kobe was insane. 62 points on 31 shots? that's efficiency. who cares if he doesn't get a single assist, it's still one of the best performances of the decade. that elbow was sweet. Irk got a taste of his own medicine.
This is not the same old offensive Dallas team. They could still score but you'll be hardpressed to get 95 from them consistently. Dirk just doesn't have that reliable second scoring option unlike Yao who has T-Mac (or the other way around), Shaq and Wade, Duncan and Ginobili, etc. etc. As far as the defense on Kobe: it's true that they played defense but I don't care if he's hot or not -- that shouldn't have happened. Howard, Daniels and Griffin did a good job contesting but they gave him too much space and weren't very physical... but I suppose the latter doesn't always work with Kobe unless your name is Bruise Bowen. AJ claims that he tried to double but it was a late/weak double so it's about as useless as putting Nash on him.
They just had a special recap on it on foxsports. They interviewed Avery Johnson and he mentioned that they tried everythiing on him, double teamed, triple teamed him, even tried to deny him the ball and NOTHING worked, he was in his zone, the type of zone only rare players of his caliber have the ability to get into. The mavs exauhsted their entire focus on stopping Kobe, therefore they didn't do well offensively because the focus was on defense. This makes your comment above pretty dumb. You are saying the mavs were off? When in reality they didn't have the energy to play offense and their coach just admitted it.
I guess you didn't see Josh Howard clothes-line Kobe when he went into the lane? I think Kobe sat out the fourth quarter for fear of getting hurt with how physically the mavs started playing him. Did you watch the game?
I did, but that's more of a hard foul helping out than the physical "D" I was looking for. But like I said, it's probably not a good idea either given Kobe's stroke with the officials. Yes, both live telecast and replay. Fair enough.
If what Avery Johnson said was true, then what's dumb is not my comment, but his strategy. They spent all their energy on stopping ONE player so that they couldn't do squat on offense? LOL That's the dumbest coaching I've heard. If it were JVG, he would've answered, "Well, Kobe was in the zone. But we still should've shot better than 35%."
