The NBA schedule can be very cruel sometimes. Back-to-back games in two different cities, long road trips, four games in five nights, etc. It’s very easy for NBA teams to put forth a poor effort under those circumstances.
The Lakers Had Reason To Roll Over, But Didn’t
The Lakers’ situation was even more difficult than usual. They had a late-night game Saturday in New Jersey, followed by an early-evening affair in Detroit against the Pistons on Sunday. To make matters worse, the entire east coast was enveloped in snow due to the Blizzard of 2009, giving the Lakers two impossible options. Either charter out to Detroit in the snow, or wait until the snow let up and fly out on gameday.
As Silver Screen and Roll, SB Nation’s Lakers blog, wrote the Lakers chose the former and still took it to the Pistons.
After beating the New Jersey Nets last night, 103-85, the Los Angeles Lakers were left with a tough decision, due to ridiculous weather circumstances. Try (with no guarantee of success) to take the normal charter flight after the game and arrive early the next day in Detroit, or stay in New Jersey overnight, and travel on game day. The early start of tonight’s game against the Pistons made sure that, no matter which option the Lakers chose, they’d be suffering a little bit more tonight than you normally would even in a regular back-to-back situation. The Lakers decided to go for broke, and were lucky enough to get out of New Jersey, but they did not arrive to their team hotel until 4:30 in the morning, leaving them roughly 12 hours before their next game.
And it didn’t make a lick of difference.
No fight at all.
The Pistons looked alive for maybe the first few minutes of the game, when they jumped out to a 9-4 lead, but were completely dominated the rest of the way by the defending champs. And to think it was the Lakers, not the Pistons, playing their last game of a five game road trip and arrived in Detroit around 5 AM Sunday morning due to the snow storms.
There are many ways to separate the truly great teams in a given season from everyone else, but few are more effective than the schedule adversity test the Lakers just passed with flying colors.
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