Looking ahead will never stop being a curse

Both the Lakers and Celtics lost Friday, which kind of takes some wind of sails for Sunday's NBA Finals rematch.

Occasionally teams will have let downs like the one the Celtics had against the Suns, but the Lakers seem to keep having let downs the whole season. Sometimes I really wonder how much they care. It was the Kings for crying out loud.

I think the main problem I have is that if the Celtics come out and beat the Lakers Sunday I do not want to hear any excuses. I don't want to hear, "The teams we play against care more about these games than we do."

That's not good enough. The Lakers should start caring about those games. Kobe and Gasol should think back to Christmas Day 2008 when it was their turn for a revenge game: a rematch of the Finals. The Celtics were on a hefty winning streak, but it ended on that day.

The Lakers still on the team from 2008 need to look to that game to realize what the Celtics are going through right now. That should be enough to motivate the Lakers to start playing good basketball--and maybe if the team could start knocking down some shots.