As I watched the Lakers self-destruct during tonight's game, I reflected on last week's Jeopardy champion and what he had that L.A.'s team lost.

        Last week's Jeopardy champion was fantastic. He cleared categories, he seemed to answer more than half the board single-handedly, he racked up such high scores that by the end his opponents couldn't have touched him no matter what happened. It was one of the most impressive displays of TV game show playing I had ever seen.

        Despite his intellectual prowess, how he handled one particular game marked him as a true champion. His opponents were sharper than usual, but still not seemingly any challenge. Then they began answering questions he didn't. He started missing answers. As his score dropped his opponents' rose. One achieved half his score -- a mere "daily double" from the lead -- for the first time during his reign. His guesses were taking him out of the game.
        Then something very subtle happened. He stopped answering questions. He just stood there. Suddenly his opponents got confident. They could surge ahead! They started trying to answer everything, and they began missing. Their score started dropping while his remained steady. Sometimes he would let the question go without ringing in. Other times he would let his opponents remove a couple of wrong options before coming in with the answer himself. His score started rising again while theirs dropped perilously close to zero.
        In the end he again won with a buffer so great no one could touch him.

        I caught the last quarter and a half of tonight's NBA Championship Game 4 between the L.A. Lakers and the Detroit Pistons. The Lakers were behind. Instead of calming themselves down, focusing, and moving forward with the quiet confidence of champions, they started displaying desperation. They missed baskets, turned over the ball, made stupid fouls. More points for the Pistons. At one point Kobe took his frustrations out on the officiating and received a technical foul. One more point against the Lakers. They dropped further and further away. One of ABC's anchors said something like "The Lakers are falling apart and it has nothing to do with the Pistons." Exactly.

        That Jeopardy player displayed the mark of the true Champion. Rather than panic, rather than start flailing and "trying harder," he just backed off. He centered himself, regrouped, then moved forward to another easy win while his opponents, desperate to make hay, dropped out of sight.
        The Lakers' frantic, desperate play took them out of the game and the series. Chick Hearn, the great Lakers announcer, used to say, "The best beat themselves." There is a level of excellence where no-one can touch you, where to lose you actually have to remove yourself from the competition. The Lakers once had that. That pathetic bunch of posers who took the court tonight didn't. They aren't champions and won't be. They don't have what it takes.

        The Lakers could learn a lot from watching Jeopardy, and it has nothing to do with trivia.