Weak Season Finish

Here an award summary on the last four games for the defending champs:

Lakers at T'Pups

Player of the Game: Pau Gasol, the only conistent Laker lately it seems.

X-Factor: Gonna give it DJ, who posted a career high 11 pts and played with high energy.

Should Have Been Benched: Fish no points, true only 20 mins, but 0/5 c'mon Fish!

Laker Hater: Ramon Sessions, highest point total in 2 months, hilarious, why don't these haters step up for the other contenders?

Overtime: Lakers clinched best record in the West for 3rd straight year. The Showtime Lakers of the 80's with current T'Pup coach Kurt Rambis did it for 8 straight seasons resulting in 6 Final appearances and four championships, only once (1990) they failed to reach the conference finals.

Lakers vs. Trailblazers

Player of the Game: LaMarcus Aldridge, filled in nicely as his team lost their star player.

X-Factor: The Camby Man. Marcus Camby continues to age well and contribute quietly, he pulled down 17 boards and swatted away four shots.

Should Have Been Benched: The Lakers reserves were awful AGAIN, but Ron Ron was bad all by himself, 3/10 shooting, no FTs, 3 rebounds, 3 turnovers, WTF, this was against a M.A.S.H. unit, jeez.

Overtime: Kobe remained 12th on the all-time scoring list, if he averages at least 20 pts and plays at least 81 games, he will move into 6th place, behind Shaq, Wilt, MJ, the Mailman, and Captain Hook Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kings at Lakers:

Player of the Game: Pau Gasol, 2 rebounds short of a double double, but 28 pts on 12/15 shooting.

X-Factor: Tie between Shannon Brown who filled in for Mamba and chipped in 24 pts, and The Machine was oiled and greased and finished with a season hight 13 pts.

Should Have Been Benched: Lakers starting frontcourt, 51 combined minutes, 2/11 combined shooting, 7 turnovers, 13 rebounds, but LO had 10 of them, pathetic showing.

Laker hater: Francisco Garcia took one more shot than the last 2 combined games, but he made double the amount of the last 1 combined games. Hater.

Overtime: The Broken Machine hit double figures for only the 3rd time this season, down from 16 last year, and 25 in his breakout 2008 season, which by the way was a contract year, coincidence? His 3 pt shooting % is lowest since rookie year and in the last 2 seasons combined has less 3 pointers made that the 2008 season, he also scored only 12 less point in 2008 than the next two seasons. The Machine? no that name no longer fits.

Lakers at Clippers:

Player of the Game: Steve Blake finishes with a triple double against the JV unit.

X-Factor: The whole Clipper team who came out and competed and embarrassed the reigning champs who showed no interest in playing.

Should Have Been Benched: Ron Artest continues his struggles for the second straight game, 1/7 shooting and only 17 minutes, the playoffs don't begin fast enough.

Laker Hater: I've seen Steve Blake burn the Lakers with his outside shooting no matter what uniform his wearing, but a triple double? Are you kidding me? He actually had more rebounds than Lamar, no joke. Will he ever get another one, doubtful, but then again there is plenty weak teams, if he ever gets another triple double I will wear his teams colors every time he plays the Lakers.

Overtime: I don't care for stars taking days off towards the end of season although I understand the injury risk. Back in '90 Rat Riley rested his starters except for Iron Man A.C. Green on the last game vs. the Blazers, fans and opponents were irate and gave the Lakers a pounding on a meaningless game. Less than a month later the Lakes starters again were resting, but this time the whole Lakers staff joined them as they had just been eliminated by the Phoenix Suns in 5 games on their own home court. Yes that extra time did wonders didn't it? I hope all this extra time off for Bryant pays off.

The real season now begins.