I may have done this before … just turned over a blog entry to the analysis of a former colleague.

In this case, it pertains to the Lakers, who are down 2-0 to the Dallas Mavericks and look unlikely to survive this round.

How can they be losing to a one-man Dallas team? That is the question I posed from the other side of the world to a guy who really knows basketball and has been following the Lakers (and sometimes reporting on them) for almost half a century.

My former colleague — and many of you will know who this is — explains in this e-mail he sent to me.

“It’s quite possible the Lakers don’t have it this year, as they didn’t as 1981 (first-round exit after winning title in 1980), or 1986 (third-round rout by Rockets after winning in ’85). It happens. I’ve more or less come to terms with it, though of course I still hope they pull through.

“I think you underestimate the Mavs. They have only one great player, as do the Lakers, but they have a lot of good ones. Maybe not anyone you’d want to draft in (a fantasy league), but quite useful in the real world.

“They play good team defense now (even Jason Kidd has learned to guard people), which is more than half the battle in the playoffs, and the addition of Tyson Chandler has been huge in that area.

“Their bench is much, much better than the Lakers’. Peja (Stojakovic), whom they picked off the scrap heap for basically nothing, can still shoot, if nothing else, and he’s just one of several guys, including 2-3 reserves, who can nail an open three. Who do the Lakers have who can do that? Which is part of their problem.

“The Lakers keep talking about how if they just focus on getting the ball inside to the two 7-footers and Odom, they’ll be fine. But the Mavericks, unlike every other team in the West, have the size to combat that. And because the Lakers don’t have any consistent outside threats to keep the defense honest — other than Kobe, who’s really a one-on-one jump shooter more than a spot-up guy you see in the typical inside-out game, hanging out at the arc to stretch the defense — the Mavs can just pack the defense inside and muck up the Lakes’ strategy.

“It isn’t simply a matter of getting Gasol set up on the low block and throwing him the ball. First of all, the defense is aligned specifically to combat that. Second … well, you want to talk about a guy who’s squishy — Gasol is so frail that, when he tries to establish back-to-the-basket position in the block, between the time when the entry pass is released and when it arrives, the defender has stuck a forearm in his back and Gasol is catching the ball 4-5 feet farther from the rim than where he tried to set up initially.

“It’s pretty much the opposite of Shaq, who would take the initial entry pass, throw it back out and ‘re-post’ five feet closer to the hoop. Where Gasol is getting the ball, he basically has no choice but to turn and face the basket, and now you’ve turned him into a jump shooter casting off from 15-18 feet. He can hit that shot when he’s open, but it’s harder when he’s guarded. Even the puny Hornets had a lot of success doing this, and now, against Dallas, he’s being moved even farther out, trying to shoot over another 7-footer with a hand in his face. I think this is why his scoring, rebounding and FG% have plummeted in the playoffs.

“I’m sure there are things the Lakers can do within that offense, with motion and cutting etc., to create some openings for him close to the rim. But it won’t be easy.

“They could lose this series.  Even Kobe said after  Game 1, ‘this team can beat us.’ You rarely hear that kind of talk from him. I never worried that they might lose to the Hornets. But these guys, yeah, they could lose this. Easily.”

Wait! There’s more. I sent a note to him about how the Lakers shooting 2-for-20 from three-point range was why they lost … that if they had shot 7-for-20, which is 35 percent and not some crazy percentage, would have generated another 15 points — and won the game. And I also placed blame on Derek Fisher, who used to make threes, as well as first-year Lakers Steve Blake and Matt Barnes, who are supposed to hit threes.

He replied:

“The two (in the 2-for-20) is terrible, but the 20 is worse. They shouldn’t be attempting nearly that many; their strength is going inside. In the office, every time they throw up a three, somebody says ‘another three’ or ‘stop shooting threes’ or ‘stop settling.’

“Fisher is an iconic figure in Laker history, he’s hit some of the biggest shots in recent team history . . . but he’s not a shooter. A guy like Peja or Ray Allen or Mike Miller or Kapono or any number of Euros you’d care to name. A guy who makes his living at it. A guy who strokes it. Who hangs out at the 3P arc, can catch a pass and shoot it in one motion, with a quick release, before the defense can get there, and can repeat that motion time after time. Or a guy who can do all while moving, while coming off a screen, a guy you can run a play for at the end of the game using multiple screens to free him up just long enough to get the ball and shoot it — a guy like Ray Allen, the best I’ve ever seen at that. It seems like every team has at least one pure shooter. Except the Lakers.

“I guess they had one in Sasha Vujecic, but he was way too streaky and Phil hated him and they traded him just to dump his salary. But Fisher’s not that guy; he’s short and stocky and slow and his shooting motion is so laborious and takes so long to unspool. He’s gotta be wide, wide open to take and make one. He’s also got to be in the game, period … but he’s such a defensive liability that Phil often won’t play him down the stretch anymore. The little guy’s a beloved figure in Lakers history, deservedly so . . . but he’s old, and he never was quick to begin with. He’s a liability now, and every other team knows it.

“When I heard the Lakers had signed Blake and Barnes last offseason, I thought they were great moves. My mental images of them were from what I’d seen them do against the Lakers — Blake hitting three-pointers from the corner for Portland in yet another Lakers loss up there; Barnes getting under Kobe’s skin and hitting clutch threes for the Magic. I told myself, these guys have moxie and they can shoot. But of course the experience of watching them over an entire season is much different from watching them in one or two games against the Lakers — who always bring out the best in every opponent.

“In reality, Blake isn’t a shooter; he’s a scrawny backup point guard who isn’t particularly quick (though not as slow as Fish), and can’t hit the three consistently, only occasionally. He looks so frail that it appears to take every ounce of strength he has just to get the ball to the rim from the three-point line — it’s not a smooth motion, there’s a lot of visible effort in it. And it looked that way even BEFORE he got chicken pox at the start of the playoffs.

“Barnes, it turns out, is just a skinny leaper who expends a lot of energy, doesn’t shoot very well (even from the FT line) and is physically overmatched anwhere close to the hoop. He’s best when he can get out and run on the break, where he’s an often spectacular finisher — but of course the Lakers hardly ever run, so his greatest strength is pretty much wasted on this team. He’s a bad fit, in other words. He and Blake — 0 pts, 0 for7 combined in Game 2.”

Looks grim, doesn’t it?