LOS ANGELES — It’s a standard scene in every old war movie. A ragtag, weary outfit, battered and bruised, is charged with holding a key bridge in order to save France from the advancing German army.
If the bridge goes, the free world goes with it.
For the Lakers, entering Sunday’s game at Staples against the Charlotte Hornets sitting at 0-5 for the first time since 1957 and facing run of high end opponents over the next 10-plus days, Sunday’s game was that bridge. Lose again, and lord knows when they might actually win.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles would explode with schnitzel restaurants.
For 24 minutes, it didn’t look good. No team in the NBA has spent more time playing from behind than the Lakers, and six minutes in the Hornets led by nine. After a Kobe Bryant jumper trimmed the lead to one with just over three minutes left in the half, the Hornets finished the quarter on a 14-6 run. Kobe looked ready to shiv someone. It didn’t look good.
But a funny thing happened on the road to oblivion. In the third quarter, the Lakers outscored Charlotte by 19, and never let the Hornets back in.
The Lakers held the bridge.
It might not seem like much, but one win helps turn them from a freak show attraction providing high-end content for Charles Barkley and the TNT studio crew — yes, the Lakers noticed — back into a garden variety bad basketball team, similar to other bad teams around the league. It releases the pressure heading into a back-to-back in Memphis and New Orleans, and changes the questions they all have to answer.
Defensively, they have 12 minutes of ultra-positive third quarter game film to watch, in which Charlotte missed 18 of 23 shots. Offensively, the Lakers shot 64 percent as a team in the second half, one in which the shot distribution was far less skewed towards Kobe than any other 24 minute stretch in the five previous games.
Sunday, at least, Carlos Boozer (16 points, five assists) and Jeremy Lin (21 points, seven assists, one turnover) stepped up. “They both were told to be more aggressive, and not to defer to Kobe as much. Try to be what you guys are. Carlos has always been a pretty good scorer in this league. Jeremy has proven he can make plays and make shots,” Scott said. “It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, it was more of just telling those guys to be themselves and play more aggressively on both ends of the floor.”
The Lakers had four days off to rest and prepare for Sunday’s game, a stretch of uninterrupted time for improvement they won’t see again, allowing them to add a little more to the playbook and along with defensive wrinkles, including a full-court press and a zone. But fundamentally, they’ll wake Monday morning with the same basic problems. The defense still defaults to leaky, and offense can be hard to generate. Scott acknowledged through the week how the Lakers, rightly, will be underdogs against almost every team they play. So while nobody in their locker room was drinking the Kool-Aid, the win still has an important benefit.
“Mentally I think what it does for us is gives us the vision (that) we can win, that we have gotten better,” Scott said.
Stringing together enough wins to stay within shouting distance of a playoff spot demands the Lakers be far, far greater than the sum of their parts, because if there are other teams in the Western Conference with less talent on hand, it isn’t by much. Scott wants to see his group turn 24 minutes of good basketball — Sunday’s second half — into 48, not just over one game, but several.
Can’t happen if doubt stunts whatever growth is available. The Lakers desperately needed a positive result to help keep faith in themselves, even if the rest of us believe it unjustified.
So Sunday is unlikely to start some shock-the-world run, but much to the disappointment of sports talk radio hosts nationwide, a huge talking point has been removed. The vultures can go circle somewhere else for a few days as the car crash fascination surrounding them subsides. For a night, these Lakers fed equally desperate fans (free tacos, for winning and holding Charlotte under 100 points) and themselves. Even the little things momentarily improved.
“It’s nice to have a press conference where I don’t drop an F-bomb,” Bryant said.
Brian Kamenetzky is a regular contributor to SheridanHoops.com. Follow him and his brother, Andy, on Twitter.
couldnt find one real picture of Lin and Kobe?