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 I don't suspect Pau Gasol would trade his championship rings for anything, but having won them is likely only going to make the the assault on his basketball reputation, almost surely forthcoming, perhaps as early as Sunday, that much worse.

As a team, the Lakers are very clearly reaching the end of an era. Of titles, of Phil Jackson. A summer of "Window for Kobe Bryant?" questions awaits. Except after the dust settles, the back-to-back title teams will be appropriately revered in Los Angeles. After winning 11 titles, losing a chance for a 12th doesn't exactly stain Jackson's legacy. Nor will an early exit from this playoffs stick to Bryant.

Gasol, though, is in for a world of hurt.

He arrived from Memphis with a rep of Cadillac skills and teddy bear toughness, but almost instantly elevated the Lakers into the league's elite. Despite numbers likely better than most people remember, no Laker absorbed more criticism for the loss to Boston in the 2008 Finals- and particularly the disaster that was Game 6- than Gasol. For the next two seasons Gasol fought against his image, playing incredibly high level basketball through a pair of title runs, outplaying Dwight Howard in '09 and coming up with key play after key play in last season's run. He was arguably the team's most consistent performer over that time.

This season, however, has been easily his most unreliable in purple and gold. After an MVP-caliber start, Gasol's play has deteriorated. Game to game, he became judged by the Black Swan/White Swan construct, essentially a daily referendum on his basketball manhood. With Gasol's struggles came problems for the Lakers. Now, following another bad playoff performance in Friday's Game 3 loss to the Mavericks, another in a string of substandard games dating back to Game 1 of the Hornets series, does all the good work he did to for his reputation go out the window?

“You tell me. Can it?," Gasol asked in the locker room. "Should it? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

He's right. He also may not get a vote.

Watching Gasol through the postseason has gone well past frustrating and into uncomfortable. To see someone so skilled play so poorly for such a sustained period is hard. Gasol is a thoughtful man, with a great deal of pride in his craft who has lost trust in his own game at a critical moment, and, just like everyone else, can't explain why.

"Obviously there’s some tension inside of me. I guess it’s—you can see it. It’s tangible," he said. “Obviously when you’re not playing as well as you can, it’s frustrating. So you get frustrated at certain times, and you’ve just got to try to be more decisive out there, and when you finish a couple plays, and when you’re successful in a few plays, then you keep getting that confidence and that tension goes away. But if you don’t, then it seems like it keeps building up a little bit.”

DALLAS — Kobe Bryant knows the deal. His Los Angeles Lakers are down 0-3 to the Dallas Mavericks and none of the 98 NBA teams facing that deficit have ever come back to win a series.
Yet Bryant also knows his team has won the last two championships, and reached the finals three straight years. And that his soon-to-be-retired coach has won a record 11 championships and has never been swept in his 20 years on the sideline.
Bryant also realizes how close his team is to leading this series 2-1. They blew a 16-point lead in the opener, losing only in the final seconds, and on Friday night they fell apart down the stretch again on the way to a 98-92 loss.
So, with all that in mind, he made this declaration following the Game 3 defeat: "I think we're still going to win the series."
Confidence, eh? Well, he also prefaced that line by laughing and saying, "I might be sick in the head or crazy."
The Lakers have mostly themselves to blame for being in this predicament. Leading by seven with 5:05 left, and having controlled the game throughout the second half, they got sloppy on defense. They gave Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Peja Stojakovic wide open shots, and that turned things around in a hurry.
A 20-7 closing run jump-started by 3s from Nowitzki and Stojakovic put the Mavericks on the verge of not only winning this series, but pulling off a sweep. Dallas can move to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2006 with a victory at home on Sunday.
"We're not good enough to relax or take the pedal off the metal," Nowitzki said. "You don't want to ever give a champion life, so hopefully we can have the same effort and the same crowd and a great game on Sunday."

The Mavericks scored 32 points in the fourth quarter, the most by either team in any period this series. Bryant said the Lakers helped by making "some of the dumbest defensive mistakes I've seen us make all year."

 After 10 losses in as many road games against the Lakers all-time in the playoffs, the Dallas Mavericks took care of business Monday winning Game One of the Western Conference Semifinals at Staples Center 96-94.

The Lakers had a chance to pick their match-up against Dirk Nowitzki nursing a one-point lead with 20 seconds remaining, and elected to go with Pau Gasol. Prior to the play, Nowitzki was 5-for-5 against Gasol, 5-for-11 against Lamar Odom and 1-for-6 against all other Lakers. Gasol fouled Nowitzki on the inbounds, sending him to the line and giving the Mavs a lead they would not relinquish.

Nowitzki finished with a team-high 28 points and 14 rebounds. It was his eighth straight playoff game with 20+ points and the seventh time in his last eight games with 25+ points.

Kobe Bryant scored 36 points in the loss meaning he now has at least 30 points in Game One of five consecutive playoff series. That’s the longest such streak in franchise history. George Mikan (1949-1950), Elgin Baylor (1961-1962) and Shaquille O’Neal (2000) scored 30 or more points in Game One in each of four consecutive playoff series for the Lakers.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Bryant is the first player to score at least 30 points in five consecutive Game Ones since Michael Jordan did that in seven straight playoff series, spanning 1997 to 1998.

The Lakers are 0-2 in Game Ones this postseason having lost to the Hornets in the previous series. The Elias Sports Bureau also tells us it's the first time the Lakers have lost Game One in back-to-back series of the same postseason since May 1998 and the first time since 1972 that they have lost Game One of consecutive playoff series in the same postseason at home.

The Spurs, top-seed in the Western Conference, trailed by three points at half-time but inspired by Argentine shooting guard Manu Ginobli who top scored with 17 points, they grabbed a one-point lead by the end of the third.
There was a late scare for the Spurs when Sam Young, who top scored for the Grizzlies with 17 points, made a three-point shot to bring Memphis within two points with less than 15 seconds remaining.
But San Antonio kept their cool and George Hill made sure of the win with four points with free throws.

All-Star Ginobli missed the opening game of the series through injury but his return was crucial with him contributing seven rebounds and four assists while Richard Jefferson, Tim Duncan and Hill all scored 16 points each.
The Thunder comfortably took a 2-0 lead in their series against the Denver Nuggets with Kevin Durant scoring 23 points and Russell Westbrook scoring 21 in the 106-89 win.
The Thunder took charge from the outset and had a 26-point lead early in the second quarter as they secured their second win before the series moves to Denver Saturday for Game Three.
Although Denver, with Ty Lawson making 20 points, reduced the deficit to 10 during the fourth quarter, the outcome was never in doubt.
The Los Angeles Lakers were playing the New Orleans Hornets later Wednesday - trailing 1-0 in the series.