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Bill Plaschke
Bill Plaschke:

Lakers make a sweeping statement

Lakers did what no other playoff team could do this season.
Bill Plaschke
April 29, 2008
DENVER -- Big bristly brooms were everywhere in these NBA playoffs, giant kitchen cleaners such as Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett.

But Monday with the little ol' Lakers was the first time anybody has used the word sweep.

 
Tough guys were everywhere this NBA spring, hammers such as David West and Carlos Boozer

But Monday with the nice 'n' easy Lakers was the first time anybody has used the word crush.

Granted, they didn't require much more than a pulse until the final hour of the final game.

But nowhere in the NBA today does that pulse beat harder than underneath barely sweaty, slightly torn gold jerseys that brushed quickly through their first mountain.

What the San Antonio Spurs couldn't do, what the Boston Celtics didn't come close to doing, the Lakers have done, sweeping their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets on Monday with a 107-101 victory in Game 4 at the Pepsi Center.

After which I asked the Nuggets' Allen Iverson a question that today permeates not only the Los Angeles basin, but the NBA landscape.

Just how good are those Lakers?

He looked at me scornfully, then laughed.

"We just got swept by them!" he said. "I don't know what kind of question that is."

It was one he had just answered, then and throughout a series the Lakers dominated until the final quarter Monday.

It is a question that will probably not be answered more clearly until the next round, when the Lakers will probably play a Utah Jazz team that is the exact opposite of the Nuggets.

We know the Lakers can beat a loosely coached, barely attentive flyweight.

How will they do against a strictly controlled, consistently punching heavyweight?

''We've got to be proud, we've got to be happy . . . but we've got to move on," said Pau Gasol, who averaged 22 points and nine rebounds in this series, but will probably be more seriously challenged next week by the likes of Boozer.

Coach Phil Jackson was quick to agree.

"We'll have to be a better team," he said.

Against a Nuggets team that played like Carmelo Anthony's constant expression -- a carefree, apathetic smile -- the Lakers only needed to be better in the fourth quarter, after the briefly energized Nuggets had taken a 96-95 lead with 3:23 remaining.

What happened next?





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