The Lakers are at it again.

That’s right – - they’ve dug themselves into an 0-2 deficit. But this time, their opponent, the Dallas Mavericks, have taken the first two games of the series in Los Angeles.

At the conclusion of the game, the crowd at the Staples Center booed its home team in disapproval.

Game One saw Dallas erase a 16-point Laker lead.

Game Two saw the Lakers embarrass themselves for most of the contest.

Los Angeles missed layups, airballed threes, threw balls away – in a nutshell, they didn’t play championship basketball.

Barea made the difference in tonight's Mavericks win.

The Mavericks played great team defense. Jason Kidd bottled up Kobe Bryant. After going up soft towards the basket, Pau Gasol got blocked by Deshawn Stevenson. And Steve Blake couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.

Dirk Nowitzki – not Bryant – is looking like the best player in this series. He has proven to create the biggest mismatch, as the Lakers (just like everyone else in the league) don’t have a defender who can truly match up with the German.

The biggest sparkplug in tonight’s game was J.J. Barea – who turned the game into Dallas’ favor early in the fourth quarter. Once again, a speedy guard was able to penetrate the Laker defense and create all kinds of problems for Los Angeles.

Thankfully for Lakers fans, their team is more than capable of winning on the road.

But if their effort doesn’t improve drastically, this series could be over before it even started.

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