I made some quickie comments about Friday’s game on Red State today. Here they are:
I’ve been sick, and still am, so here’s a delayed comment. I’d still be asleep in fact, were it not for the fact that I couldn’t get back to sleep, because my last Claritin D had worn off…
Anyway yes, that game was good. Combined with the previous Lakers/Rockets game, in which Houston fought hard to wipe out a 20+ point Laker lead, my thought late in this one (even before OT) was that it’d be GREAT for these two teams to meet in the playoffs. It might happen too, as a 4/5 or 3/6. Not guaranteed, though, because I don’t see either team dropping lower than a 6. Of course there’s always the second round…
I think this game was an excellent contrast between the teams two number one stars. Their number two options are both out (Odom and McGrady) so it’s perfectly fair to use this game to compare Yao Ming and Kobe Bryant.
Yao was a monster in the first half, making I think it was 6 blocks in the first half. He picked up only two in the second half though, I think none in OT, and in fact got blocked at least twice himself in the second OT, during the run in which the Lakers took the game away. He was tired. This is his fifth year in the league, and he fades in the fourth quarter like a rookie in the spring.
Kobe on the other hand, managed to follow perfectly the script set for him by his demanding critics. He gave totally selfless basketball a fair chance, only scoring two in the first quarter, and then kicked it in to overdrive as the game went on. He didn’t completely neglect his teammates late though, and so Smush hit some big shots late, too.
I bet Smush will stop fading yate before Yao does though.
I’ve been sick. Still am, but I’m feeling mostly better now. Been playing FFXII. Yes, still! The hunts are getting stupid in that, I might quit them. Finding the Gil Snapper and the Marilith centered on dumb tricks that I actually broke down and looked up on the Internet. If any more require tricks I’ll just quit the hunts.
Reports are that The Army and Marines want more troops, except that they really don’t. The services are actually requesting permanent increases in their size to basically match their current sizes, which are being boosted by special wartime bills.
I’m heartened by this. We’ve been told for years that the military leaders didn’t want more troops. However now, the Army and Marines are superficially making it sound like they do. Only, by requesting an increase in their numbers that slightly more than matches the current amount provided by the supplementals, this gives the Democrats a way to attack Bush while in fact staying the course.
There are some smart cookies behind this announcement.
Kobe had 33. I thought he’d have a big game without Lamar Odom around, to cover for the offense. What I didn’t fully expect though was that the defense would have so much trouble without him.
It makes sense when I think about it, though, because Odom is another of those versatile forwards like Dirk Nowitzki. Oh, well. The Lakers won’t have to play Dallas EVERY game in the next four to six weeks until Odom returns, at least!
The Suns beat the Shaq AND Wade-less Heat, so now the Lakers drop to second place.
Whew. The Lakers had over a 25 point lead, but nearly gave the game up. Of course, the concern rihgt now is what happened to Lamar Odom. The severity of his knee sprain is not known at this time.
In any case, it’s good to get a win to start this stretch of mostly road games.
Eric Gagné is now a Ranger, apparently having agreed to a one year, $6 million deal with a possible $5 million in bonuses.
It’s nice that he’s in an AL team. Now I can root for him to do great.
For 35 years, longer than the lives of most current NBA players, longer than Commissioner David Stern’s signature has been on the ball, the association used the same Spalding leather balls. This season though, that practice ended. Following up from a trial run in the last All-Star game, the leather ball was replaced by a new ‘microfiber’ synthetic ball.
Veteran NBA athletes were used in the bulk of the ball’s development. However Steve Kerr and Mark Jackson are retired from the league. Except for that one-shot All-Star trial, the ball was not tested by active players. In fact, the players uniformly say they were surprised by the sudden change, and complained that they got no chance for input before the decision was made.
Shaquille O’Neal, quotable as always, compared the ball with an outdoor ball from the toy store. Steve Nash said the ball would hurt his hand, and now months into the season, he has the cuts to prove it.
Seeing no other recourse, the players’ union turned to the National Labor Relations Board for relief. This move was widely seen as futile, with most commenters seeming to reply with Mark Cuban’s assessment that legal action was in the league’s ‘wheelhouse,’ referring to the NBA league office as as “Nothing But Attorneys.”
Well, David Stern is a high-powered attorney himself, and he may see some merit in the players’ complaint, because it is reported that the league will reinstate the leather balls starting on January 1.
Personally, I think this would be a terrible mistake. Instead of switching back to leather, I think the league should take Mark Cuban’s advice: switch out the ball every quarter, and every time it gets wet. According to Stern himself, the leading advantage of the new balls are their uniformity, so why not use that advantage and keep the ball dry? That would shoot down the players’ complaint that the balls are slippery when wet.
Kobe’s back, and 34 points from 24 helped beat the Spurs in an exciting game. Both teams had double-digit leads over the course of the game, but the Lakers played offense and defense late, while drawing three point plays and hitting their outside shots, to grab the win.
Now for some road games…
Early evaluation: you keep your party for the most part, it’s fairly free-form without the constant jerking around that most of the series does to you. So far I like it.
Kobe apparently decided to rest his injured ankle tonight against the Hawks, probably in part because the Hawks are weak, partly because he needs to heal it, and the rest because his injured play last game led the whole team to take far too many jumpers.
And boy, did the Hawks make this Kobe-less team look good. Lamar Odom did the grunt work, with 15 rebounds and 7 assists to go with his 6 points. Kwame was efficient, too, with 13 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists. The beneficiaries of these assists: Luke Walton, 25 points; Maurice Evans, 22 points in the rare start; Jordan Farmar, 15 points off the bench. The team as a whole shot 56% from the field to the Hawks’ 43%.
The Suns won again, though, on their East coast trip, so the Lakers will remain in first place only by a single game in the win column: 13-6 versus 12-6. And yes, I’m still nervous about whenever the Lakers will have their first big Eastern swing.