From Lakers' bench

Lakers coach Phil Jackson growled for a timeout late in Game 5 with his team down by eight. Miked up for the TV broadcast, he told his players, "(Boston) loses more games in the fourth quarter than any team in the league. They know how to lose games and they're showing us that now."

Oh really, Phil? Though I understand that this pat-on-the-back was likely used to relax his players in crunch time, the statement glosses over all the things the Lakers were doing wrong in the game and assumes they were just a few possessions away from winning it. He was way off.

But what exactly put the Lakers on the brink of elimination? Now, I'm no Dr Jack Ramsey, the legendary coach and analyst, but I'd like to think that a three-hour conversation I had six years ago with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski fed me enough basketball knowledge through the process of osmosis to allow me to uncover flaws in the Lakers' strategy. So grab that jar of salt.