Until the last eight minutes of the nightcap, that is, when the young guys - the Oklahoma City Thunder's Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant - took over.
The day started with 36-year-old Tim Duncan, who is looking surprisingly spry in these playoffs, leading his San Antonio Spurs to a 3-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Clippers.
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It ended with 33-year-old Kobe Bryant, looking like Kobe Bryant usually looks (OK, minus the windmill dunks of his 20s), scoring 38 points and almost leading his Los Angeles Lakers to a victory and a 2-2 series tie against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Almost.
Bryant and the Lakers held a 13-point lead with eight minutes to go and had everything going their way before Westbrook, who scored 37, and Durant, who scored 31 including a go-ahead three-pointer with 13.7 seconds left, led the Thunder to a late comeback and a 103-100 victory.
The way the Lakers played for the first 40 minutes Saturday night, they looked like a team that could be playing a while longer in these playoffs and not so much like the team in disarray that, quite recently, lost a combined four out of five playoff games to the Denver Nuggets and Thunder.
Well, forget all that. They are officially in disarray again.
And not speaking well about one another.
Bryant, with good reason, was upset afterward at Lakers forward Pau Gasol.
In the game's deciding sequence, with the score tied, Westbrook committed a turnover and the Lakers came down with a chance to re-take the lead in last minute. Bryant, double-teamed coming off a screen by Gasol, threw a perfect bounce pass to Gasol that freed the 7-footer for a wide open 10-footer.
That's right in Gasol's wheelhouse - an open midrange jumper. Inexplicably, he threw a pass toward Metta World Peace on the weak side that was easily intercepted by Durant.
The Thunder came back down and Durant, at the top of the key, ran down the clock and then drilled a three-pointer over World Peace.
Bryant, who had scored so well most of the game but struggled down the stretch against a defense designed to crowd him into tough shots, was not pleased.
"Bad read," Bryant said of Gasol's decision. "That's a bad read on Pau's part. It happens."
There was more. "He's looking to swing the ball too much," Bryant said of Gasol. "He's just got to shoot it."
And more. "He's got to be more assertive. He's catching the ball looking to pass. He's got to be more aggressive. He will be next game."
Gasol's response: "It's one play, one mistake. There were a lot of mistakes in that fourth quarter, a lot of mistakes throughout the game. If I could have gone back, maybe I could have shot it and I would have. But it's one play, obviously at a critical time, but I don't feel like we lost the game because of one turnover."
This is not a new theme. Bryant has publicly urged Gasol to be more aggressive in the past. And in the team's first-round difficulties in Denver, Bryant called out both Lakers bigs - Gasol and center Andrew Bynum - for uninspired play.
Lakers coach Mike Brown had some criticism of his own of Bynum and Gasol, both of whom shrank in the second half. Bynum had 18 points and nine rebounds for the game but only four points and two rebounds in the second half. Gasol had 10 points and five rebounds for the game, also just four points and two rebounds in the second half.
"I think our bigs had two rebounds each in the second half," Brown said, and he was correct.
The Thunder leads 3-1, and Game 5 is Monday, back in Oklahoma City.
"We have to go to OKC and take care of business," Bryant said. "I don't think anybody is particularly worried about going there and winning."
For most of Game 4, the Lakers got the pace they want, the matchups they want and the results they wanted.
It was mostly due to Bryant, and that's amazing, considering his age and the ridiculous minutes he has played this season. In the compacted, player-unfriendly regular season, Bryant played 38.5 minutes per game. In the playoffs, he's playing just a tick under 40 minutes a game.
(Duncan, by comparison, was limited by Spurs coach Gregg Popovich to an average of 28.2 minutes in the regular season and is playing about 31 minutes a game in the playoffs.)
Bryant scored 20 points in each of the first two games of this series. But in the last two games, he has taken over offensively, scoring 36 in Game 3, including 18 of 18 from the line, and 38 in Game 4.
But none of that mattered when the lead crumbled at the end, thanks to not enough support from Bryant's teammates, the focal point being Gasol's timid turnover.
And then, Durant's clutch three-pointer.
"I wanted to run the shot clock down and get the last shot," Durant said. "I sat up there and just tried to look at the whole picture. I had been going to the rim and they were doing a great job of swiping and contesting at the rim, so I saw (World Peace) back up just a hair, and I shot it. I was thinking, 'If this doesn't go in, it's going to be a terrible shot. I'm going to take a lot of criticism.' "
Not to worry. The criticism after this one was aimed elsewhere.
The game was a physical one from the start, and Bryant engaged in a few wrestling matches in the first half with Durant and James Harden -- some hard bumping and body checking that seemed to stop just short of a shove and/or technical foul.
The bone-jarring play continued into the third, as the Lakers' preferred pace - slow - prevailed, and Bryant set up shop in the post against tough defender Thabo Sefolosha for some hard-earned and high-degree-of-difficulty fallaway jumpers.
The first half had ended on an ominous note for the Thunder, as Westbrook, changing directions on an inbounds play with just a couple of seconds left, slipped and fell awkwardly along the sideline. He lay there for a few minutes before walking very gingerly across the court and into the visitors' locker room.
He turned out to be just fine - better than fine, actually. He was jetpack-quick unstoppable in the second half.
So, the games were done.
A 36-year-old - Duncan - was happy.
A 33-year-old - Bryant - was brilliant in defeat and definitely not happy.
And a couple of young guns, Durant and Westbrook, had another notch on their belt.
Source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/UsatodaycomSports-TopStories/~3/bv9_Xj8ONmU/1
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