End of an era? Too early to tell...

Above is a video which recaps the Los Angeles Lakers series loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 Western Conference Semi Finals.  The Mavericks managed to sweep the Lakers 4-0, leaving everyone except Charles Barkley, shocked and stunned with confusion.  Of course Mavericks players will say that they were confident they could beat anyone they faced in the playoffs, and in sports, that is an essential state of mind needed to compete wholeheartedly.

Dallas came off a very competitive first round against the Portland Trailblazers, showing signs of what would later become the nail in the coffin for the Lakers.  The Lakers also had their hands full on their way out of the 1st round facing the New Orleans Hornets, eventually winning in 6 games, just as Dallas did over Portland.

So, how did Dallas manage to sweep the back to back champions?

Some people will go into a long winded answers with the "unraveling thread" theory as how the Lakers made the mistakes that helped the Mavericks win.  That is simply untrue.  Simply put, the 2010-11 Dallas roster, especially their bench, was way better than the Lakers, leaving them unable to compete.  Sure they had Kobe Bryant scoring, but with Dirk Nowitzki able to compensate on the Dallas end, it came down to role players performing well, which ultimately made the difference.

Yes, Gasol never got into his rhythm, we saw Bynum show moments of promise and in Game 3 the Lakers starters played well, but got no help from their reserves.  On the other end, Tyson Chandler played like an animal, Dirk was hitting fade away jump shots like lay ups, Shawn Marion never relaxed on the offensive end getting countless second chance points and veteran Jason Kidd played some of his best basketball considering he is 38 and still playing with no signs of slowing down.

Now if that wasn't enough for the Lakers to deal with, in all 4 games combined, the Dallas reserves out scored the Lakers 197 to 89.  To top it all off, role players Jason Terry and Peja Stojakovic combined for 15 of the teams 20 3-pointers, tieing and NBA playoff record in the deciding Game 4.

With the Phil Jackson possibly coaching his last game in his Hall of Fame career, the inability of the team to live up to high expectations and poor performances by the team as whole, it clearly left the Lakers bitter and frustrated. resulting in 3 flagrant fouls in the 3 final games.  J.J. Barea was victim of 2 of those calls, sadly due to his amazing performance backing up Jason Kidd, and received a shot to the face by Ron Artest in Game 2 and an elbow while in mid-air by Andrew Bynum which caused him to crash hard onto the court in Game 4.  Lamar Odom chipped in with his own dirty hit and was also tossed in Game 4 for an unprovoked body check on Dirk Nowitzki, not as dangerous as those made on Barea, but classless and punishable none the less.

All that said, viewers are set for a new champion in the NBA.  Whether the Lakers can bounce back next year is not my concern.  I am only interested in the future, and right now, in the Western Conference, only Dallas, Oklahoma and Memphis really matter in 2011.

Is it the end of an era for the Lakers or just a bad playoff performance?

Either way, we will all have to wait for next season to find out.