--Orange County Register
None of these Lakers, these guys who got swept out of the Garden like a purple compost heap, bears the real pressure now.
After this, the questions all land on Andrew Bynum.
Son, you better be as good as you looked.
More precisely, you better become the colossus Mitch Kupchak thought you would, when the Lakers general manager didn't go after Kevin Garnett.
On the ninth possession of Game 6, Garnett got the ball low, knocked over Pau Gasol, and scored. For the rest of the half the Lakers kept listening for whistles that never sounded, kept waiting for someone to watch over them. Instead they were stripped, dunked upon, knocked down and ultimately humiliated by a Boston Celtics club that had spent four hours on an LAX airport runway Monday morning.
The score was 131-92, a record margin for a Finals elimination game. No team has ever scored that many points in such a game, and neither the Celtics scored nor the Lakers gave up 131 during this season.
Although Paul Pierce was the Finals MVP and Rajon Rondo was the Game 5 catalyst, Garnett got Boston to the summit. Embarrassed by a bad Game 5, Garnett matched the Lakers' field goals in the first quarter (five). Capping a lifetime of double-doubles, Garnett recorded 28 with 14 rebounds, and late in the first half he cupped the ball behind his head, to counteract a rare fit of defense by Lamar Odom, and then slammed it against the box on the glass and watched it ricochet through the hoop, from the floor.
That gave Boston the same 20-point lead that the Lakers had in Game 4. There are no such holes in Celtics pockets.
"You know the bully that always used to wait for you at school?" Garnett said. "Then one day you knock him down and you wonder how he's going to come back at you. And then you show up tomorrow and he's not there. That's the way I feel right now."
The previous high margin for a title game was 129-96, by the Celtics over the Lakers in 1965. (That season ended on April 28.) That was Russell and Cousy, but no Boston team has ever been less merciful than this one.
"Let's not just win, let's win by 30," Coach Doc Rivers told the Celtics beforehand. Garnett got lob passes and dunked them. Rondo blitzed every Lakers big man who dared to dribble. Celtics closed in from both flanks to swallow up Kobe Bryant, who missed 15 of 22 shots. Unfortunately for the Lakers viewing audience, there was no other game to switch to.
What does this have to do with Bynum, who saw his breakout year end with a knee injury Jan. 13?
Well, Garnett was on the market last summer. He's certainly the teammate Bryant wanted, during his summer of distemper, but then Boston got Ray Allen and sent Al Jefferson and a bunch of flotsam to the Twin Cities for KG. Make sure Minnesota GM Kevin McHale, whose number hangs from the ceiling, gets at least a chip of this ring.
And the Lakers steadfastly said no to everyone who asked about Bynum, including McHale in Minnesota. After he was hurt the Lakers got Gasol. Next year they'll presumably have Bynum, Odom and Gasol, but here Gasol and Odom were too light and too reticent to answer this challenge. That all falls to Bynum now _ the shot-blocking, the competitiveness, the attitude.
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