By Mike Bresnahan, Los Angeles Times –
DENVER — Kobe Bryant should have stayed in his hotel room.
Conserved energy. Continued to drink a lot of fluids. Rest up.
Instead, he played in Game 6 after missing the morning shoot-around because of intestinal flu symptoms. His teammates certainly didn’t make him feel better.
(PHOTO: The Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant dunks against the Denver Nuggets in Game 6 of the Western Conference first-round series at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday, May 10, 2012.)
The Lakers didn’t just lose to the Denver Nuggets. They were humiliated, disgraced and whatever other synonyms the thesaurus spat out in a 113-96 loss Thursday at Pepsi Center.
Game 7 is Saturday at Staples Center, stunningly.
The Nuggets will be ecstatic to be there. The Lakers? Who knows?
Bryant had 31 points on respectable 13-for-23 shooting, but the hole in the Lakers’ frontcourt was devastatingly obvious.
Pau Gasol had three points on one-for-10 shooting and added a mighty three rebounds in almost 29 minutes. Andrew Bynum was marginally better than Gasol on offense, scoring 11 points on four-for-11 shooting and had 16 rebounds.
Only eight teams in NBA history have come back from a 3-1 deficit to win a series. Fittingly, the last time involved the Lakers, who fumbled a 3-1 edge and first-round series to Phoenix in 2006.
The Lakers were never in it Thursday, trailing 13-0 before the game was four minutes old. At one point, Ty Lawson was outscoring them, 14-8.
Worse than that, Gasol and Bynum had exactly one point between them midway through the second quarter. It was Bynum’s point, for the record, a free throw with 4:04 left in the first quarter.
“Kobe being dehydrated and sick as a dog, coming out and trying to will us to a win, it’s disappointing watching him give that type of effort … and we don’t get it from everybody,” Lakers Coach Mike Brown said. “Our second and third best players are Drew and Pau, and the reality of it is both those guys have to play better in order for us to win. We’re going to have a tough time winning if we get that same type of production not just offensively but on the defensive end of the floor too.”
On one long walk back to the bench for a timeout, Bryant stopped abruptly because Kenneth Faried and Corey Brewer were jubilantly body-slamming each other in mid-air. The Nuggets led at the time, 96-70. The fourth quarter wasn’t even two minutes old.
“Obviously, it was disappointing to watch,” Brown said.
Nuggets fans celebrated as the song “Going Back to Cali” played once, twice, maybe more times during fourth-quarter timeouts. Surprisingly, nobody stormed the court after the game.
Oklahoma City never seemed so far away for the Lakers, who lost a second consecutive close-out game despite Bynum’s proclamation that they could be easy.
Lawson buried them with 32 points in 30 minutes, including five-for-six shooting from three-point range. Faried continued to be a nuisance down low, collecting 15 points and 11 rebounds. He’s listed at 6 feet 8, four inches shorter than Bynum or Gasol.
The Nuggets’ reserves kept flicking away those of the Lakers. This time, Corey Brewer had 18 points off the bench, making eight of 12 shots.
The Nuggets led by as many as 28. The Lakers’ starters looked dazed as they sat on the bench for the final minutes. Bryant stared straight ahead.
His illness briefly brought to mind the intestinal distress he felt almost 10 years ago in Sacramento before Game 2 of the conference finals. Bryant received three liters of IV fluids before that game and didn’t shoot well (nine for 21) but scored 22 points in the Lakers’ 96-90 loss.
He shot fine Thursday. It was the rest of the Lakers that didn’t show up.
If they don’t reappear Saturday, they’ll be out in the first round, their mini-dynasty of back-to-back championships fading quickly into the distance.
