LOS ANGELES -- In other news, the Lakers played the Magic.
This was a Finals rematch unlike many other first meetings since a June showdown, slipped into the schedule as the last stop on a tailspin of a four-game Western swing for Orlando and just before L.A. heads out for a monster eight-gamer, on a Monday night, with neither team playing particularly well, on a holiday with the league driving attention to Atlanta and Memphis for Martin Luther King Day. It wasn't like the buildup for Lakers-Celtics a season ago or even Lakers-Cavaliers a few weeks ago on Christmas that didn't have the benefit of the playoff storyline.
Everyone -- the NBA, the networks, Nike and its merry band of puppeteers -- cranked the volume for the Cleveland game. But the first reunion since last year's Finals, a pretty competitive championship series at that despite lasting only five games, just sort of happened, a strange development in the hype-machine world.
Or as they may have called it around the Lakers: Game 41.
"You know, they've got so many games on today that I guess this one kind of got under the radar," coach Phil Jackson said, looking into the thick mass of media during his regular pre-game press gaggle. "I don't know. A lot of guys here, though. Twenty people standing here listening to me, so something's going on."
Except that was only a few guys more than normal. There is always press coverage at a Lakers game, as anything the team does counts as news in a city where there's no such thing as too much coverage of the defending champions. But for some reason, this game didn't seem to register as special.
Then again, these weren't exactly the Magic and Lakers circa June.
It's not just the roster changes either, with Vince Carter in for Hedo Turkoglu for the Eastern Conference champions and Ron Artest replacing Trevor Ariza here. L.A. has misfired lately, relatively speaking, having lost three of the previous six to keep the race for No. 1 in the West just interesting enough that now it may take all the way until the All-Star break for the rest of the conference to deliver concession speeches. Orlando, meanwhile, had dropped six of eight before Monday.
And not just typical slump defeats. The string of four consecutive setbacks would have been bad enough, but they were magnified by the list of the opponents: the Bulls, Pacers, Raptors and Wizards. Then, when the losses were to a better quality of opponents, (the Trail Blazers and Nuggets on the road), the unwanted reality check for the Magic was that the margins were 15 against Portland and 18 against Denver. The lead in the Southeast Division was gone and, just as certain, 2009 was done too.
"We looked back to review how we played and everything else, but I didn't go back and watch all five games," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy of skipping the trip down memory lane to watch the Finals again. "We know how we played in that series. We took a look at that, and we'll go from there."
Jackson, never noted for his diplomacy anyway, said in reference to the Magic losing their way amid injuries and the early Rashard Lewis suspension that "I just don't know what happened to that team in the process." That team being the one that reached the championship series and opened 17-4 this season.
That team or this team or whatever they are, they had enough to respond to the moment by turning a 13-point deficit midway through the second quarter into a nine-point lead with three minutes to play in the third. The Magic just didn't have enough to close the deal, getting outscored 15-0 to begin the final period and losing 98-92 in a failure to capitalize on Kobe Bryant missing 15 of 19 shots amid continuing problems with a fractured right index finger.
"We understood what type of approach that they might want to take, as far as them still having a bad or bitter taste in their mouth from what happened because they've got a lot of their same guys back," Shannon Brown said after his team-high 22 points. "They were up nine, so we had to fight back. But every game for us is a big game."
Cleveland a few weeks ago. Cleveland, Boston and the Madison Square Garden stage coming up. Orlando on Monday in the Finals rematch unlike many others, mostly because it was like so many others around here.
Game 41.
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