How you gonna look me in the eye, claim to be the defending champions and owner of the most talent laden roster i the NBA, and give up 36 points in the fourth quarter of a playoff game?

That's right, you're not.

The Los Angeles Lakers are either playing out this sad last act in Phil Jackson's swan song season or their pulling the off the ultimate rope-a-dope. They are sure are lulling everyone to sleep to with random offense and non-existent defense.

But hey, it could be worse, you could be the San Antonio Spurs who will now have to stave off even more "they're too old" comments than usual.

What was once the NBA's hottest team who were gelling and coming together to truly dominate the league, now looks like a team praying there's enough left in the tank.

The Grizzlies are no slouch, but for all the sunshine everyone was blowing up Greg Popovich's backside earlier in the year, there's no excuse for losing the first game. No one expected a sweep or anything, but to drop the opener is unacceptable.

The Boston Celtics once again proved that whole "wily-veteran-in-the-clutch" thing when Rey Allen put them ahead for good with a three-pointer with only 12 ticks remaining.

If you don't think this was a must win for the Celtics, you're wrong. The worst thing they could have possibly given this Knicks team was confidence.

The NBA's all-time leading three point shooter got an open look with 12 seconds left. Read that again kids. If you're looking for a living, breathing definition of playoff inexperience that's it.

In the night cap, the Denver Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder kicked off their series with the Thunder overcoming a Nuggets team that kept coming.

At one point, I found myself saying to myself "Wow, look at all these players who started the season on the Knicks". Only to follow up that with "Holy crap, these former Knicks are losing this game!"

Sure, Thunder forward Kevin Durant had a solid game and Russell Westbrook came up big in the clutch. We can't ignore that horrible missed goaltend by the officials. But no two people had a bigger hand in losing this game for the Nuggets than Raymond Felton and Danillo Gallinari.

Turnovers and bad shots marred the second half that the Nuggets had for the taking. You can only do so much and playoff basketball means you have to do everything right every time. You can't say the Nuggets didn't have their chances.

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