The big difference is that the Pistons played Defense. Team Defense, and TMac was the only player who could score against that defense. With the Suns, anyone on that Lakers team can score against that defense (or lack thereof).
Weren't those the later-to-be-crowned World Champion Pistons that disposed of the Lakers in a near-sweep in the NBA Finals?
Did the Mavericks play team defense too? Bucks? Hornets? Dude, it never mattered which team the Magic or Rockets played against, T-Mac always took complete control of the game. Besides, I never said it was about scoring, I said it was about getting your teammates involved, not trying to beat a team going solo and make the playoffs your personal showcase. Make them feel as if their contributions will make a difference in the outcome of the game, don't just get yours all through the game and then expect your cold teammates to make plays in the 4th quarter when you're tired and or trapped. Right now the Lakers are getting contributions from everyone on offense and that pays off on defense, rebounding, and everyone being prepared to make a play when the game hangs in the balance. Do you think Lebron is having a great series? Look at his numbers and you might say he is, besides the turnovers, but in reality he's having a horrible series, all you have to do is look at the TEAM stats. He's taking a third of their shots, 14 more than Larry Hughes, he dishes out twice as many assists as anyone else, and three times as many turnovers. That's typical young Jordan/McGrady playing stats right there, he brings the ball up then every play is ran through him, leaving everyone else standing around even though he's playing with A LOT of talented players. That solo mindset just doesn't work, the teammates a guy like that is playing with are irrelevant because he doesn't involve them the way he should. Like I said, they're going to lose the series with him playing that way, unless the gameplan is changed to one that involves everyone. No.
praise him for what, they lost. that was the point, not to bash. mcgrady had a great playoff series, no one ever said he didn't, the point is the team lost because they relied to heavily on him.
What Kobe told Smush during the bearhug after their steal and finish at the end of Game 4 regulation. I DVR'd the replay last night. It's inaudible, but any kid who can read lips can see him say twice, "You're one bad M-----f-----."
Maybe he's finally stopped lusting after 19 year old chicks and told Smush that he badly wants to f*ck his mother...
Then your point is wrong. The team lost because nobody else on the team was any good, except for spurts. In the stretch, nobody else on the Rockets could step up. Plus, Tracy had to guard Jirk (and did a great job) because NOBODY else on the roster could. This obviously took it's toll late in games. Don't laugh, but I'm one of the few who thought losing Juwan hurt us big against the Mavs because it killed our depth. But the thing that burns me the most about that series was how worthless Sura and Wesley were. Our injured old fossils in the backcourt are why we lost that series. It wasn't coaching; it wasn't Tracy. If we hadn't "relied to heavily" on him it would have been 4-0 Mavs. The Mavs series is why I ranted so much last summer about putting both Sura and Wesley out to pasture.
in other words they had to rely on tracy too much. whether it was because they were no good or the offense didn't involve everyone enough is another debate.
Yet, you don't know that because they weren't ever given the chance to do something, nobody was allowed to get into any kind of a flow, just hit your open shots. Remember, we did have Mike James who showed this season that he was more than capable of putting up some numbers. Actually, in two games against the Mavs this season he averaged 24, 4, and 6 while hitting nine threes. No, he wasn't going to do anything like that in the playoffs, but he could have helped more if he wasn't used as a spot up jump shooter unless he went outside of the offense. Anyway, it's true, it's debatable whether or not T-Mac did everything out of necessity or the desire to go solo or out of stupid design, but the fact remains, you won't ever win big relying on one guy like that.
Subplot No. 2: Bizarro Kobe Well, I broke new ground here on ESPN.com: Back in January, I wrote that he was playing too selfishly. Now? I think he's playing too unselfishly -- in fact, he passed up so many scoring chances to set up teammates in Game 4, it nearly cost the Lakers a winnable game. More importantly ... WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?? WHERE THE HELL DID THIS COME FROM?!!?!?!?!?!? This was like watching Jimmy Fallon make it through an entire month of SNL episodes without laughing at one of his jokes. This was like watching Chris Berman make it through an entire NFL draft without tipping a team's pick as Paul Tagliabue approached the podium. This was like watching me write an entire month of columns without mentioning my friends or my father. It was simply incomprehensible. You could even call him Bizarro Kobe. Out of anything, I thought this e-mail summed it up, courtesy of JR in Pittsburgh: "How eerie do you find it that the Lakers' season continues to play out like the movie 'Teen Wolf?' Kobe plays like the Wolf all season only to show up for the playoffs in human form. You can just imagine him telling everyone before the series, 'I think we can take these guys. We don't NEED the Wolf.' Now everyone is making shots and playing so much good team ball that Mark Safan is probably calling Jerry Buss every day trying to talk him into scheduling a performance of 'Win in the End' at the Staples Center. You even have the coach who looks disinterested most of the time and is very philosophical (I remember reading that the original title of Phil's book was, 'Never Play Cards With a Guy Who Has the Same First Name as a City'). Has there ever been a movie more synchronized to [a] real sports storyline?" Actually, no. There hasn't. If Kobe starts dribbling down the court on fastbreaks with his head down like Michael J. Fox, I'm going to be officially freaked out. Do we praise him (for grasping the team concept, playing the most cerebral basketball of his career and finally understanding that his teammates will always play harder/better/more passionately when they have a greater stake in the proceedings) or skewer him (for not playing like this all along when it was clearly lurking inside of him). It's a tossup. If anything, his newfound unselfishness has hindered his offensive game; he played poorly for most of Game 4. But it's been mind-boggling to watch Bizarro Kobe pass up bad jumpers and openly try to get his teammates involved. It's simply implausible, like watching the Colts come out for a playoff game running the wishbone with Manning, and even stranger, Manning running amok and breaking tackles 20 yards down the field. Donald Sterling Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images It's good to see that Donald Sterling's 25-year plan to win a playoff series worked perfectly. As for the "What would prompt Kobe to switch gears so dramatically?" question, the answer lies in J.A. Adande's blog, in which the Los Angeles Times columnist runs an eye-opening Kobe-related quote from Phil Jackson. "Sometimes his needs to overwhelm the rest of the ballclub's necessity ... as we get into the playoffs, that'll dissipate, because he knows that he's got to put his ego aside and conform to what we have to do if we're going to go anywhere in the playoffs. Any player that takes it on himself to do that [play for himself] knows that he's going against the basic principles of basketball. That's a selfish approach to the game. You know when you're breaking down the team or you're breaking down and doing things individualistic, you're going to have, you know, some unhappy teammates ... and he knows these things ... intuitively, I have to trust the fact that he's going to come back to that spot and know that the timing's right. The season's over, things have been accomplished, records have been stuck in the books, statistics are all jelled in, now let's go ahead and play basketball as we're supposed to play it." One interesting wrinkle about that quote: Jackson made it two years ago, right before the 2004 playoffs. And he was responding to Howard Beck's question in which Beck wondered if Kobe used the regular season as his personal laboratory experiment, then gets with the team concept for the postseason. My take: I think Kobe came into the league too soon, had too much success too soon, won too many titles too soon, and eventually, he decided that his own numbers were more appealing than anything else. So he went on his own for a couple of years, even peaking as a scorer this season, only the team suffered as a result. And then something clicked over the last 5-6 weeks of the season, when Walton and Odom started playing so unselfishly and so productively, followed by Kobe coming around, and then the team came together and that was that. Now he has almost swung too far in the other direction, like an uncaring boyfriend who suddenly starts calling his lady four times a day and getting her gifts all the time. Yes, there's a happy medium. And here's the scary thing for the rest of the league: Over the next six weeks, Kobe Bryant might actually find it. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060502 The bolded says, in better words, what I've been trying to say with this theory that doing everything is the wrong way to go about playing basketball, winning in the playoffs, and getting the most out of teammates.
Screw that, I want to know what Payton and Wade were saying. I couldn't read Wade's lips to save my life.
To you and jumpman, fine, but the fact Sura and Wesley were hobbling ends the debate for me. And while Mike James took up some of the slack, he had 2-3 really bad games on offense. JB pitched in some, but MJ was our only backcourt player who could stop/slowdown anybody. I don't mean to dump too much on Sura and Wesley but their lack of contribution and inability to defend are why we lost. Our superstar dominated their superstar but the effort was wasted. jumpman, I agree it DOES prove you cannot win a championship on the back of one player. BTW, don't you dare post another picture of Rasheed with his big mouth open.
