Fall of a Dynasty

On Sunday night, The 2 two time defending NBA Champion, Los Angeles Lakers, lost 122-86 to the Dallas Mavericks and were swept in the Western Conference Semifinals 4-0. Game 4 marked an all time low and embarrassment for the story book careers of Head Coach Phil Jackson and minion Kobe Bryant. The game was such a embarrassment in fact, that Lakers Forward Lamar Odom was taking cheap shots at Dirk Nowitski by the 3rd quarter. Later in the quarter, Center Andrew Bynum was ejected from the game for a vicious, WWE style clothesline to Dallas guard J.J Barea that broke his ribs.
This is strong evidence that the Lakers do not know how to lose with class and that their players will go as shallow as possible to be the poor sports and sour losers that they are. This team doesn't know defeat and simply does not understand how to deal with adversity. Game 2 of the series could have told us all that as the word "quit" was written all over the players faces after the loss. Bryant had 17 pts in game 4, while going 0/5 from three point range. On the other side of the court, Jason Terry had a career night, shooting the lights out, making a career and NBA playoff record 9, 3 point field goals, finishing with 36 points. Dallas beat the Portland Trailblazers in 6 games in the opening round of the Western Conference playoffs and after sweeping L.A, the Mavs will await the winner of the other Western Conference Semifinal series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the upstart Memphis Grizzlies. Announcing earlier this season, Phil Jackson will now weigh his options and see if retirement is really what he wants ,while the Lakers are getting older by the day, leaving all to wonder if the Jackson-Bryant Dynasty in Los Angeles has come to it's downfall. Kobe is now the center piece alone without Jackson in the franchise, and it will be interesting to see how L.A will pick themselves up from the depths of defeat and start from scratch as they did before the two arrived in the city of Angels.