The San Antonio Spurs are supposed to be banged up. The Spurs were supposed to struggle. The Spurs are too old to be this good. The Los Angeles Lakers will come out the better team as they fought to get into the playoffs. Everything was said, but when the action took place, the L.A. Lakers' effort wasn't enough to stop the Spurs do what they've done for a long time now; win basketball games.
The Lakers are the old ones who are banged up and lacking scorers. The loss against the Spurs in Game 1 snapped a five-game winning streak that helped the Lakers get into the playoffs. As a result of their last victory over the Houston Rockets, the Lakers took the seventh seed in the West and because the Oklahoma City Thunder played better basketball than the Spurs down the stretch, San Antonio fell to the second seed.
The matchup against the Spurs is better for the Lakers, analysts said and yes, it made sense, but nobody though the Spurs were going to come out firing the way they did in Game 1. Manu Ginobili was counted out, yet, he was responsible for giving the Spurs the boost they needed. He single handedly outscored the Lakers' bench which totaled only 10 points in Game 1.
Ginobili was 3-5 from three and seemed to break the Lakers will whenever they thought they were making a comeback.
Steve Nash was inefficient as he played in his first game after missing almost a month of basketball. He was wide open and couldn't knock down the shots. Whatever the Lakers did on defense, they immediately gave it back on offense as they had 18 turnovers. Metta World Peace held his own on the defensive end, though he only scored five points in Game 1. Jodie Meeks showed up on defense too, but he only had four points.
Pretty much with Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard as the prime scorers, the Lakers don't stand a chance. Howard needs to score more than 20 points, somewhere in the upwards of 35-40 to give the Lakers a legit chance to win. This doesn't look like it will happen as Tim Duncan is too good of a defender to allow Howard to push him around.
The Lakers are done. They need Kobe. San Antonio Spurs sweep the series and advance to the Western Conference semis in four games.
