The operative question to come out of last night's surprising 95-92 Indiana Pacers victory over the Los Angeles Lakers is this: did Indiana take the game away from the Lakers, or did Los Angeles give it away with poor play.
Naturally, it depends on your perspective. For my money, it looked like the former. The Lakers certainly could and should have played better, but I think their poor play occurred in large part due to Indiana's defensive intensity and offensive execution. SB Nation's Pacers blog Indy Cornrows agrees:
The Pacers took it to the Lakers last night and earned that W by out-playing the defending champs. Along the way, thanks to Roy Hibbert, the Pacers exposed the soft middle that the Lakers are playing with while they await Andrew Bynum's return. Pardon me if I don't shed a tear because the Lakers trotted out plenty of talent last night and were simply beaten.
Lakers fans, however, don't agree with this. SB Nation's Lakers blog Silver Screen and Roll said the Pacers "earned" the win, but was also very critical of the Lakers' performance.
Honestly, I thought we were done with games like this. The lack of energy, the refusal to buckle down and execute the offense, the inability to muster enthusiasm against a B-list opponent, the disappearance of the bench, the reckless hope that Kobe Bryant's greatness would allow an uninspired team to steal a victory where it didn't deserve one: tonight's disaster was lifted directly from the 2009 Laker family album. We sat through plenty of these depressing spectacles last year, but the roaring start to the new season that saw the defending champs flatten all who stood in their way had me convinced that this team was different. That it wasn't as vulnerable to lapses in effort and concentration. It seems I gave them too much credit, too early.
The truth is that it's probably somewhere in the middle. The Pacers played their hearts out, but the Lakers could have still won with a better performance.
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