March 30th - The Lakers are running away with the Western Conference title and are challenging for the best record in the league. They’ve swept season series with the second and third best teams in the league. But are they too soft to win a championship? That has been the question hanging over the Lakers’ heads since the 131-92 beatdown of June 17, 2008.
Of all the possible reasons the Lakers could have lost, why the focus on their alleged “softness”? It’s simple: the “softer” of two teams generally loses a seven-game playoff series.
There are exceptions, of course.
The “softer” team could have an edge in talent that far outdistances their edge in “softness.” Or there could be no substantial difference in “softness” between two teams, in which case talent is again decisive. Think of all the times that Michael, Scottie, and Co. beat Patrick Ewing and his ex-CBA sidekicks. A more recent example is the 2007 Spurs-Cavs Finals.
Another exception is when the losing team has issues (injuries, lack of chemistry, feuding, match-up problems, etc.) with no apparent connection to “softness.” Think of the 2004 Lakers-Pistons Finals, or the 2006 Western Semifinals between the Mavs and Spurs.
But more often than not, “softness” is a key issue. Before we go any further, it’s probably a good idea to remove the quotations and discuss precisely what it means for a team to be “soft.” Here are the five main qualities:
Getting outrebounded (especially giving up lots of offensive rebounds)
Giving up big leads, either during a game or during a series (this is a sign of softness only when the big lead didn’t come from a team playing over their heads against a far superior foe)
Losing close games, often due to mental errors and an inability to make defensive stands down the stretch
Allowing easy baskets in the paint (and getting dominated in the paint in general)
Letting the other team dictate (sometimes through physical play) tempo, style and strategy and an inability to adjust
One doesn’t have to go very far to appreciate the significance of softness in the playoffs.
Take last year’s Finals. The Lakers were outrebounded in four of the six games (including an embarrassing 48-29 margin in Game 6). They gave up a huge 24 point lead en route to losing Game 4 at home. With the exception of Game 6, every game was winnable for the Lakers but they more often than not failed to make key baskets and defensive stands in late-game situations. One of the defining moments of the series was when Leon Powe took the ball coast-to-coast on painfully slow one-man-break and capped it off with a dunk as Pau Gasol and Sasha Vujacic stood watching like spectators. It may be fair to say the Lakers lost because they were too soft.
The reasons the Suns have been eliminated by the Spurs during three of the last four years are summarized very nicely by the five qualities of softness. In 2005 and 2007 the Suns had no answer for Tim Duncan’s dominance in the paint. In 2008, they suffered a heartbreaking Game 1 loss in double-overtime and never seemed to recover emotionally. All three years, the Suns displayed long stretches of embarrassingly poor defense. They were especially unable to make stops near of the ends of close games which is why they have lost virtually every close game with the Spurs in recent years. (The one exception is worth noting: Game 4 of the 2007 Western Semifinals. The Suns finally came back from a deficit and won a close game, but they went too far in trying to “prove” they weren’t soft in their response to Robert Horry’s hip-check of Steve Nash. Losing poise and attempting to brawl should never be confused as exempting a team from softness.)
The Mavericks lost the 2006 Finals by blowing a 2-0 series lead and a commanding lead late in Game 3. In three of their four losses, the Mavs were outrebounded by the Heat 49-34, 48-36, and 56-50. In the one loss where the Mavs won the battle of the boards, Game 5, an inability to stop Dwyane Wade from scoring, a timeout called at the wrong time, and missed free-throws cost them the game. In 2007, the Mavs were eliminated in the first round by the Warriors largely because they let the Warriors dictate the style of play and take them out of their game. In other words, the Mavs continually failed in the playoffs because they were too soft.
Other perennial contenders that may have been too soft to go all the way include: the Webber-Divac-Bibby Kings of the early part of the decade, the Barkley Suns of the 90s, and the Price-Daugherty Cavs of the late 80s and early 90s. It’s probably unfair to flatly label the Sonics and Jazz teams of the 90s as soft, but many of their playoff failures (early-round losses to inferior teams, close losses in big games due to mental errors) can be attributed to softness.
A natural question is, once a team shows it is soft is there any way to shed that label? Thankfully there is. Several teams have looked soft during certain playoff series, but were redeemed by their overall body of work. Two great examples are the 76ers and Lakers of the 80s.
The 76ers held a 3-1 series lead over the Celtics in the 1981 Eastern Finals. The 76ers held substantial leads late in Games 5, 6, and 7, but ended up losing by margins of 2, 2, and 1, respectively. In the final minutes of Game 7, the Celtics were literally pushing the 76ers around, forcing turnovers and wrestling away loose balls. The 76ers found themselves a finesse team dominated inside by the Celtics big front court of Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Larry Bird and Cedric Maxwell. In spite of the crushing loss, the 76ers had already shown their mettle the previous year by wiping out the Celtics in five games, and they made amends the next year with a dramatic Game 7 victory in the Boston Garden. The Celtics were a bigger, more physical team, but the 76ers showed they were not plagued with any inherent softness by beating the Celtics two out of the three years.
The 1984 NBA Finals is a classic example of a team “choking” a series away. The Lakers won Game 1 at the Boston Garden and were up by two points in the waning seconds of Game 2 when James Worthy threw a lazy inbounds pass that was intercepted by Gerald Henderson who subsequently tied the game with a layup. The Lakers still had a chance to win in regulation, but Magic Johnson lost track of the shot clock and the Lakers didn’t get a shot off. The Celtics prevailed in overtime. The Lakers blew out the Celtics in Game 3, but lost in overtime in Game 4 after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fouled out and Johnson and Worthy missed some key free throws and again committed some big turnovers. The series came down to a Game 7 in which the defining moment may have been Magic Johnson getting stripped of the ball two consecutive times down the court late in the fourth quarter with the Celtics barely ahead. Throughout the series the Lakers had been giving up numerous offensive rebounds. They responded to the Celtics’ cheap shots (Kevin McHale clotheslining Kurt Rambis) not with more focused rebounding and defense, but with cheap shots of their own (James Worthy shoving Cedric Maxwell into the basket support).
The Lakers absolved themselves of their soft showing during the 1985 Finals. They went after and got loose balls and rebounds that had been claimed by the Celtics a year before. While physical play and minor skirmishes were still prevalent, the Lakers kept their poise. The won some close contests, and with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dominating inside, the Lakers captured the series in six games. Three years later, the Lakers met another physical, hungry team in the Finals: the Detroit Pistons. The supposedly glitzy Lakers were able to match the muscle and hustle of the blue-collar Pistons, and won the series after making all the key plays in some very close sixth and seventh games. Even if they were glitzy, those Lakers teams weren’t soft.
In their own quest for redemption, the current Lakers have turned to the example set forth by their ancestors of two decades ago. It’s the natural thing to do, and not just because they wear the same jerseys. Like the 80s Lakers, today’s team is more of a finesse team than any of the other top teams in the league. Pau Gasol isn’t going to turn into Shaquille O’Neal anytime soon. But what the Lakers can do is, like the 1985 team, contest rebounds and loose balls with more energy, maintain their focus in close games, and play with more hunger. The Lakers have shown such a spirit in tough wins against Boston and Cleveland. But the real season doesn’t start until mid April. That’s when the Lakers will ultimately determine their place in history. Will they prove themselves worthy of a championship, or are they destined to go down as another team too soft to win it all?
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