I wanted to play the Lakers in the first round. If nothing else this is good experience for Yao and Steve. I hope that Yao learns he has to bring it every night and that Stevie learns to trust his teammates but here's what I've seen in this series so far. I wanted to play the lakers because if you get in Kobe's head (like the stories about how well mobley does against him have) he makes it 1 on 1 and if he doesn't shoot over 35% you have a shot to win the game. He did that. And we lost. The problem was that we tried to go at their players 1 on 1 and you can't do that vs the Lakers. They have too many talented players on that team. What you can do is take advantage of the fact that that unit has 42 games together. Even though we had fewer turnovers than normal durring the 2nd half it because of the lack of passing which leads to the low percentage. On the Yao/Francis arguement. I thought Yao played decent, though not great and Francis had the worst triple double i've ever seen. Don't get me wrong, you don't get a 3/2 without hustling, but the assists came early not late which is the problem. There was an article that mentioned 3 times that Yao had position but got a bad pass, what about the times he had position and didn't get a pass period. Not that he goes without blame, but how does shaq get foul 4 with 9 mins in the 3rdQ and not foul out? We should have set picks to get shaq on Yao and wait for the inevitable? Yao on the otherhand didn't rebound, take it to shaq (most of his points were not on shaq, and he only picked up two of the fouls on shaq)or play him tough enough when he was in foul trouble. These add up to a young/immature team that may get swept IMHO
