NBA Playoffs 2012: Why the Lakers Won't Come Back from Game 1 Loss to Thunder

There are plenty of inferences you can make about the Oklahoma City Thunder's 119-90 thrashing of the Los Angeles Lakers Monday night, but most of those inferences can be boiled down into two theses about the fate of the series. 

You could be of the opinion that the Thunder's dominance was a relative aberration, a happenstance simply spurred by an raucous home crowd and internal motivation stemming from Metta World Peace dropping the Peaceple's Elbow on James Harden on April 22.  

That theory assumes the series will rebound to its expected status as the preeminent of the conference semifinals in Game 2.  That a fully rested and fully motivated Thunder team was a mismatch for an exhausted and ill-prepared Lakers team just 48 hours removed from a difficult Game 7 victory over the Denver Nuggets.  

The aberration theory doesn't mean you must be picking the Lakers to recover from Monday night and pull the upset over the Thunder.  To borrow from Dan Savage for a second, it just assumes that it (in this case the series) gets better.  Much, much, better.  

The other theory is that we're on the precipice of a redux of the Lakers' second-round series against the eventual NBA champion Dallas Mavericks from last season.

It assumes  the Lakers are a complete mismatch against a more motivated and more talented Thunder team. That we're on the verge of a four- or five-game series followed by another tiresome Lakers offseason where rampant "Dwight to LA" rumors dominate the summer. 

For me, 95 percent of the time I would fall into the former camp.  It sounds far more sensible and follows the basic analytic theory that games are played in a vacuum with very few residual buildups from previous contests.  

This will prove to be the exception, however, and it comes down to four distinct reasons.

The point guard mismatch

Coming into the series, the most obvious mismatch was between Russell Westbrook and the Lakers' two-headed vast abyss of defensive tenacity at the point guard position.  

That mismatch was exemplified in Game 1 as Westbrook shot 10-of-16 from the field, exploding for a 27-7-9 line in just 27 minutes.  On the other hand, Ramon Sessions and Steve Blake combined for a 2-4-7 line that only further exacerbated their defensive shortcomings.  

Neither Sessions or Blake are becoming lockdown defenders overnight, and we know Westbrook won't stop firing until the final whistle sounds, so there's absolutely no reason expect any attrition in his play for the rest of the series.  The best-case scenario for Laker fans is that Sessions and Blake regain some offensive form to help offset Westbrook's dominance.  

The Pau Gasol enigma

If we're saying that Sessions and Blake represent an abyss of defensive tenacity, it's impossible to not be equally critical of Gasol, whose past two postseasons represent how psychological fragility can impede performance.  

Gasol admitted his abysmal play during last postseason stemmed from "off-the-court distractions" (rumored to be a breakup with his fiance), but what's his excuse for his equally terrible play through eight games of the 2012 playoffs?

No matter the excuse, Gasol's playoff drop-off from the past two seasons have been eerily similar:

2011 Regular Season:  18.8 PPG, 10.2 RPG, 3.3 APG, 52.9 FG%

2011 Postseason:  13.1 PPG, 7.8 RPG, 3.8 APG, 42 FG%

2012 Regular Season:  17.4 PPG, 10.4 PPG, 3.7 APG, 50.1 FG%

2012 Postseason:  12.5 PPG, 8.9 RPG, 3.9 APG, 43 FG%

I only included offensive statistics because Gasol's defensive numbers show no sign of significant depreciation or appreciation, but his offensive dip could give credence to the theory that Gasol is unhappy in Los Angeles as the decline is only a two-year phenomenon.  

Regardless of his unhappiness, Gasol is a top-15 player in the league and should be getting far more heat in the media for his lack of performance.  

The Thunder's bench depth, and the Lakers' lack thereof 

Again, this is something we knew coming into the series. Oklahoma City boasts one of the deepest benches in basketball, led by Sixth Man of the Year James Harden, while Los Angeles has easily the weakest bench left in the playoffs after allowing vital cogs Shannon Brown and Lamar Odom go during the NBA's aborted offseason.  

The Lakers bench scored 26 points Monday, which would be enough for a win on a normal night for the top-heavy Lakers, but that number is deceitful considering the junk time of the fourth quarter.  And all of this is before mentioning that the Thunder's bench amassed 50 points, an impressive number regardless of any extenuating circumstances.

I'm obviously not inventing the wheel here, but the Lakers need to find some semblance of reliability off the bench or this series will be as ugly as I think it will.  

Team camaraderie

For the most part, the media confuses chemistry and camaraderie.  Anyone who plays basketball with a group of people for any extended period of time develops a working team chemistry.  There's an understood team hierarchy and everyone knows each other's rhythms. You know Todd loves the three from the wing and Stu likes to be fed the ball in his right hand in the post so he can hit the quick turnaround.

Chemistry is easy, but poor camaraderie can derail even the best teams.  You don't have to like your teammates as people, just not to hate them so much that you subconsciously screw your squad.  Kobe and Shaquille O'Neal were never BFF's off the court, but they had a poetic working relationship until the camaraderie became so toxic that it eroded their working relationship.

Ironically, Kobe hasn't disliked a group of players this much since his first post-Shaq season in 2004, and it shows through his quotes in the media and shot selection.

The Thunder, on the other hand, have gone out of their way to prove how much they enjoy each other's company both on and off the court, despite the media's incessant attempts to drive a wedge between Durant and Westbrook following last year's playoff loss to the Mavericks.

Simply put, Oklahoma City will win handily because it's more talented and enjoys playing together more. 

Yeah, the wheel?  Definitely not getting reinvented here.