Kobe Bryant and Lakers Sent Packing by NBA's New Big 3

Time is of the essence for the Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers after Monday night's series clincher.

The Thunder, as they use their most recent 106-90 win over NBA royalty as a milestone to mark the beginnings of a budding, young dynasty. The Lakers, as they embark upon a long and painful offseason of combing over the recent past and reshaping of the future.

For OKC, it's off to the Western Conference finals for the second year in a row to go toe-to-toe with a red-hot team from Texas. This time around, it'll be the run-'n-gun San Antonio Spurs standing where the eventual-champion Dallas Mavericks once did.

One of the league's oldest Big Three (Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili) against the youngest (Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden).

San Antonio may be a transition team these days, but it will be hard-pressed to keep pace with the lightning-quick fast breaks of OKC's best. The Lakers may be "turrrble" (in the immortal words of Charles Barkley) in transition defense, but that does little to detract from how impressive it was to see the Thunder pile up 30 fast-break points in Game 5.

Once OKC got out running, there was no stopping them, about which Westbrook was kind enough to remind Ramon Sessions in the third quarter:

All told, OKC's Big Three combined for 70 points, 21 rebounds, 12 assists and five steals.

Or, as they might refer to it, Monday.

They may be young—Durant and Westbrook are 23, Harden is 22—but don't call them immature. Two fourth-quarter comebacks and a dominant second half to close out the series showed that the Thunder have the ruthless determination and team-wide belief indicative of and necessary for a championship run. 

But while the Thunder's terrific trio continued to rise, LA's could do little but crumble, and not just in Game 5. Laker Nation can grumble all it wants about how the Purple and Gold woulda, coulda, shoulda been up 3-1 in the series coming into Monday's mea culpa.

But they weren't, in no small part because their closer (Kobe Bryant) failed to do just that in Games 2 and 4. He did what he could to make up for those respective disasters with a 42-point (and no-assist) outburst.

Aside from Sessions' six-turnover disaster to cap off a career-defining playoff mess to seal his fate, unfortunately for the Lakers, offense wasn't the problem.

In reality, it was LA's defense (i.e. Mike Brown's calling card) that proved to be its biggest problem. Andrew Bynum's foul-plagued finale saw the seven-foot All-Star pull down four rebounds in 35 minutes and decline to box out on the boards and challenge on defense all night. That effort (or lack thereof) may well have Bynum on the way to a certain central Floridian team in exchange for a certain center with a sore back, though I won't say which (h/t Got 'Em Coach):

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Hey Bynum, #EnjoyOrlandotwitpic.com/9nv952

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"— Got 'Em Coach (@GotEm_Coach) May 22, 2012"

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As for Pau Gasol, his ticket out of town was bought and paid for months ago, when the Lakers had him headed to the Houston Rockets in the nixed Chris Paul trade. He's a great player, to be sure, but one who often looked lost without the comfort of Phil Jackson's Triangle Offense.

It doesn't help either big guy's case that LA was dominated on the boards, 51-35, including 14 offensive rebounds surrendered to OKC.

That being said, the mandate at the feet of Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak remains the same: Make the most of Kobe's twilight by surrounding him with a championship-caliber roster.

As are the details: Find a point guard who can ease Kobe's burden and play a lick (or two) of defense, and add some perimeter shooting.

And get younger and more athletic wherever and whenever possible, to keep up with the younger, more athletic teams that are now on the prowl amongst the NBA's elite.

Like, say, the Thunder. They're clearly the future of the league, a squad whose success is predicated on the spectacular play of 20-somethings who just so happen to be superstars.

They have an opportunity to speed the present up to where they are and have been since leaving the city of Seattle behind. For the "Zombie Sonics," it's a matter of moving forward to put another piece of the past back to where it ostensibly belongs. First, it was the Dallas Mavericks, whose title defense amounted to little more than what may well go down as the most exciting sweep in NBA history.

Then, it was the Lakers, who fashioned two separate dynasties in just over a decade.

Now, it's on to the Spurs, who've fashioned the twilight of the Tim Duncan era into a team capable of one last triumphant trip down the River Walk.

As Steve Miller may well have sung, time, like the Thunder, keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future.

Whether anyone—the Lakers, the Spurs or otherwise—can catch them remains to be seen.

Follow @Josh_E_Martin