Awesome game 6!!!! Kobe being Kobe. He hit a ton of huge shots. He should have driven on that last play though. Thomas and Barbosa were big for Suns. Kwame Brown sucks. I dont know how many passes he fumbled in the lane. laker's Stromile Swift. Smush Parker needs to sit. He sucks!!! I hope game 7 goes to overtime too!! But I think Suns confidence is too high and they should close out the Lakers.
Actually it was freakin ESPN classic... I didn't realize that the QUALITY of play was just that much better. Better execution... better set-plays... better role-players... better defenses (Bad boys)... better shooters... and in most cases, more drama in the games because you knew both teams could execute/get a stop when they needed to. Alright, I'm done... this thread will be gone by Saturday, and I'll have to find something else that's interesting in this playoffs (since this is the only series that I've paid somwhat close attention to... because the media has tried to shove it down the throats as the series of the decade).
bull****. there used to be 24 teams back in the 80s and the population of the USA was about 240,000,000. now there are 30 teams and the population is 300,000,000. still the same number of people per team. oh, and the people playing now grew up watching the 80s and 90s, when the nba was at its most popular. it then seems fair to assume the percentage of people who wanted to play in the nba was probably never higher than for this generation. and then you add in the international influx of something like 80 players and you're talking about 6 teams worth of guys who weren't even here back then. so now we're back to 24 teams being filled by americans with 60,000,000 more people to do the filling with more of those 60,000,000 growing up liking the nba than ever. expansion is a poor argument. as for the stars, even hakeem got knocked out in the first round when he had crappy teammates. mchale wouldn't have led anyone anywhere with teammates like parker or walton. lets not go overboard on the nostalgia.
I was LOL when he said that!! Smush would have been smushed with the ball in his hands in that pressure cooker. Stop trying to sound smart Chuck. You used to chuck 2-3 ill-advised 3 pointers a game thru out your career.
Yup yup. More than half of the time, even he himself has no idea what the heck he just said. Trying really hard to sound smart.....not happenin.
The bulls from the 90's aren't much different than this lakers team. The main difference is that the bulls had point guards who could shoot. PJ runs the offense the same way, he just doesn't have quite as much to work with. Damn that Tim Thomas! lol
Nick: You're completely off. This revisionist history that "the game was once so great" gets annoying. The game is in great hands. Kobe is great. Lebron is great. We like to look back on the past and remember it as something it wasn't. I don't really know what you mean about the game being helter skelter. Put in a tape of the '94 Rockets-Knicks finals. Controlled slow down basketball, right? No. They were basically running up and down the court jacking up shots (especially Maxwell). It wasn't pretty.
give us a break. so not only were the defenses better, but the offenses were two levels better to account for all the extra scoring. it makes perfect sense. even though the sport has not waned in popularity (at least in terms of who is playing now) i'm to expect that suddenly the 6 billion people on this planet got worse at basketball collectively, even with all the extra benefits of training and coaching developments that have occured in the interim. clearly an avid basketball fan here to inform us of the state of the nba. get thee back to the baseball board.
people do it in every sport and every walk of life. the "good ol' days" were always so much better. basketball was better when they scored more, baseball was better when they scored less, football was better when there were strong teams instead of parity, baseball sucks b/c there are only strong teams and no parity, music used to be great now it sucks, tv used to be great now it sucks, movies used to be great now they suck. like that sunscreen song said when you were younger "prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders."
slick, I agree with you. I mentioned along time ago about Tim Thomas. I resurrected the thread again on the Rockets side because I know someone will have a 'lets sign Tim Thomas thread'. Plus i'm stepping on the Tim Thomas haters and people who 'thought' they knew more about me about this subject(basketball). you're welcome to join the thread. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=86559&page=1&pp=20
sure if you worship kobe or are a closet faker fan, you won't enjoy this game. but i did. i think nash is showing the world he deserves the MVP trophy. let kobe score and do his otherworldly stuff, but this game is played on earth and involves 5 people. now you got it? no? too bad. i see that PJ has already started working on the refs in the postgame interview. nice job, Zenmeister. unfortunately i hope your string of good fortunes will end in the desert. the gamesmanship played by you and your top gun, aka kobe the little Eagle Mambo, somehow didn't work out. kobe even unleashed a joke on "flush" which i didn't hear clearly but made all the r****do reporters laugh like crazy. enjoy it while you can, Mambo. what a great game. cheers. ps. "Barbosa took four stitches in his lower lip in the first quarter after being accidentally elbowed by Bryant"--Bell, does this ring a bell for you? that's how you answer an elbow: by scoring 22 pts.
DO NOT question my passion for the NBA. I've watched more NBA basketball in my lifetime than any other professional sport. My first team was the Oilers, and then the Rockets... I was a late-comer to baseball. I'm still die-hard with the Rockets, why do u think I was one of the first ones to ever register here? I just wish the NBA didn't play second-fiddle to the other major sports and college sports (besides hockey). I know they're making progress in that department since the early 2000's... but they still have a ways to go. But, I'll still be watching... and please don't make proclamations on this board about me or anyone else. If we went back and got all your quotes over the last year and a half regarding SF, T-Mac, the Magic... everything... I could make you look like the most schizophrenic of basketball fans with a ton of knee jerk reactions. But, I know you're better than that... I know you truly understand/love the game... and I would expect u to not pretend you're an admin, or some other higher up, and understand that there is an ability to be "critical" of today's NBA, but still be able to follow it.
I don't think that is spin. I think the Lakers did lose it because Kobe started hogging the ball. Look at the shooting percentages of Brown, Odom, and George. Those guys were performing well. Kobe just lost faith in them and then lost the game. Odom was 8 - 14. Brown was 8 - 9. George was 5 - 8. Even Walton was 5 - 11 which isn't horrible. Yet at the end Kobe was unwilling to share with those guys, and the Lakers lost. I don't know how you can say they weren't getting it done, when they obviously were. It is no coincidence that earlier in this series when Kobe was sharing, the Lakers were winning. Getting other players involved helps them out on the defensive end as well. They feel like they are part of a team, and have a stake in what is going on. We see what Kobe did last night, and the Lakers lost. Hopefully morons won't call people with a different opinion morons especially when they have rationale, and specific shooting percentages to back up their opinion.
That was their chance at the upset, that missed rebound and then that missed shot by Kobe, that's too bad, I predict a blowout by the Suns on Saturday night. Yes, it was because Kobe tried to win it on his own, just like Barkley said, and like I said that style of play will NEVER EVER win in the playoffs. I don't understand how he can change his game like that, after he saw that they played better as a team, and when his teammates had an opportunity to make big plays they made them he still went solo on everyone. It's insane. And YES, he should have passed the ball to Smush Parker, who cares if he was 0-5, he was 1-11 the other night when he stuck that game tieing three in Nash's face. It's so disappointing as an NBA fan too, thought I'd finally see another super star who doesn't think he's above his teammates, now maybe Lebron realized this with his teammates great contributions in game 5, we'll see.
