Brick, you were right about Derek Fisher. Everyone's been talking all year about the improvement of Bynum, Vujacic, Farmar and Turiaf, and then about the Gasol trade, but the impact of the Fisher acquisition has kind of been forgotten, at least by me.
But watching that game last night, I realized how much of an impact he has made on that team. They have a saavy veteran point guard with playoff experience who gets after it on defense (even though he will get burned by better point guards, and Deron Williams will remind us of that from now on in this series, I think), knows the offense and will step up and hit big shots in big games. 22 points last night, I think, at least when I started flipping channels.
And then when you compare him to Smush "Team Defense" Parker, the difference is night and day. I didn't think Fisher would make that much of a difference, and the fact that other players on the team got better and they made a big trade has a lot to do with it, but the Lakers lucked out with the Fisher situation.