ShareThisThere are some sports franchises that are so much a part of the fabric of their community that any sneeze or twinge or burp -- any imperfection, period -- becomes a civic crisis.
You could apply that description to a couple of dozen NFL franchises, definitely the Boston Red Sox in baseball, any Canadian hockey franchise ... and, needless to say, the Los Angeles Lakers.
The combination of obsessiveness and overreaction is mostly amusing. It's a little over a month into the season, and the Lakers are 17-2 after Sunday night's 105-92 victory over Milwaukee. Yet the blown leads in two of the three games on last week's road trip were treated as a symptom of some overarching malady that would jeopardize the local heroes' championship dreams.
And this was just days after fevered speculation over whether the Lakers could eclipse the 1995-96 Bulls' record of 72 victories in a season, speculation that Coach Phil Jackson immediately rejected.
For what it's worth, they're now on a pace for 73.4 victories. (If you can figure out how to calculate four-tenths of a victory, let us know.)
Here's another example: Sunday evening the Milwaukee Bucks made 7 of 21 shots in the second quarter, 14 of 45 in the first half, and went into intermission trailing 43-31. Yet commenters on a popular Lakers' blog were suggesting in a live chat during the second quarter that the team's defense was somehow deficient.
Really.
Jackson, whose opinion matters more than most, acknowledged that his players have been operating at peak efficiency only in spurts.
"I saw them playing exceptionally well for 12 to 14 minutes in the first half Friday (in Washington), then in the second half playing 10 minutes exceptionally well and then losing their focus a little bit," he said.
Tuesday in Indiana the Lakers blew a 16-point fourth-quarter lead and lost. Friday night in Washington they were up 19 in the fourth and narrowly averted another buzzer-beating loss.
Sunday night they entered the fourth quarter up by 20, and handled it well enough that Jackson was able to give end-of-the-bench guys Josh Powell, Chris Mihm and Sun Yue minutes. Yet giving up 38 points in the fourth quarter, after allowing only 31 in the first half, was an irritant.
"I thought our defense was exceptional for the first three quarters," Jackson said. "It got away from us in the fourth."
These things happen during the course of an 82-game season. And it's human nature to relax with a big lead against an overmatched team.
But when you're hungry to get back to the NBA Finals, and win it this time, there's a certain amount of impatience with the natural growth process.
"You look at that first 10 games, we were boom, boom, boom, clickin'," Lamar Odom said. "The last three or four games we haven't been playing well.
"Forget (human nature). We're striving to be the best team in the league, and it's going to take hard work."
The Lakers will adjust as necessary. They'll figure out how to hold leads, how to handle the hostility of the road, how to weather fatigue and, yes, occasional boredom against teams that aren't as good as they are.
Bottom line, their devoted followers couldn't be any more demanding or expect more of the Lakers than they expect of themselves.
So relax, folks. It's early. Save the nervous breakdowns for May and June.
E-mail Jim Alexander at jalexander(at)PE.com
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.Column
