Defining a successful team effort is the first step to recognizing when it’s been achieved, and recognizing it is the first step to repeating it. Preparation allows for repetition; repetition breeds excellence.

If the Los Angeles Lakers are still looking to define that blueprint for excellence, they needn’t look further than the performance they produced Wednesday night against San Antonio.

This is not to say Wednesday game was flawless. Far from it actually, since the Lakers showed plenty of blemishes against the Spurs. But it is for precisely that reason it should be the model the Lakers build on and point to when defining success over the next two months of playoffs basketball.

John Wooden once famously said that “failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” Coaches around the world have long used this quote to inspire their teams during lethargic practice sessions or tedious film prep – it is a simple, straightforward axiom reminding players of the importance of practicing properly.

While player preparation is crucial to team success, to achieve meaningful success, teams must go beyond practicing hard. They must develop, and share, a bona fide roadmap that defines their team’s success. They need a clear and consistent blueprint for how to maximize their collective strengths.

The Lakers found their blueprint Wednesday. They were not perfect, but by executing well in a number of critical areas they were good enough to win. That is the lesson coming out of the first game of their current five-game roadtrip: identify the essential components of the game, execute them well, limit major mistakes, go home with a win.

As complicated and difficult we make basketball out to be, there are some basic, almost primary, elements that go a long way to defining whether a team will be successful.

Really, winning in the NBA comes down to four directives:

1)      Can the team score efficiently on offense and share the ball?

2)      Can they attack and swarm defensively without getting into foul trouble?

3)      Can they rebound to limit opponents’ second-chance opportunities?

4)      Do they have a closer to put the game away down the stretch?

If a team can do those four things well, they stand an excellent chance at winning. If a team can do those four things and features the kind of incredible individual talent that the Lakers have, there are is little way it can lose. Really, for a team this talented the game becomes that simple.

On Wednesday, the Lakers showed us they could achieve all four of these decrees. If they continue to follow that blueprint from here until June the rest of the NBA needs to look out.

Wednesday’s win saw the Lakers battle back from being down at half, and do so by trusting their defense. Yes, Bryant took over in the fourth en route to scoring 24 points and hit a pair of game-sealing 3-pointers, but Los Angeles won because it held the Spurs to 31% from the floor in the four quarter and just 37.5% for the game. They won behind Ron Artest’s five steals, Lamar Odom’s 13 rebounds, and Pau Gasol’s double-double.

That is the blueprint the Lakers need to follow to win this spring: effective team defense, consistent output from Artest and Odom, and Bryant playing the role of distributor for 36 minutes (he had 6 assists Wednesday) before going into the proverbial phone-booth and reemerging as the game’s greatest closer.

As already mentioned, this effort was far from perfect though. Artest still took too many threes and falls in love with his jumpshot far too often. Gasol still let himself be pushed around in the paint when double-teamed and is still all to will to back down when team’s get physical with him. Bryant never went to the line and is attacking the rim less and less. No one stopped Manu Ganobili’s repeated assaults on the rim, giving the Spurs easy layups. And the list goes on.

Certainly there is a catalog of things the purple-and-gold could have done better. But the point is that with a team this talented, they need not be perfect. Just consistent. And committed.

All year we have waited for the defending champs to seem as engaged as they did last season. A year ago they had an easily identifiable hunger to win – they had been humiliated by the Celtics in the Finals and wanted payback. They were hungry. For a long time that has not been true of this year’s squad. But perhaps now they are finally tuned in and focused on the task ahead of them. They know the playoffs are just around the corner and that they need to get organized if they are to make a third-straight trip to the Finals.

Whether or not they do it remains to be seen, but at least now they have the blueprint for how to get there. All they have to do is follow the formula they found against the Spurs, trust the process, and prepare for success.