And you thought the Lakers stunning Game 2 loss to the Thunder was a heartbreaker? Game 4 loss might have been worse.

For the second time in three games, the Lakers blew a fourth quarter lead and failed to execute at crunch time.  Somehow, the team with five championships in eleven years and three NBA Finals appearances in the last five has inexplicably lost their poise when the game matters most.  Somehow Kobe Bryant, the NBA’s greatest closer, has forgotten how to close out a game.

Asked why, a tight-lipped Bryant shook his head.

“They’re surrounding me, they’re surrounding Andrew {Bynum]. Simple as that.”

A night after bailing the Lakers out at the end of Game 3, Bryant missed 8 of 10 shots in the fourth quarter of Game 4, then blamed his teammates for not being aggressive enough.

“The shots that I took were tough shots,” Bryant said. “They didn’t fall for me tonight. Either we got to free me up to get better looks in the fourth quarter, or other guys got to be aggressive, one or the other.”

In the latter part of the regular season, Bryant seemed to turn a corner, admitting that he couldn’t do it by himself, that he needed his teammates. He facilitated while bolstering his teammates’ confidence. He let Andrew Bynum and Steve Blake win critical games with fourth quarter shots usually reserved for himself. When he sat out seven games with an injury, he reveled in his new role as unofficial assistant coach, giving out pointers, smiling, looking for all the world like the consummate teammate.

The good feelings and stellar play carried over through the first four games of the Denver series, when the Lakers took a 3-1 lead. Then they lost their mojo, let the Nuggets back into the series, survived a shaky Game 7, then found themselves in deep water against a Thunder team that is younger and athletically superior. Bryant has gone back to questioning his teammates – he sounded disappointed that Metta World Peace decided to trust Blake with the game-winning shot at the end of Game 2, despite the fact that Blake was clearly open and Bryant clearly was not. And when the game tightens, Bryant – like the rest of the Lakers – stop trying to pound the ball down low and resort to perimeter shots, which often lead to long rebounds and play right into OKC’s fastbreaks.

At this point, it’s tough to tell which is coming first: is Bryant taking over the game because his teammates are deferring to him, or are they deferring to him because they’re waiting for him to take over?

Whatever the answer, there’s a strange disconnect that’s enveloped this team for the past year.  Maybe things would’ve been different is Derek Fisher had still been around, but Fisher was no help a year ago when the Mavericks swept the Lakers out of the second round – which is where all the problems seem to have started.  Or maybe they started when David Stern vetoed the Chris Paul trade, Lamar Odom was shipped out, and Pay Gasol, nearly a Houston Rocket, slid into a season-long funk.

It’s also become clear that Bynum and Gasol do not play well together. This was not an issue during the back-to-back championship run, because Bynum often sat the fourth quarter (or large portions of it) and the Lakers had the slashing Lamar Odom to help keep defenses from collapsing the paint. Now, Gasol looks tentative and passive, and Oklahoma City is swarming Bynum down low.

All this aside, the Lakers almost rewrote the script that everyone had written for them after Game 3. The script suggested that the Lakers had spent all their energy pulling out a must-win, and that the Thunder’s younger legs would carry them in the second game of a back-to-back, the Lakers gradually succumbing to age and fatigue. 

But this is Hollywood, where scripts are constantly rewritten. Before the game, Mike Brown assured the media horde that the Lakers were fresh and ready for Game 4, and then they came out and proved it. Bynum was a beast, hitting 7 of his first 8 shots and having his way with whomever OKC threw at him. Bryant was at his playoff best, hitting 10 of 18 shots, dishing when he needed to, staying aggressive.  At the end of the first half, he responded to Kendrick Perkins blocking his layup attempt by coming back to hit a twisting, driving shot high off the glass to send the Lakers to halftime with a 10-point lead.

The Lakers kept the pressure on in the second half. For 40 minutes they were in complete control, maintaining a low double-digit lead, never letting the Thunder get closer than 7 points. OKC’s body language was frustrated; after Bryant found Bynum under the basket with a nifty pass that led to a dunk, Kevin Durant and Kendrick Perkins could only shake their heads. With a little over nine minutes to play, the lead was 13, Staples Center was rocking, and it appeared the series was headed back 2-2 for Game 5. 

Then the wheels came off the Lakers offense. As Bynum said later, Perkins started fronting him, and he got swallowed up in the post. Bynum got one shot off in the final five minutes, a hurried miss from the baseline.  Russell Westbrook and Durant took over the game.  Bryant kept shooting, Pau Gasol never got off a shot in the final 12 minutes, and no other Laker stepped up.

As Thunder coach Scott Brooks said afterwards, “I don’t know how it happened, but it did.”

No play epitomized the Lakers’ collapse more than the egregiously bad pass that Gasol made with the score tied. Holding the ball in the right frontcourt, he passed up an open shot and attempted a cross-court pass to World Peace. Durant anticipated it, picked it off with one swoop of his long arms, and calmly moved down the court, backing Metta on his heels before launching a long three that the entire building seemed to know was going in.

"It left my hand, (and) I was thinking, 'If this doesn't go in, it's going to be a terrible shot,'" Durant said.

It wasn’t, of course. Gasol’s pass, unfortunately, may be Lakers’ fans lingering memory of him when he is likely traded this summer.

“I could have probably taken a shot at that point,” Gasol admitted. “I thought I had a good look to Metta at the three-point line…. I could’ve shot it, I could’ve dribbled it… I am unselfish, and sometimes it kind of plays against me. Unfortunately, I made a mistake.”

Said Bryant of Gasol: “He’s looking to swing the ball too much, he’s gotta shoot it, he’s got to be more aggressive.  Got to shoot the ball, got to drive to the basket, and he will be the next game.”

A game that could well be the Lakers’ last of this often confounding season.