All good things must come to an end, and thus the Lakers 10 game winning streak is over. The Mavericks game into Staples Center on Sunday afternoon and steamrolled the Lakers, the final score of 114-100 not fully capturing what took place.
We’ve said this several times in the past two-plus weeks (including in our game preview), but just because the Lakers were winning games, it did not mean they were playing great basketball. Their defense had been slipping and while their offense was improving to compensate, they could still be prone to dry spells that put them in holes they’d needed to climb out of to continue winning.