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Lakers-Thunder: Coach’s corner

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The questioning was over andOklahoma City Coach Scott Brooks departed the interview room at Staples Center, leaving reporters with these words: ‘You guys are easy.’

That was probably the only thing easy for Brooks on Tuesday night in Game 5. The Lakers led, 31-16, after the first quarter and went on to win, 111-87.

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‘What happened? Well, we got our butts kicked,’ said Brooks. ‘There’s no way around it. They out-played us from the opening tip to the end of the game....We settled for too many bad shots. We didn’t do a very good job of making them miss.’

Brooks said Kobe Bryantset the tone defensively for the Lakers and the impact of Bryant guarding Russell Westbrook to start the game ‘kind of threw us off a little bit.’

Lakers Coach Phil Jackson spoke about the thinking behind putting Bryant on Westbrook.

‘When I came out of the team video yesterday, he (Bryant) said, ‘I’d like to take Westbrook,’ ‘ Jackson said. ‘I said OK.’

Game 6 will be Friday at Oklahoma City.

Brooks put it bluntly to his players afterward.

‘The only thing I said was all of us in our locker room have gotten their butts kicked. All of us,’ he said. ‘The only thing you can do is come back and respond to what just happened. We don’t get too high. We don’t get too down.

‘The one thing that we always do -- we always respond. We’ve done it all year long. We’ve had some tough losses, some last-second, difficult, emotional losses. But we’ve always found a way to come back and bounce back.

‘I expect to see our guys doing the same thing Friday night.’

-- Lisa Dillman

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