Once again, the Los Angeles Lakers faced the San Antonio Spurs last night in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals. The first game of the series was quite an adventurous one as they came back from a twenty point deficit to take a series lead and hold the home court advantage.

Last night, the home court advantage was once again at stake. The Lakers didn’t wait for Kobe Bryant to change his shoes at halftime and take over the game in the 3rd quarter this time though, they decided to beat the Spurs as a team and win the game from the get go.

The first quarter was exciting as the Spurs kept the game quite close and exchanged baskets with the Lakers. This time around it was Derek Fisher that would contribute early by driving in for lay ups early and not settling for the rainbow jump shot. As much as we all love to see Derek Fisher launch up “Rainbow Treyz” I am happy with the And 1 lay ups and the two free throws.

The announcers covering the game on TNT made a comment with about two minutes left in the first half saying, “The Lakers have severely outplayed the Spurs in this half and are still tied up… They should be way farther ahead in this game.” I believe the Lakers heard the comment because they went on a 9-0 run to finish the half and were on a mission to extend the lead after halftime.

The San Antonio Spurs proved to the world that their games are determined by who wins the 3rd quarter in the last series against the New Orleans Hornets. The Lakers were aware of this theory as well as they came out strong and pushed the lead even farther. Kobe Bryant and the Lakers outscored the Spurs 28-20 in the 3rd quarter and went into the final period with a 17 point lead. The rest of the game was quite simple, the Lakers bench came in, and continued to build on the lead.

Jordan Farmar finally came out of his shell last night and led the Lakers bench with 14 points. Sasha Vujacic played well as well hitting clutch jumpers in the first half, and helping the Lakers put the Spurs away in the 2nd half. Overall it was a great experience for every member of the team. Everyone got to play, there was even a Trevor Ariza sighting in the 4th quarter. Ariza played six minutes and had 2 points and 2 rebounds to show for it. There were about four alley oop attempts that kept getting broken up by the Spurs that proved Trevor Ariza is fully capable of jumping and exploding with the same energy he had before his injury.

The brilliance of Lakers fans all over has shown throughout this series as so many have joined me for my Live Blogs. I had the pleasure of being joined by a few great guests like the writers from Khandor’s Sports Blog and With-Malice. I was also joined by TCO of My Inner Fan has contributed plenty; here are some thoughts:

“As great a coach as Pop is, I believe he really hurt his team due to his stubbornness. Robert Horry was 0-5, with all the shots missing horribly, and got considerably more playing time than Kurt Thomas, who can defend, shoot, and rebound better. Likewise, Finley was only 3-9, and was invisible for the majority of the game. For Game 3, I hope Pop comes to his senses and plays Thomas, Udoka, and Barry more, so that the useless corpses of Horry and Finley can rest in their grave.

The Spurs did fine when they cleared out for Duncan and Parker. When they were given proper space to work with, the both did reasonably well. Parker can penetrate at will, and perhaps Pop should attempt to run the offense through him.”

I was quite excited to see the team perform the way they did. The final score was a beating of the defending NBA Champions with a 30 point deficit at 101-71. We can only hope that the Lakers can go into San Antonio’s AT&T Center and perform just as brilliantly, after all, we know we’ll have the same cheerleader on our sideline as we did in Staples Center.