The second-string contingent of Luke Walton, Sasha Vujacic, Ronny Turiaf and Jordan Farmar – affectionately known as the “Bench Mob” – has been all of those things for the Lakers all season long, but in Game 1, that ol’ bench magic just wasn’t there.

Meanwhile, Boston’s sub squad, described as being too old and too inconsistent to match the talent, energy and cohesion of L.A.’s second unit ended up outscoring the Lakers 17-15 on Thursday.

The Lakers’ sixth man through 10th man fell seven points below its 22.2 post season scoring average and L.A. lost by 10. For all of the talk about Kobe Bryant’s 9-for-26 struggles, Walton, Vujacic, Turiaf and Farmar combined to go an equally anemic 5-for-15.

On Friday, Phil Jackson protected his bench players, citing that his changes to the Lakers’ rotation could have been the cause for the mob’s drop off.

“I really shortened the minutes of the bench last night, so that's not their fault about not scoring and no productivity,” Jackson said. “The adjustments that our younger plays will make, our bench players will be noticeable as we go through.”

Some of those adjustments will surely include finding a way to get better shots for the bench guys when they enter the game. Turiaf was baited into several jump shots out of his range, Vujacic was reverting to putting the ball on the floor rather than playing to his skills with catch-and-shoot attempts and Luke Walton ended up forcing both of his shot attempts.

In Dean Smith’s early days of coaching at the University of North Carolina, the legendary coach employed an en masse substitution pattern. In order to get the most out of every player on his roster, Smith guaranteed playing time to his non-starters and plugged them into the game as a group for at least four to five minutes each half.

Jackson usually uses the Bench Mob in a similar capacity, throwing the four of them out on the court on the same time and encouraging them to open up the offense by pushing the tempo and scoring out of transition and quick hitters.

In Game 1 however, the unit was split up, and just like they say a finger is weak but a fist is strong, the individuals lost their mob mentality without being on the court simultaneously.

“They didn’t play us all together,” Farmar said. “Our unit is a unit, we play together. We were never all on the floor together but for maybe a minute or so, so you can’t really judge.

“We all know how to run the triangle and get into our stuff, but when the Bench Mob is in together we play a different style – we get up and down, we scrap a little more defensively, we all know our strengths and weaknesses and we play to help each other out. [When we’re in together] it’s just a little different style. It takes the reigns off the triangle a little bit. We didn’t get a chance to go out and do it last night, I’m sure at some point in this series we’ll get an opportunity to do so.”

“I think they took us out a little bit of our offense,” Vujacic added, also noting that his and his teammates’ struggles were partially because of the good defensive rotations by the Celtics but also because L.A. didn’t move the ball as well as it should have.

“We didn’t have as much success as we had before,” Turiaf said. “If a couple of us, including myself, knocked down one more jumper maybe two more jumpers, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

Turiaf did his part to correct his broken jumper on Friday, engaging in a spirited spot shooting competition with Bryant at the end of practice. Bryant and Turiaf kept score with one another as Lakers assistant coaches Kurt Rambis and Frank Hamblen took them through a series of curls, fades and drop steps.

The 6-10 forward held his own with the league MVP through the first couple series of drills until Bryant started yelling, “Ca va?!” (roughly translated: Is it going in?) in Turiaf’s native French language to distract the eccentric big man as he released his shots.

Even though Turiaf was 2-for-5 in Game 1, (and also eventually lost the shooting competition to Bryant), he still found positives in the Bench Mob’s appearance on Thursday.

“We did a great job defensively so I think you have to also keep that in mind,” he said. “Basketball is not just offense. Sometimes we’re going to have an off night, but if you stop the offense from scoring, I think you’re doing a great job.”