As the season tipped off two weeks ago the ingredients were all there for the Los Angeles Lakers to have a fantastic season of basketball. Off-season acquisitions of the monstrous Dwight Howard and pass-master Steve Nash would be enough to propel most teams to stardom.
Throw in the likes of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol and you’d be right to think you’re onto a winner. So far though that hadn’t materialised as the Lakers had stumbled badly to an appalling 1-4 start in the NBA leading to Head Coach Mike Brown’s departure. Failure to resolve the team’s play would lead to a more costly casualty though – The Lakers’ (and Kobe’s) chances at another NBA Championship.
Brown’s assistant coach Bernie Bickerstaff was given the chance to stable the ship on an interim basis as the Lakers searched for a new permanent Head Coach. A home fixture then against another struggling franchise, the Golden State Warriors, was an ideal opportunity for the Lakers to pull together and show any potential new coaches what they’d have to work with. Lakers centre, Dwight Howard set the tone for the game early on, using his superior size and strength beneath the basket to grab a rebound and smash it home leaving the Warriors’ defence stranded.
Kobe Bryant, never one to be outshone, was happy to get in on the act for the Lakers laying on Pau Gasol with a sweet pass capitalising on another lapse in concentration by the Warriors. The Warriors’ superb three-point shooting was the only thing keeping them in the contest at this point with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson showing off a great shooting technique from beyond the arc. Again though, the enigmatic Kobe Bryant took control and shot three-pointer after three-pointer after three-pointer – very much a case of anything you can do I can do better.
The Warriors’ biggest lead in the game was three points however in the second half the Lakers slaughtered any chances of a Warriors win, taking the game by the scruff of the neck and putting it firmly out of the Warriors’ reach. Bryant and Gasol were the main instigators again – at the centre of everything good about the Lakers’ play. Kobe finished with a well-deserved and well taken, 27 points whereas Gasol finished with a double-double of 14 points and 16 rebounds, leading the Lakers to a crushing 101-77 victory over Golden State.
If this performance doesn’t attract any big name coaches to the role I don’t know what will but it was clear throughout who the fans wanted as their head coach, Phil Jackson. Chants of “We Want Phil” echoed around the Staples Centre throughout the game but after already having coached the Lakers twice in his illustrious career, will Jackson want to return for one last hurrah? Only time will tell but for the moment Lakers fans can take massive encouragement from the performance their team put on for them tonight and can look forward now – with six home games in a row coming up – to kick-starting their season.