Finally - the season starts

Uh oh - this just in. The Lakers need to do more than show up to win. They sustained a 70 win pace through the first quarter of the season by doing little more than that. Superior talent, a favorable schedule, and one good run a game was enough. But not anymore. 2 games into a 4-game-in-5-night road trip and the Lakers are winless, Jordan Farmar is injured, Andrew Bynum was trivialized by the more mature Dwight Howard, and obviously the sky is falling! In my last post, I claimed that front offices put NBA teams in a position to win championships. Well, they do. But the players have to actually do it on the court. With the exception of the first few games of the season, the Lakers have played like the preseason predictions are already ptrue. Guess what? The Lakers have dropped out of the league's elite class. The Celtics, Cavs, and Magic are all clearly better than the Lakers right now. Fortunately, it's a long season and championships aren't won in December. A tough road trip is just what the Lakers needed. They have lessons to learn, but it's hard for the lessons to stick when the team wins despite their mistakes. A couple of hard to swallow losses should get their attention. Now that the Lakers have some adversity to face, the season finally starts for real.