Lord, what an awful performance. If you are a Laker fan, the most depressing aspect of Game 3 had to be their decision to fire up panic threes once Sactown opened up a lead, rather than trying to pound the ball into Shaq...oops...wait a minute, they did pound the ball into Shaq; I forgot about all those fifteen footers he attempted last night. Memo to Aristotle: your not Vlade Divac; don't bother trying to establish a perimeter game. Just get to the basket and power dunk !!

The Lakers best chance to win this series was to blow the Kings out early (in the series, that is; I suppose it would be asking a lot for them to show up and play like they cared in the first half of any game). If that happened, the injury to Peja Stojakovic and the fact that the Kings were beaten the last two years by the Lakers would combine to put them into a defeatist mindset, much the same as what happened to San Antonio this year. Stojakovic is still out, but now the Kings have the home court edge back.

By the way, how exactly did it become such an established fact that the Western Conference championship was the de facto title series. Has anyone actually watched the Celtics play in this year playoffs? Their next bad game will be their first; more than can be said about the two-time defending champions (who, by the way, lost both times to Boston in the regular season).