Next Article ? It can come easy for Bryant, Bynum and Gasol Kevin Ding column: In a season where almost nothing has come easy for the Lakers, their victory in Dallas signaled a breakthrough for a team tired of fighting everything.
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By KEVIN DING
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
DALLAS – Andrew Bynum likes complicated things.
Tricked-out cars, powerful computers, thorny communication challenges such as those he tackled in reading the conflict-reducing "Instant Persuasion" book recently.
Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum celebrate in the final moments of the Lakers' victory in Dallas.TONY GUTIERREZ, AP ADVERTISEMENT After the Lakers missed six consecutive free throws down the stretch Wednesday night in Dallas, the guy who wanted to study engineering in college began his mathematical musing: "I'd love to know what the odds were on that."
"The foundation," as Kobe Bryant recently called himself, former medical student Pau Gasol and the emerging Bynum, is awesomely skilled but also very smart. The Lakers are an experienced, intelligent basketball team that has embraced the struggle of learning an array of new ideas and concepts this season.
And as satisfying as they find it to be mentally challenged ...
Man, the Lakers really needed their game of basketball to start feeling simpler.
Fueled by improved camaraderie from Bryant throwing a supportive arm over Gasol's slumping shoulders via Kobe's own style of public relations, the Lakers are starting to see straight lines, even if they no longer form a triangle.
We are starting to see how much more fun it is becoming for the Lakers to play.
They're figuring out some things that work, depending on what the opposing defense is intent on taking away. The Dallas approach, as it often is for Lakers opponents, is to shrink the floor on Bryant, trapping him whenever two defenders have the opportunity.
You saw how easy the game can become for the Lakers against that style Wednesday night. The Lakers ran pick-and-rolls with Bryant and Gasol, knowing Gasol would be left alone if the floor was spread properly while two Mavericks collapsed on Bryant. Gasol searched out space in the middle to catch Bryant's passes and stepped quickly and confidently into shots.
Or Gasol spotted a rotating defender coming and trusted immediately that Bynum would duck in and be a Texas-sized target near the rim, no one bigger than a small forward possibly left to cover him. On one of the key plays down the stretch Wednesday night, Bryant correctly read that Gasol would be covered, so Bryant just threw the ball directly to Bynum for the alley-oop dunk.
The whole thing served as a graphic representation of how easy the game can be for the three-headed "foundation."
Afterward, Gasol expressed implicit pride in how Bryant's subtle actions were backing up those bold words, how Bryant could be seen now "distributing the ball a little more." Bynum happily talked about how lining them three up like dominos means it just takes a couple quick strokes based on the defense's alignment and then "it's over."
Simple. As easy and productive as Bynum's beloved pregame 5-hour ENERGY shots.
It had to start to go that way for there to be any chance of postseason success, because teams that find the regular season draining get lapped quickly in the playoffs by teams with full tanks.
"The media and the fans want this thing to be sped up," first-year Lakers coach Mike Brown said after the game and before saying words that will shock the majority of Lakers fans:
"We're making progress a lot quicker than I thought," Brown said.
It has obviously helped the past two games that Bryant hopped on his soapbox and pointed at "the elephant in the room."
"You address it, talk about it, and I think everybody can relax a little bit more instead of tip-toeing around the issue," Bryant said.
Gasol agreed, saying: "Adversity, going against a negative, it always gives you an opportunity to get together and be even closer."
The game in Dallas was, aside from those uncertain late-game foul shots, the perfect fusion of the Lakers' new strategies and their old confidence.
Brown felt it would be odd if he as a newcomer tried to point out before the game that this was the Lakers' first trip back since the dynasty died in Dallas last year. No matter.
"Fish reminded us," Bynum said.
Derek Fisher serving as both moving orator and clutch shooter is one of the Lakers' longtime tenets that had been badly shaken. Yet everybody needs those staples, some faiths you bank on or turn to that don't require deep analytical machinations.
Bynum has taken to jumping rope on the court for the last two minutes of halftime, a most unconventional NBA warmup tactic, but he seemed to get more of a kick out of breaking one of the handles on his jump rope Wednesday night. Bynum engaged in the way he is so good at, patiently repairing the handle that he'd pulled off the rope, and moved on to the exercise.
Yet the philosophy that even the people most capable of complex thought eventually come around to is that you'd better keep some other things in life simple to keep from driving yourself crazy. Everything in moderation, you know?
For the Lakers, this was never going to be a season of successes strung together on easy street.
Well, now we can see it won't be a never-ending struggle, either.
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