a minute remaining.
• Like the initial two games, the winning team’s star player came up huge in the fourth, with Kobe scoring ten points in the game’s final 3:06.
• Like the first two games, the Nuggets couldn’t defend without fouling, committing 31 team fouls total—plus three technicals—with four players recording at least five violations.
• Like the first two games, Andrew Bynum was frequently caught out of his defensive stance, and was tardy in recognizing the flurry of action happening around the basket whenever the ball was zipped from one side of the court to the other.
• Like the opening two games, Trevor Arixa was a revelation, playing above-average positional defense, menacing loose dribbles and errant passes, attacking the rim, and plugging his three balls.
• As in Games One and Two, Chauncey Billups launched all manner of quick shots early in the shot clock, but unlike the first two games, his rush jobs didn’t go in.
• Like the initial two games, Kobe Bryant was routinely beat off the dribble and had trouble navigating through screens. He even committed a dumb foul on a Chauncey Billups three, giving the Nuggets a four-point play.
• And like Game One, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom made quality rotations late in the game to get in position at the basket before Anthony and Billups could use their strength and athleticism to beat the bigs inside.

However, there were some new developments as well. While Derek Fisher struggled again with his shot, his defense on Chauncey Billups was exemplary. With Shannon Brown and Jordan Farmar routinely overpowered by Billups’ strength, Fisher remains the only strong body on the Lakers (aside from Kobe) who can deal with Billups’ powerful drives to the basket.

This is why it was curious as to why Phil Jackson assigned Fisher to J.R. Smith late in the fourth quarter. Because Smith has such a profound speed advantage over the leaden-legged Fisher, Smith was able to drive and discard Fisher for a number of pull-up jump shots in crunch time.

It’s shocking as to why fans don’t call Dahntay Jones out for the goon he is. While fans channel all their outrage on players who flop—harmless bodily fibs told to sell a call—Jones gets a free ride for shoving an airborne Bryant from behind with two hands, a dangerous play that can often result in serious injury under many circumstances.

Had Manu Ginobili, for example, committed the foul, no doubt the blogosphere would be ripe with the outrage of fans voicing their outrage at his perceived “dirtiness,” yet Jones gets off by the league, and by the court of public opinion, scot-free.

After a pair of uneven performances, K-Mart was downright dreadful. Aside from his botched inbounds play, he missed a layup, committed a needless off-the-ball foul on Lamar Odom, and bailed Bryant out with a foul after he was trapped in the corner with 20 seconds to go and the Nuggets down two.

That was only in the final 1:46. Martin spent the rest of the game missing open shots, playing defense with his hands and not his feet, and being a genuine non-factor.

Nene too was often guilty of playing defense with his hands and not his feet—a systemic problem of the Nuggets. Because they have so many fundamentally-impatient players, because they play with a commitment of aggression that often borders on recklessness, and because so many of their players have histories of poor basketball IQs, they often are forced to reach, grab, and tug to compensate for being in the wrong place at the right time.

The Nuggets' three-point shooting was dreadful, with Denver only shooting 5-of-27 from the bonus land.

In the end though, the Lakers persevered because they corrected their mistakes in the fourth quarter, and because the Nuggets committed theirs in the game’s final minutes.

However, it would be strongly advised that whichever team plans on winning the series smashes the looking glass into a thousand pieces. With this mirror seducing the two ball clubs into mentally lazy and uninspired play, there’s no shadow of a doubt that the team that breaks the mirror won’t get seven years bad luck, but, on the contrary, will receive the best chance of winning the series in seven games—or fewer.

The first 18 minutes of Denver’s 106-103 Game Two victory over the Lakers provided a glimpse into Denver’s not-so-illustrious recent history.

• The Nuggets big men played with no competitive fire whatsoever. Nene committed the egregious mistake of walking with his back to the ball to his man under the basket, being in no position to play defense. A halfcourt pass by Derek Fisher after an inbounds pass located Andrew Bynum all alone for a plus-one slam. And Nene never failed to not hustle back in his transition defense.
• Kenyon Martin spent most of the first half stargazing at Lakers’ missed shots instead of attempting to corral the rebounds.
• Too often Carmelo Anthony attempted to drive into a wall of Lakers defenders, leading to missed shots and dumb turnovers.
• The Nuggets spent more time complaining to the refs than sprinting back in transition.
• Dahntay Jones was used an abused for four fouls in the initial six minutes.
• The Nuggets made no attempt to play defense on Kobe Bryant until after he caught the ball. Knowing that, Bryant just took his man into the post and tallied layup after layup.
• Chris Anderson was left eating Pau Gasol’s dust in the post, and was suckered into launching (and missing) a 20 foot jumper. Shades of Marcus Camby.
• A simple inbounds pass from under their basket went awry.
• J.R. Smith couldn’t defend without fouling, and played with less mental acuity than a coma victim.
• A routine pass to Kenyon Martin went straight through his hands out of bounds.
• The Nuggets had no answer for Bynum and Gasol beating them down court and establishing deep post position before their defense could get set.
• Quick shots were the norm, as were unforced errors, mental mistakes, a lack of effort, and general crimes against playoff basketball, usually a sentence for defeat at this stage in the season.

But then the Nuggets found their collective selves and allowed their talent to shine through.

George Karl gave Linas Kleiza ample time at the four, opening up driving lanes, and removing an underwhelming big from the floor. The spacing gave Denver’s dribble-drivers more space to drive to the lane. Plus, Kleiza stepped up with a powerful driving layup, and by knocking down five of his seven trifectas.

On the defensive end, the lineup was much quicker in closing out perimeter shooters than Denver’s two-big lineup.

Finding more room to work inside, Carmelo punished every Laker defender with his dazzling array of powerhouse drives and pull-up jumpers.

And when ‘Melo didn’t have the ball in his hands, he’d simply camp under the basket and uproot any Lakers player who tried to box him out. Included in ‘Melo’s five offensive rebounds was a rebound and put-back through Kobe that led to a critical layup.

When Carmelo was asked to defend Kobe, he gave up a share of difficult jumpers, but his ball denial prevented Bryant from catching the ball on several possessions, while his strong body kept Bryant from the easy post ups he feasted on in the first half.

Chauncey Billups forced several shots and drives, but he absolutely disintegrated the defense of Jordan Farmar and Shannon Brown. And even against Derek Fisher, Billups simply put his head down and overpowered the Lakers rotating bigs for several calls, or his misses would free up the offensive glass for Anthony and others.

If Nene’s effort level was atrocious, he hit two big free throws, and came up with a huge defensive play, deflecting Kobe Bryant’s dribble as he tried to split Nene around a screen with only seconds remaining.

Kenyon Martin finally started to care in the second half and made a number of good defensive plays guarding Odom, and hit a tough-tiebreaking layup in traffic with 30 seconds to go.

And despite many Lakers playing well…

• Like Bryant who hit a brace of critical jumpers in the fourth, though he was outplayed by Carmelo
• Like Trevor Ariza who menaced passing lanes, picked Carmelo’s pocket, finished on the break, hit both his threes, and threw down a menacing dunk.
• Like Bynum and Gasol who pulverized the Nuggets on the boards in the first half and converted easy looks with good post position.
• Like Luke Walton, who hit a tough layup, and made great passes drawing Chris Anderson and lobbing over him to the man he was guarding resulting in layups or fouls on Denver’s rotators.

…Too many Lakers were no shows.

• Like Sasha Vujacic, who continues to embarrass himself with his shot selection—0-4 FG.
• Like Derek Fisher who’s fading to dust before our eyes—1-9 FG.
• Like Jordan Farmar and Shannon Brown who were eaten alive by Billups.
• Like Lamar Odom, whose individual offense was shut down by Martin.

It should also be noted that the refs missed a huge call late in the ball game when J.R. Smith cut through the jump circle on a jump ball which should have resulted in a violation. Still, Trevor Ariza came away with possession of the jump ball, and promptly fell down. Whoops.

Give the Nuggets credit for not imploding, and for rousing their competitive chops before it was too late. And give Billups and Anthony credit for taking over when they needed to. While the opening 18 minutes was a glimpse into recent history, the final 30 minutes featured the unmistakable Nuggets of the present.

With their resolve and aggression stemming from Billups’ leadership and Anthony’s newfound maturity, the Nuggets can now steal wins impossible for them last season. Still, is their awful starts become a habit against the Lakers, there won’t be any way for them to steal this series.

When the National Basketball Association Conference Finals tip off later this week, four teams will test their level of cooperation, unselfishness and teamwork. One issue that apparently will not get in their way is diversity.

Two new studies have shown that an NBA team's level of racial or ethnic diversity does not have any significant impact on its winning percentage or its players' split-second decision making on the court.

These reassuring findings on player unity contrast with a 2007 report showing same-race bias among NBA referees when making foul calls.

The demographics of the NBA have changed dramatically over the last 40 years. African-Americans make up about 76 percent of the league's players, while Latinos and Asians account for three and one percent, respectively.

According to the NBA, 77 international players from 32 countries contributed just over 17 percent to team rosters. There are not only potential ethnic and cultural barriers, but also language differences that may impact a team's chemistry.

For any organization, results matter. However, few groups of co-workers have their teamwork watched, measured and analyzed to the extent of an NBA team.

Diversity measured 

Paul Sommers and Jessica Weiss of Middlebury College wanted to see if the level of an NBA team's diversity affected its ability to win.

For the last three complete NBA seasons (through 2007-08), players who had at least 800 minutes of court time were divided into one of five racial or demographic groups; African-Americans, Caucasians, East Europeans, Asians, and other foreign-born players who did not play either high school or college basketball in the United States.

Using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) to measure diversity, a number was assigned to each team for each season. An index of 1.0 would indicate a completely homogeneous team, while more diverse teams would score lower (between 0 and 1).

When the HHI was regressed against each team's regular season winning percentage, no significant correlation was found. In other words, a team's diversity did not help or hurt their success on the court.

As supporting evidence, the last three NBA champions, the Boston Celtics (2007-08), the San Antonio Spurs (2006-07), and the Miami Heat (2005-06), had dramatically different HHIs of 1.0, .360, and .781, respectively.

What about that language barrier? If communications suffered, then there should be passing mixups and team turnovers should rise.

To find out, Sommers and Weiss divided the teams into two groups, more diverse and less diverse at the median HHI for the league. Over the three seasons, there was no significant difference in total turnovers between the two groups.

The findings were detailed in last month's Atlantic Economic Journal.

Carrying that on-court cooperation theme even further, Brigham Young researchers searched for same-race bias in NBA players when passing to their teammates.

To put it bluntly, would a white player subconsciously prefer to pass to another white player if given a choice and, conversely, a black player to a black player?

In an exhaustive study, Joseph Price, Lars John Lefgren and Henry Tappen dug into six seasons of NBA data to look at every assisted basket and recorded the race (noted simply as "black" or "not black") of the passer and the scorer.

They also noted the other three players on the floor when the basket was made. Of course, there were numerous decision variables that the researchers had to eliminate to isolate just racial preference.

The conclusion: No same-race bias was found in the passing patterns of NBA players.  Study details are available from the Social Science Research Network as part of their working paper series.

Referees don't play fair

Joseph Price is known for his controversial paper in 2007 that concluded there is significant same-race bias shown by NBA referees.

In that study, more than 600,000 officiating calls over 13 seasons were analyzed to see if white referees would call fewer fouls on white players than black players and vice versa (black referees whistling black players).

They concluded that the difference was "large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.”

In fact, their data showed that players earned up to 4 percent fewer fouls and scored up to 2.5 percent more points on nights in which their race matches that of the refereeing crew.

From a team perspective, the bias factor may change the outcome of two games out of an 82-game season. For some teams, that may be the difference that keeps them out of the playoffs.

Please visit my other sports science articles at Sports Are 80 Percent Mental and Livescience.com

The last time the Rockets played in L.A. they were drubbed by 40.

In Game 7 they were pummeled and finally sent home after a much-prolonged series.

Kobe Bryant scored only 14, but that proved more than enough thanks to Pau Gasol's 18 rebounds, which kept the smaller Rockets' off the glass and cut down on second-chance points.

Aaron Brooks had 13 for the Rockets. Ron Artest contributed a measly eight on 3-of-10 shooting.

The Lakers advance to the Western Conference Finals to meet the streaking Denver Nuggets.

1st Quarter

Los Angeles started the game on an 8-0 spree and was never challenged after that.

Kobe brought a more aggressive attitude and drove the ball to the basket twice in L.A's opening possessions. He created opportunities for himself and his teammates throughout the game.

Artest started off with two air balls.

The Rockets finally got on the board with 6:53 remaining thanks to a pair of free throws by Brooks. Houston began the game 0-for-12 from the field and didn't get its first field goal until 7:15 had elapsed.

The Rockets' offense was stagnant with none of the low-post presence they had before, first with Yao and then with Luis Scola in Game Six.

At one point Scola drifted out to the perimeter and had his shot rejected by Gasol, which ignited a fast-break. Without a post presence, Houston became a jump-shooting team, which it isn't.

Later in the period Houston fed its bigs on three straight trips, and Carl Landry and Scola capitalized. The tandem went 2-for-3 and opened up options on the wings.

On defense, Houston needed to send more help toward the three-point line and chase L.A.'s shooters. The Rockets should have applied this strategy to Trevor Ariza in particular. He knocked down two threes, which  pushed the lead from eight to 11.

Los Angeles led 22-12 after one.

2nd Quarter

The Rockets started by pounding the ball inside to Scola vs. Gasol, which caused Luke Walton to come over to help. The result: a defensive three-second call on Los Angeles and a free-throw for the Rockets.

If nothing else, Houston should have understood at that point that throwing the ball into the post initiated its offense and allowed it to scope the defense and figure out the right play.

The Rockets also were unable to find the touch from long range. They were still without a made three-point basket by the closing minutes of the second. They started 0-for-7 from downtown before an Artest triple with less than a minute to go.

For the Lakers, Jordan Farmar did a nice job of penetrating and scored on a three-point play for Los Angeles. He got an assist after dishing to Gasol under the basket after attracting several Rockets' defenders.

The Lakers began to punish the Rockets' smaller front line by dumping the ball down low to Andre Bynum. He had eight points, five rebounds, and two blocked shots. Gasol also picked up the memo and dominated the glass tallying 11 points and 12 rebounds before intermission.

Los Angeles led 51-31 at half.

3rd Quarter

Rockets coach Rick Adelman said his team needed to change before the game grew out of reach. But Houston waltzed out from the intermission as stale as in the first half.

Bryant cemented the game for L.A by scoring six in the the opening minutes. He also drew Shane Battier's fourth foul and found open looks on consecutive possessions for both Derek Fisher and Gasol.

On a positive note for Houston, Aaron Brooks awakened and drained back-to-back threes to reduce the Lakers' lead to below 20. He was first Rocket to reach double-figures.

However, as the period progressed Brooks began to display his inexperience. He was called for traveling in transition as he left his feet and came down with the ball still in his hands. He could have rifled the ball to a streaking Scola to his left instead.

Moments later on a fast break, Brooks blew past Farmar but was stripped by  Ariza. Brooks is right-handed, but instead of going to his right he should have gone left. It would have created a near-impossible angle for Ariza to mug him and would have resulted in a layup. 

You can't expect the world from a still-developing second-year player just thrust into a mentally grinding Game Seven atmosphere. These are a few areas in which he will improve in the next few years.

The Lakers led 69-50 going into the final quarter.

4th Quarter

Los Angeles kept its foot on the gas.

Gasol continued to dominate Scola and the Rockets' front line as he posted a Superman-like 19 points, 18 rebounds, and three blocks.

The crowd serenaded the Rockets with appropriate goodbye chants. 

Los Angeles now moves on to the Western Conference Finals, where the Lakers will meet the Denver Nuggets.

Only six teams are left in the NBA's annual rendition know as the Playoffs and as two Game Sevens conclude only four will remain after Sunday. The postseason is littered with talent on every team at every position.

Dominance can't last forever and everyone knows it. David Robinson was sure of the fact, and so hung up his sneaks after securing his NBA Finals ring. Pretty soon, Tim Duncan will do the same. Duncan has had a super career, one of the best ever, but how long will it be before he retires and leaves the San Antonio Spurs in disarray? Who will fill the shoes of one of the all-time greats? 

No one for now, it seems. The Spurs currently have five players 6’10” or taller: Robert Horry, Fabricio Oberto, Matt Bonner, Tim Duncan, Kurt Thomas, and Ian Mahinmi.

Thomas, Duncan, and Oberto (who has fell out of coach Greg Popovich's rotation as of late) are all are 32 or older and each has at least five year's experience.

The lone exceptions to the 30 year or older club is Ian Mahinmi, a extremely raw prospect from France who didn't log a single minute in the 2008-09 season. The other being Matt Bonner who will turn 30 in April, signaling yet another barometer of just how old the Spurs really are.

But none of the players mentioned above have anywhere near the skill level capable of compensating for the loss of Duncan once he leaves.