Game Rewind: Elbows Fly as Lakers Knockout Clippers – Lakers 126, Clippers 86

What a difference a week makes.  This time last week, the Clippers were puffing themselves up for finally ending their losing streak against the Lakers.  Tonight, the Lakers quickly erased that bravado to the tune of a 40-point ass whooping and in its place bubbled up some deep-seeded frustration from LA’s junior varsity basketball team in the form of a vicious elbow from Baron Davis.

Baron Davis taught Pau Gasol the age old lesson that if you can’t beat them, elbow them in the face.

I know this was round three of the Lakers-Clippers season series, but Baron Davis clearly took that a little too literally tonight.  Right in the middle of the Lakers cracking the game wide open, Boom Dizzle blew his top and tried to take out both Pau Gasol and Derek Fisher with elbows because they had the audacity to trap him in the corner and try and steal the ball from him without committing a foul.  What bastards!  Really, we shouldn’t expect anything less from noted hooligans like Pau and Fish who already terrorize the league with their placid but amiable demeanor and squeaky clean style of play.  I would be surprised if David Stern doesn’t go Gilbert Arenas on their ass and suspend them both for the rest of the season for their intolerable actions in this game.  How dare they get deliberately elbowed and not fight back!

Actually, what I am really surprised about was the Baron Davis could throw those bows and then bark at the entire Laker team with a deranged look on his face (seriously, dude had some bonkers crazy eyes going on) and not even get ejected.  He had already committed a hard foul on Lamar Odom just a few plays before that and was dangerously close to pushing the game to the brink of a more serious altercation.  I guess the refs solution of delaying for what felt like seven hours before deciding on whether or not to eject him worked to, but really fellas, let’s try and be a little more efficient next time.  Just give Baron the boot and move it along.  It isn’t like the game was close or anything, so it wouldn’t have been unfair to the Clippers.  Heck,

The more I think about it though, maybe I am being a little unfair to Baron Davis.  After all, if I spent my whole career playing for sinkhole franchises like Charlotte, New Orleans and Golden State and then finally freed myself to return to my native Los Angeles only to end up on the wrong LA team, I’d be pretty pissed off too.  But at least Baron’s misplaced aggression injected a little life into an otherwise boring half of basketball and might have even introduced some real bad blood into a rivalry that really could stand to be a lot more heated.

• Welcome back, Kobe!  The finger and back definitely weren’t bothering Kobe too much tonight as he snapped out of his slump in a big way, dropping 30 points with relative ease (knocking down three-pointers from 30-feet always helps) and ending the night with a whopping positive-41 in the plus-minus column.
• Pau and Bynum had 20 points apiece, quite possibly their best tandem performance of the season.  Not a bad start for the dynamic duo as they seek to finally find a way to coexist.  Too bad Odom was in so much foul trouble though, it would have been nice to see if all three bigs could play well in the same game.
• SEVEN turnovers all game long for the Lakers, including garbage time.  That stat right there speaks to just how efficient and potent the Laker offense was tonight.  They were scoring at will against the Clippers in a way that makes one wonder why they couldn’t play like that the last time the two teams played.

Lake Show Outtakes:

• I seldom ever question Phil Jackson, but what is the point of having DJ Mbenga and his black belt in aikido on the roster if you aren’t going to run him out their to roundhouse kick Baron Davis in the face a la Chuck Norris?
• WTF?  Why were the “Jersey Shore” kids at the game tonight and how did that pack of morons get such good seats?  If I had known that being a drunken douchebag was the best way to get awesome seats at Laker games, I would have been a much different kid in my college days.  I suppose we should just be glad that they didn’t punch anyone or give any of the Lakers VD (I hope, lord knows certain members of the team like hooking up with reality stars).

Tags: Andrew Bynum, Baron Davis, Derek Fisher, DJ Mbenga, Game Rewind, Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom, Los Angeles Clippers, Pau Gasol