TORONTO — Steve Nash looked like a theatre director, in a black wool turtleneck under a black suit, and he stood in the corner of the Los Angeles Lakers locker room, which is the smaller of the two stages they perform on. His locker was next to Kobe Bryant’s, and across the room from Metta World Peace’s and Dwight Howard’s and Pau Gasol’s. Nash’s hair was combed back in its youthful lopsided fashion, and he had an organic salad and three bottles of water on the bench behind him. The Lakers had lost to Toronto, 108-103. Just another day.
“I thought our effort was very spotty, a little bit lazy, cutting corners,” said Nash, 38. “I know we flew across the country and played a very early game by West Coast time, but for me that’s not an excuse, that’s a sign. You’ve got to come ready to play early, and I didn’t feel like we came ready to play. I thought we cut too many corners at too many times of the game, and dug too big a hole to climb out of.”
He was right. The Lakers fell behind 25-9 to start the game, and spent the rest of the game bumping into one another as they tried to come back. Howard picked up two technicals for the first time in his career and was tossed. Before that he looked less like the man of steel than the man of iron, and though leaner after back surgery he played heavier, harder to lift, less able to go airborne. The previously forgotten Gasol was terrific in his absence, which was a welcome change that didn’t change much.
And Bryant looked like a 34-year-old in his 17th season who is being played far too many hard minutes, and who was at the arena shooting nearly three hours before the game. (He arrived from the hotel in a cab.) He hit the front rim over and over, shot 10 for 32 with six turnovers, and stood there asking for blame. He has been surprisingly efficient this season, but this was a bad one.
The Lakers defence, meanwhile, was basically a series of stationary posts of varying height. Nash, our boy from Victoria, got picked on defensively by Landry Fields and Jose Calderon, and was otherwise OK — 16 points, nine assists, three turnovers, 5 of 11 shooting, and so forth.
But after he opened the scoring on a nifty backdoor layup, the Lakers never led again. They are 17-23 with half a season gone — “It’s taken off like a tugboat,” Nash said — and they are nowhere close to being a good team.
“I don’t know if it’s hit home enough that we’ve got to make ground up, and we’ve got to do it quickly,” Nash said.
So Nash talked about sticking to the system instead of abandoning it too early, and Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni talked about the ball sticking on offence. When asked what it was like to play with Kobe, who is also quite fond of having the ball in his hands, Nash offered a diplomatic solution, as he tends to.
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