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Lakers should be embarrassed by loss
Charley Rosen/Fox Sports

Not only did the Oklahoma City Thunder thoroughly embarrass the Los Angeles Lakers 110-89 to even the series at 2, the defending champs thoroughly embarrassed themselves.

On the heels of OKC’s hard-fought win in Game 3, the Lakers absolutely needed to make major adjustments in several critical areas. Their inability to make these adjustments leaves them without any real resources as the series moves back to Los Angeles. This has to be a frightening prospect for what was supposed to be a cruise for the best team in the West.

Oklahoma City’s incredible effort aside, the Lakers are paying their dues for waltzing through the last few weeks of the regular season in their arrogant belief that whomever they faced in the opening series would go belly-up as soon as the defending champions stepped on to the court.

Instead of being intimidated, however, the youngest team in the NBA was too quick, too unselfish, too deep, too resourceful and too committed to playing earnest defense to give the Lakers any chance of winning Game 4.

And by sweeping both games on their home court, the Thunder just might have become too confident for the Lakers to beat.

Two games into this series I was certainly hoping for a different narrative than "the Lakers don't care about playing hard," but now I think I'm buying into the media hype. The Lakers are playing bad but more upsettingly they are playing like there is a tomorrow, like its a foregone conclusion that the rest of the Western Conference will take one look at the L.A. roster and decide its not worth it to put up a fight. That wasn't the case with Houston and Denver last season and its obviously not the case now. Guys like Russell Westbrook are beating guys like Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom. I think I've resigned myself to the idea that L.A. isn't going to win the title. The next dynastic chapter in the Lakers storybook of championships may have been a false alarm.

P.S. - At least soomeone is playing worth a shit in L.A. This guy made a half court shot for $230,000.