Weekend Sweep Gets LA on Track

Following two of their toughest losses of the season last week, Derek Fisher and the Lakers needed something big to get them back on track.

Someone big came through in the clutch.

Each Laker player stepped up, but it was Andrew Bynum who played the biggest role (Getty Images).

Center Andrew Bynum dominated the frontlines of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Boston Celtics, leading the Lakers to back-to-back wins over the weekend.

"When his energy is up we’re a very difficult team to beat," Derek said of Bynum, who gave LA 46 points and 24 rebounds over the two big wins. "A lot of what we do on both ends of the floor rides on what Andrew is doing out there."

The victories followed back-to-back losses for the Lakers, in Detroit and Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday. Derek managed just two points but had four rebounds, an assist and a steal in the 88-85 loss to the Pistons. The following night he tallied nine points, five assists and two steals in D.C., but LA still fell to another Eastern Conference cellar-dweller.

The ugly losses prompted coach Mike Brown to call a coaches-players meeting over the weekend. Brown called upon his leaders – Fish, Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol – to do the talking. Derek said his goal was to reignite the passion in his teammates that he saw when they won three straight — including a big win over the Miami Heat — after the All-Star break. He also wanted to gage where his teammates are mentally.

"I think I just kind of brought it back to us," he told ESPN LA. "How bad do we want this? Despite what everybody thinks or what’s going on or why, how badly do we want to be successful? That was basically the question that I posed. Because if we want it bad enough, collectively as a group, we’ll figure it out and we’ll take the actions necessary to get there."

Coach Mike Brown leans on vets like Derek in times of need (Getty Images).

The overall theme of the meeting was to stay positive, something that needed to be addressed after the players-only meeting recently held by the Lakers. Derek said the fact that the Lakers had to have a second meeting so close to the first wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. He acknowledged that there is a point where the talking needs to cease, but doesn’t believe LA has hit that point just yet.

"I don’t know if communication for us is bad. We’re trying to do something that we’ve done before, in terms of winning a championship, in a completely different way," Derek said. "So, we’re trying to recreate something with a new model and that’s the challenge. Communicating and working through our differences and talking about things and ultimately holding ourselves accountable, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing for us. It’s, in some ways, part of the process."

Derek expressed his thoughts and compared the team to a family working out their problems during the meeting.

"When you’re trying to continue to have a culture of excellence and championship success, the commitment and the time that that takes, you become like a family and there are going to be times when the family is just not clicking or it’s not getting along," he said. "Sometimes it’s not flowing the way you’d like it to, but we’ve been pretty good at figuring how to work through those things and we’ll continue to do it that way."

ANYTHING BUT GREEN
The Lakers got the weekend off to a great start, capping their road trip off on Friday night with a 105-102 win over the Timberwolves.

Derek helped the Lake Show outgun Minnesota by knocking down three treys in the victory. He contributed nine points off those threes and added four assists and three rebounds during win.

The Lakers’ win in Minnesota broke a two-game slide (Getty Images).

LA took that positive momentum home with them as they prepared to face the rival Celtics on Sunday afternoon at the Staples Center.

Derek has plenty of Lakers-Celtics experience, but Lakers first-year head coach Mike Brown got a lesson in the feud just a few short weeks ago. Ever since, he’s vowed to never make the mistake of wearing green in LA again.

"I wore green and somebody walked up to me and said, ‘Nah nah nah nah nah nah,’" Brown recalled in January. "And I said, ‘Why?’ I didn’t understand that the Boston-Lakers rivalry was that deep that I couldn’t wear a green sweater vest, so it’s been shelved ever since."

As a veteran of the league’s most bitter rivalry, Fish knew Sunday’s meeting with Boston was a game that the Lakers could use to propel them forward into a tough stretch of their schedule.

"Despite our record or their record or whatever people think about our teams as we stand today, the reality is that in the last four years, these two teams have won three championships," Fisher said. "Just about all the main characters in those movies are still here."

The Lakers jumped out to a quick 10-point lead after the first quarter. Fish hit his first points of the game with 4:46 left in the half off a 19-foot jumper, but LA and Boston went back-and-forth the rest of the half, exchanging basket after basket. The Lakers went into the locker room ahead by just two points.

Derek began the third quarter by hitting a 26-foot three pointer after he stole the ball from Rajon Rondo, but Boston answered right back and the Lakers found themselves trailing. Fish picked LA up by assisting on the first of back-to-back treys by Metta World Peace midway through the third. Derek then followed the two treys by drawing a foul and hitting both of his free throws to put LA up 56-55 with 6:49 to go in the third. They again led by two after three quarters of play.

But down the home stretch on Sunday, the lead actor role for LA was a played by a man known more for his supporting roles in past years: Andrew Bynum.

Bynum combined with Lakers’ annual lead mean Kobe Bryant to score the last eight points of the game as LA recovered from a late five-point deficit to pull out the win.

Fish had a key assist late Sunday, finding Kobe for the go-ahead basket (Getty Images).

When Fish checked back into the game with under five minutes to play, the score was tied at 87. Moments later, No. 2 found himself behind the foul line again where he hit both free throws to tie it again at 89. But Boston followed with a pair of free throws from Rajon Rondo to retake the lead and then pushed that edge to five when Ray Allen knocked down a trey with 2:41 to go.

But from there, the Lakers defense held Boston off the scoreboard for the rest of the game as Bryant and Bynum went to work.

First Bryant hit a fadeaway to make it a one-possession game. Then, after a Boston miss, Kobe fed Bynum for an alley-oop to pull LA within one with 1:17 to go. The play forced the Celtics, unready for Bynum to play such a big role late, to take a timeout.

"I just think that Kobe has always continued in that evolution in terms of doing different things to try to get us to the top and trying to get us to a championship level team," Fish said of the timely pass from his longtime teammate Bryant to Bynum. "I think that today is just another example of him realizing what it takes for us to win and to trust Andrew

[Bynum] in that setting was huge for us."

Out of the timeout, Boston missed a chance to extend their lead and the Lakers took possession. On the other end, Derek assisted Kobe’s jumper to give Los Angeles the lead with less than a minute left.

The Celtics followed with another miss and the Lakers took timeout with 23 ticks remaining and the chance to create a game-winning play. Historically the ball tends to fall into the hands of D-Fish or Bryant in those situations, but the two leaders handed to ball to Bynum. Using veteran leaders as decoys, Bynum was able to hit a six-foot hook shot with 15.5 to go to put LA up by three.

"I believe we have always been pretty dangerous down the stretch because it’s difficult to decide what to do," said Derek after finishing with nine points, two assists, two steals and two rebounds. "In the past it has been Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol, myself, Kobe [Bryant], Metta World Peace and it’s tough for teams to make a choice. Kobe [Bryant] has obviously always trusted his abilities but he has shown trust in his teammates at the most important time and so he did that again today."

Late misses by Paul Pierce and Rondo for Boston sealed the Lakers’ victory.

The 97-94 win marks the 18th victory in their last 19 home games for Los Angeles and their third straight win over Boston. The Lakers are now 25-16 for the season and 18-2 at home.

NEXT UP
D-Fish and the Lakers head back out on the road for another back-to-back away from Staples Center this week. It starts in Memphis where they’ll face the Grizzlies on Tuesday night. Tip-off is set for 5 p.m. PST on KCAL.

RELATED ARTICLES

• Andrew Bynum steps up as closer (ESPN Los Angeles, March 11, 2012)
• Lakers, Coaches talk (ESPN Los Angeles, March 11, 2012)
• Lakers vs. Celtics: Still the NBA’s most colorful rivalry (LA Times, March 11, 2012)
• Lakers Gameday: Celtics (Lakers.com, March 11, 2012)