The Lakers arrive for their annual visit to TD Garden as a shell of the team that defeated the Celtics in the 2010 NBA Finals. After being embarrassed by the Mavericks in last year’s Western Conference semifinals, Lakers management decided to nudge Phil Jackson into retirement and reject top assistant Brian Shaw for the head coaching job, hiring former Cavaliers coach Mike Brown.
And when the NBA rescinded the three-team trade for Chris Paul that included Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol, the Lakers moved the devastated Odom to Dallas in a salary-clearing trade.
The new Lakers bunch includes players such as Jason Kapono, Josh McRoberts, and former Celtic Troy Murphy - not exactly a stellar supporting cast for a championship-contending team. A weakened core means Kobe Bryant has had to do the heavy lifting, but he has been brilliant, despite a torn ligament in his right wrist that he told reporters yesterday has healed.
Despite his gaudy numbers, cinch Hall of Fame status, and five NBA championships, Bryant remains his team’s biggest critic. The Lakers are 14-11, second in the shaky Pacific Division but in a four-way logjam for fifth place in the Western Conference. They have lost two straight and six of nine.
“Terrible, awful, disgusting in patches,’’ Bryant said when asked about the team’s play. “We just don’t have a big margin for error.
“We play very well for long stretches of a ballgame and then we have a couple of minutes where we don’t execute very well defensively and teams tend to bust us open in those stretches.
“It’s not as bad as the record may indicate. There’s a lot of positives there and we’re close to really turning the corner. We’ve just got to keep at it.’’
His quotes sound eerily applicable to the local team. The Celtics could have seven more wins if they had had better fourth-quarter execution. And on Monday, the Lakers led the 76ers with 2:33 left before Lou Williams came off the Philadelphia bench and burned their defense.
