True Grit or: Your Home Court Means Nothing

Ever since their Game 4 loss to Oklahoma City in the First Round, the Lakers have been on a tear. While their margins of victory over the Thunder and the Jazz have been relatively unimpressive (except for their Game 5 blowout of OKC), the toughness they've exhibited since that aforementioned humiliating defeat at the hands of Kevin Durant and company has quieted some of the talk regarding their focus and chemistry issues. The narrow victory they eked out against the Jazz tonight in Salt Lake City, despite the brillant play of Deron Williams and Kyle Korver and the return of Andrei Kirilenko, is further confirmation of the fact that the Lakers, no matter how unlikable and passionless they may some times appear to be, are champions in the truest sense of the word. They could have at any point given up, and taken comfort in the fact that they would have retained home-court advantage regardless of the outcome; instead, they refused to wither in a physical game in front of a hostile crowd, and stole a one-point victory against a team with its back against the wall.

Despite his hesitancy to pass in the first quarter, Kobe played a magnificent game (35 points on 13-24 shooting, 7 assists, and several cluch plays in the final minutes of the fourth), as did Ron Artest (!) and Derek Fisher (!), both of whom provided L.A. a spark with their outside shooting (!!!). While they shouldn't expect the latter two to play as well as they did going forward (indeed, Fisher's performance was akin to Lazarus rising from the dead), the Lakers have to be encouraged that they were able to pull out a road win, despite the apparent inability of their bench players to play well anymore (really, 8-24 from the field, guys?). A sweep is, at this point, not out of the question considering the disheartening way in which the Jazz lost (poor, poor Wes Matthews), though one shouldn't be surprised if the Lakers are unable to stifle the desire to finish up the series at home.

Also: the less that's said about the Orlando-Atlanta series, the better. However, I find it remarkable that the lower seeds in each conference are having such a hard time defending their home court. Atlanta and Boston were hammered by their visiting opponents, and the Jazz and Spurs lost tight, physical games in front of crowds who traditionally have swung more than a few games in their favor. Strange times, folks.