Blog Posts For Tag: Lakers

After the first weekend of NBA play, it appears all is well. The slate of games actually increased from 6 million to 6.2 million from last year to this. Many feared repercussions similar to those after the NBA lockout in 1999. However, the players and owners proved most wise to save the Christmas dates. Besides, it is rare that the league enjoys much national attention (read – a national broadcast) until the holiday weekend.

While the rest of the basketball universe is busy condemning David Stern for blocking a blockbuster trade that could have jumpstarted interest in the NBA, I am wondering if the Los Angeles Lakers would be that much better with if they had acquired Chris Paul and traded away Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom.

The NBA has an obsession with the number three. The ultimate expression of dominance in this new era of basketball is the three-peat. Every team must have a three point specialist to space the floor in this age of unimaginably tall basketball players at every position. And now the rule of three is being applied to the championship equation.

The 2010 NBA Finals (and yes, I am preemptively giving the Western Conference Finals to LA.) is neither a rematch of the Celtics and Lakers from the 2008 season nor a series between the 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics and the 2009 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers. This may seem perfectly obvious to many, but pundits are sure to compare a Celtics team with a healthy Garnett to the championship team two years ago and a Lakers team with a healthy Andrew Bynum to the championship team from last season. This could conveniently by billed as a battle between the optimal incarnation of both storied franchises in the 21st century, especially as the NBA tries to steal attention from the LeBron watch.

Yesterday I was watching the replay of PTI on ESPN2 and caught an interview with Derek Fisher. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were asking his thoughts on the aging of Kobe Bryant and on the backlash from Utah Jazz fans during the last playoff series. This is where I get angry. He has the gall to summarily dismiss the anger of the Jazz fans, saying that he simply plays a game.

The Orlando Magic are down 0-2 in the NBA Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sports sites and basketball experts are busy decoding every game and pinpointing the Magic’s struggle and one of the arguments you and I are sure to hear is that the Magic take too many threes.

Every year just before the NBA playoffs begin, the postseason, the 16-team tournament or “second season”, seems to be sold as a story with plot points at every round and a black and white biopic for every charismatic player or superstar for each remaining team.

After a month prelude that was at times compelling (Celtics-Bulls) and at times uninspired (Mavs-Spurs) the conference finals have finally begun. The Los Angeles Lakers, who won last night thanks to Kobe’s fourth quarter performance, play the Denver Nuggets for the Western Conference title and the Cleveland Cavs play the Orlando Magic for the Eastern Conference title.

This year’s NBA Playoffs is turning out to be as predictable as I expect the summer blockbusters to be this summer. The Eastern Conference has only one possibility for the NBA Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Celtics and Magic are an injury or a year or two of experience away from cancelling the coronation of LeBron James. Despite the abundance of quality teams in the Western Conference(the first six seeds had a winning percentage of at least 60 percent), the Los Angeles Lakers appear to be playing on another level, with a deep bench, a penchant for smooth interior passing, and a superstar. Still, there or more storylines than simply the finals this spring, there are 14 other teams in the postseason and yesterday I discussed the Eastern Conference seven, now I get to take a look at why exactly the rest of the Western Conference is playing.

Whenever anybody thinks of the NBA and can’t miss games, the same match up comes up, the game between the purple and gold Los Angeles Lakers and the green and white Boston Celtics. This is perhaps the only nationally recognized rivalry in basketball, which is odd considering that the NBA has been around since the 1940s (which is also why everyone was so excited about last year’s finals). However, if you live near a city lucky enough to have one of these professional basketball teams you know that there are plenty of regional rivalries that have as much passion or are revving up to be as intense as the ultimate East Coast-West Coast showdown.

Invariably, any basketball postseason experience, whether you are watching an NBA game or any of the contests on the slate during March Madness, will have a game that will come down to the final minutes and a four or five point deficit. It is moments like these, after years of watching painful finishes, that have made me despise announcers who feel required to say that the team trying to claw into the lead does not need to go for three.

With a little more than 20 games left to go before the NBA regular season is over it is time to take a look at the stories that are sure to dominate the speculative headlines, features, and blogs.

Last season the trade deadline was a chance to improve a team’s position to try and spoil the Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers chances to win an NBA Championship. This season the trade deadline was a chance to collect expiring contracts to put themselves in position to sign an NBA Star in 2010.

The summer of 2010 promises to be one of the best free agent classes in NBA history with a plethora of top tier players becoming unrestricted free agents or having a player option to terminate their contracts and cash in for bigger deals.

This weekend was one of extremes. It started with a Sports Illustrated expose that implicated New York Yankees Alex Rodriguez as one of 104 people who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) and ended with an NBA match up between two of the best basketball players in a game that did not disappoint.

There is something about the fall of an institution or a person that is bigger than life that elicits such strong emotions. There is never any middle ground. It is always a reveling in an almost tyrannical vindictive showcase of fire and brimstone or an intense lament complete with blind nostalgic prose. If the documents released in the Barry Bonds perjury case are even slightly damning then I would be prepared to grab a pitchfork and join the other villagers in a mad riot on the way down to the steroid laced steel gate of his mansion.

Subtract a major part of the offense, add an opponent who does not play defense, and what do you get? Kobe Bryant posting 61 points at Madison Square Garden. Bryant hit 19 of 31 shots, including 3 of 6 threes, and sank 20 straight from the stripe. He did not do much else – only three assists, one block, and zero rebounds-, but he did manage to score the most points in basketball’s Mecca history.

Which is rarer, pure greatness or a great center? This question came up after Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel posted the vexing question in anticipation for the Cleveland Cavaliers-Orlando Magic game on Thursday night. Essentially the article was asking what is more valuable to a championship team, a player with pure greatness like LeBron James or a player with an incredible set of skills for a true center?

It seems like the winter wasteland that blankets the top half of this country is so intense that few things can bring a solid group of sports fans together. There is the Super Bowl, which is on February 1st this year, but little else seems to excite a nation that lives to love sports.

Twenty-three. Yes, twenty three. I am not chanting Michael Jordan’s old number, but counting the number of three-point shots made by the Orlando Magic Tuesday night against the Sacramento Kings. The Magic hit 23 of 37 shots from beyond the arc to set an NBA record for the most triples made by a team in a single game. They were hitting shots from all over the place and nine players helped the Magic capture the record even after garbage time had started in the fourth quarter.

The Boston Celtics started 27-2 and looked like they were going to be the team to beat the Chicago Bulls historic 72-10 season in 1995-96. The season looked like one long holiday, but Christmas Day began with coal in their stockings and by New Years Eve it looked like Boston would have to make a resolution to play better defense.

So I am simply obsessed with ESPN and the NBA, and that adoration is tied into one blinding vision that ties the two into one. I am like a giddy little girl who just found out daddy sprung for Jonas Brothers tickets. Really, I think “Mayne Street” is genius. The offbeat humor is enough to make me want to buy his book, even if the show is shameless self-promotion for his book An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport.

The real question is not who is better, the 23-2 Boston Celtics or the 20-3 Los Angeles Lakers. The real question is can any team in either conference actually stop these teams in a seven game series?

It is no secret that geek chic has taken over. Shows like Chuck and sassy smart girls in glasses are all the rage. It is also no mystery that the ‘80s are back. Excess is king, Madonna is back on tour, and the Celtics have played the Lakers in the finals.

The NBA has started a new golden age. Those words have been said before. They were said when Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, and Allen Iverson and this last batch of superstars were supposed to replace Jordan from the ‘90s.