For the Lakers, Sunday marked a significant improvement in both opponent caliber and game significance. The Lakers utterly failed when it came to winning, which was necessary to climb the standings and get out of the play-in race. And the Lakers laid an egg early on in this one.A less than four-minute stretch in the opening period buried the Lakers into a hole they never came out of. For the majority of Sunday’s game, they were on par with or better than the Suns. But none of it mattered.
This makes it one of the more annoying defeats of the season. The Lakers mishandled the ball as badly as they have all season when they had a wonderful opportunity to move up the standings.
Let’s now assess the defeat. As usual, grades are determined by the standards set for each participant. The average performance for the player is indicated with a “B” grade.
Tim Hardaway doesn’t hate Allen Iverson, but he does hate Iverson’s crossover dribble. For years, Hardaway seemed like he might be THE little superstar point guard of the 1990s, and the crossover was his signature move. But at around the same time Hardaway got hurt and had to rebuild his career, along came Iverson to seize Hardaway’s throne. The fact that Iverson had a legendary crossover only made things worse. Immediately, and for decades afterward, Hardaway seethed about that crossover, creating a rare (and very petty) rules-based beef.
