Los Angeles Lakers-Milwaukee Bucks: Kobe Bryant, Shannon Brown Go Deer Hunting

S—. I forgot it’s an away game.

I hurry downstairs to my television to find out that we’re down 57-59 at the start of the third quarter. Three-game road trip, and we might be starting it off with a fat, ugly L on our foreheads.

Jennings had torn up the Lakers backcourt with 19 points in the half. This is the guy who ruined my fantasy last year with .16 percent shooting on a week that I needed him bad. Again, our defense just isn’t there, especially now that Ratliff is out with arthroscopic surgery. Bogut was owning the boards with 9 offensive rebounds and 18 total, when Pau and Odom combined for 17 altogether.

Fisher brought the game back with a 26-footer and a driving lay-up smothered by three defenders to tie the game at 66. I was relieved to know that we finally came back, after being outscored in the second quarter 25 to 30. But we were trading baskets now. Something needed to change.

During almost every Lakers game, they run polls through text messages to get the audience’s opinion on who came off as the biggest surprise off the bench. We knew we were signing up for a stable playmaker with Blake who can hit the threes and run the triangle offense well.

Barnes, also, does not surprise us when he relentlessly jumps for missed shots, dives for loose balls, or just plays downright gritty defense. Brown, however, blew me away these past 10 games and made me repent for wanting to scrap his salary for the likes of Raja Bell.

With 1:45 left on the third, in comes Shannon Brown—meek as a sheep, never looking like he belongs there in the midst of all the roaring testosterone. And he bolts all of a sudden. Covered by two defenders, he runs the baseline for a lay-up I never imagined he would make. From the camera angle on the television, it just looks impossible, but he nets two points. The scoreboard slaps me across my incredulity.

“I definitely don’t want to be remembered as just a dunker, but [rather] as a great basketball player,” Brown said after the All-Star game back in February, and it rings true even more today, as he gave the Lakers a huge boost off the bench with 4 threes and 16 points in the fourth quarter.

It seems his game has evolved from merely dunking. I used the word “merely” when there’s nothing ordinary about the way he jumps, but his offense was flat most of last season apart from his athletic abilities.

With all the Shannon Brown coverage, it is, in no way, ignoring the massive contributions from Kobe Bryant tonight, who caught the Bucks frozen in headlights with his 31 points and 7 rebounds; but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. There’s a reason why No. 24 jerseys flooded the stadium at Bradly Center.

Tomorrow the Lakers play the Pistons in Detroit. Can the Lakers finish this road trip on a perfect record? It’s not impossible if the killer B’s continue to produce the same efforts off the bench, but the question still lies with the defense. Tonight marks another game where the opponent posted over a 100 points.

Now that we can expect Ratliff to be off the roster for four to six weeks, our center position suddenly seems…very thin. Let’s hope Bynum comes back soon and reinforces his strong presence in the paint, so we can put an end to our defensive woes.

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