{"id":2007,"date":"2004-06-07T02:38:24","date_gmt":"2004-06-07T09:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2004\/06\/so-much-for-laker-triumphalism\/"},"modified":"2004-06-07T02:38:24","modified_gmt":"2004-06-07T09:38:24","slug":"so-much-for-laker-triumphalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/07\/so-much-for-laker-triumphalism\/","title":{"rendered":"So much for Laker triumphalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tI wasn&#8217;t surprised to see the Pistons run circles around the Lakers on their home court in game 1 of the NBA finals, frankly. The Pistons showed they have both talent and character in their series with Indiana, and the ability to carry out the coaches plans with perfection. They&#8217;re a team that lacks a super-duper star, but what they have is more important &#8211; 11 guys who are willing to check their egos at the door and go out on the court and do whatever it takes to win. The Lakers are basically a two man team with a supporting cast of waterboys who get so flummoxed whenever they touch the basketball they turn it over as quick as possible. Shaq and Kobe are great players, don&#8217;t get me wrong, but it&#8217;s a team sport, right? Putting single coverage on Shaq and Kobe &#8211; basically demolishing their star status and making it a five-on-five game &#8211; was all it took to blow their minds.<\/p>\n<p>Unless the Lakers can learn the fundamentals of NBA defense in two days, the Pistons will win it in 5.<\/p>\n<p>See Laker <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/basketball\/nba\/lakers\/\">soul-searching here.<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wasn&#8217;t surprised to see the Pistons run circles around the Lakers on their home court in game 1 of the NBA finals, frankly. The Pistons showed they have both talent and character in their series with Indiana, and the ability to carry out the coaches plans with perfection. They&#8217;re a team that lacks a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/07\/so-much-for-laker-triumphalism\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;So much for Laker triumphalism&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-wn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}