dude sf4 get over it: Nash is MVP and he deserves it. go to bed now and wet your pillow with sad tears, my closet faker fan and not-so-secret kobe lover. you will cry him a river. admit it. then forget it. this has to be one of the most enjoyable moments in watching the NBA for so long. the refs handed game 4 to the fakers and their hyped Princess of the Dark, but the Suns, mostly the MVP, refuse to take it and found their own destiny. I think everyone with a fair game in him/her will rejoice and celebrate this sweet justice. the bball God is indeed watching. Amen.
Les should have canned CD for Colangelo while he had the chance, instead of going with RotoGM. Oh well, let's see what GM Statbot can do.
To all the Kobe fans, what make u guys think Kobe deserves the MVP?? Because his team is 45-37 and made the playoffs or because he averaged 35 points per game? If lakers lost, all the blame were on his teammates so does this mean all the team success is because of Kobe alone. IMO, the lakers roster 2006 was better than last year. I got Kwame from the Butler trade, Kwame may have a soft hands but he is the post defender the lakers desperate needs especially in the Western Conf. He improves lakers defense. They got Parker to replace Atkins. Both Parker and Atkins has almost identical stats. Paker is the big guard which Phil Jackson likes. Overall the roster improved, young players got one more year under their belts and dont forget they got PJ who is arguably one the of the best coach in the league and PJ knows Kobe well enough to maximise his potential. So the team improvement is beacuse of the overall team not only Kobe alone. Plus the fact, teams like Rockets(yao & tmac), utah(boozer, kirilenko), kings(Peja) all have star players missed significant amount of time this season which indirectly lead to lakers playoffs apperance. Kobe scored 35ppg. So far, his rebounds and assists is lowest in his recent years plus his defense suffered because he spent too much on offense. Kobe took 27 shots to score 35ppg. If Iverson shot extra two more shots, he will score 35ppg. If Lebron shot extra 4 more shots, he will have 35ppg as well. Not big deal! They didnt because they passed more. Nash has his flawed maybe he didnt score enough to gain others respect. Lebron struggled mightyly without Hughes(until they got Murray), Billups has all star teammates with him. Dirk has a strong supporting cast. But the award, MVP, is voted by all the media, journalist, analyst etc not by us the fans. They all think Nash is the better choice, so please just get over it. Amen.
winning 4-3 with better teammates is dominating? wasn't he supposed to win? didn't they basically control the tempo of 2 games , maybe 3. the fact all of his teammates can hit shots and most of kobe's really can't was a huge contributing factor. unless laker ball movement resulted in a layup, the ball didn't go in much. well when he scores people say it's his fault they lose. clearly phil took away his free reign. personally, i think it was a mistake, but kobe did what the coach said. hell he scored 23 points on 13 shots in the first half of game 7 and outplayed nash for the half and his team was down a million points. it's not like dale ellis or tom chambers were better players than hakeem in the late 80s b/c the sonics beat us in the playoffs.
In the same freakin year, les had an opportunity to can JVG and get Phil Jackson,who wanted to coach the rockets, AS WELL AS fire CD and go aggresively after Colangelo. He did neither. Instead, he extended JVG's contract AND signed an unknown commodity as a GM. Brilliant!!!
why were Jimmy Effing Jackson and Aaron McKie rotting on the Lakers bench during this series? true, Jimmy's not the best defensive player, but the Lakers needed someone cold-blooded who could drain shots. was McKie hurt? they could have easily played :: 1 - Smush 2 - Kobe 3 - JJ 4 - Walton 5 - Odom or 1 - Kobe 2 - McKie / George 3 - JJ 4 - Odom 5 - Kwame the possibilities are endless. the Lakers needed some dependable shooting. and when the rest of the players that you play b/c of their defensive ability aren't playing well Offensively OR Defensively, i'd say that should be an invitation to play JJ.
It is always clear that you cheer for the Lakers and Kobe. Just as clear is guys like tinman cheer for Cassell and the Clippers. Heck, I think tinman is annoying in his Cassell lovefest. However, I don't think tinman would refer to the Clippers as"we." It is fine cheering for another team. But how can there be two "we's"? It's like a married guy makes a slip referring to another woman, "How many times is she going to do that when WE are in bed." I am sure your wife would smack you in the face if you did that.
Such an enoyable beat down last nite.... Lakers down, that just leaves the Mavs to pull a Colts and get knocked off yet again..... Guess PJ suddenly forgot how to coach.......
The better team won. Kobe's "fire" and "winning mindset" could do nothing about it. I predict Clippers will take 2nd round in 6 or 7.
People don't say they lose when he scores. They say the Lakers lose when he's a ballhog - there's a huge difference. Taking 35 shots is generally being a ballhog. Taking 3 shots in the 2nd half is simply stupid - especially when your team is struggling. There's a middle ground there that Kobe hasn't learned. According to the post-game press conference, it was Kobe's decision to not shoot as much, not Phil's. I don't know where you get the idea Phil "clearly" took away his free reign. ESPN analysts were commenting that he looked like he was trying to make a "statement" to people complaining about how many shots he took in game 6, and we know he's done it before. If that's true, then he's childish as well.
Yup. Let's can a coach one year into his contract - a year that he actually led his team to the playoffs. That would be great for our perception around the league. And after treating your personnel like that, what on earth makes you think Colangelo would want to come work for such a crappy, disloyal owner?
You can spin it any way you want, but the cold hard truth is that the Lakers were up 3-1 and ALL they needed was ONE WIN to advance. They choked a seemingly insurmountable lead away to a team that is good but not great and is missing lots of key players. But again, it happens, I don't blame Kobe alone, this is a team game and the entire Lakers squad was at fault here. Anyways, I am just glad we got to enjoy postseason basketball in this series, it was very enjoyable. I honestly didn't care one way or the other as to who wins. Now, however, I am rooting for the Clippers all the way!
i think Kobe was afraid of "taking over" again, after all of the talk surrounding him becoming a "teammate" in the earlier games. none of his teammates could shoot worth sh1+. just look at the boxscore. Odom 5-14 FGS, 0-4 3PTers Kwame: 2-10 FGs Smush: 4-13 FGs, 1-6 3PTers George: 0-4 FGs Cook: 4-11 FGs, 0-3 3PTers Vujacic: 2-6 FGs the only ppl shooting decent[ly] were: kobe: 8-16 FGs, 4-8 3PTers walton: 6-13 FGs, 2-3 3PTers Lakers FG % = 35.2%; 3PT FG % = 29.6% in contrast, look at the freaking Suns. Barbosa: 10-12 FGs Boris: 8-14 FGs Raja: 5-7 FGs, 3-5 3PTers TimThomas: 6-10 FGs Nash: 6-12 FGs Marion: 6-13 FGs JamesJones: 2-4 FGs, 2-4 3PTers House: 3-4 FGs, 2-2 3PTers despite Thomas's (0-3) and Nash's (1-5) bad 3-PT shooting, the Suns managed a FG % of 61.0% and a 3PT FG % of 47.6% those are some bad@$$ shooters. why is it that, supposedly, when you're an outside shooting team [Sonics, Rockets in early years, etc.], there will be some good games, but there will also be some cold games, leading to the announcers saying something like "well, you live and die by the shot, and sometimes they won't fall" - but it NEVER seems like the Suns have a bad shooting night. even last year, when they had JoeJohnson, Q-Rich, and Jacobsen [i think he was the year before], it never seems like they're cold. maybe it's b/c they have SOO many shooters, i dunno. but it just seems like 'cold streaks' afflict them much less than the streaks afflict the shooters on the rest of the teams in the NBA.
You have to admit it is very hard to find that middle ground. It all depends on Lakers win or lose. If Kobe jacked up 24 shots in the second half and Lakers still lost (most likely), then people would have said that b*stard didn't even give his teammates a chance, he decided to go back old self, he just couldn't resist the temptation to do it alone, etc. etc. This man is consistently in a no win situation. Some of the criticism against him is legit, others are extremely unfair. Look at game 6, he shot nearly 60%, scored 50 pts and played an almost flawless game, Lakers were just 6 seconds, 1 defense rebound away advancing to the next round, yet ppl said Lakers' lost because Kobe shot too much. No even AI, the king of ballhog, deserves these kind of BS. I think this man is just fed up with it.
Well I think we can put the Kobe = MJ talk to bed. No way MJ only takes 3 shots in the second half of a game 7. Heck MJ wouldn't have even let it go to a game 7, he would have put a dagger in the Sun's heart in game 5. Kobe is a good player for sure but he is not Michael Jordon. Guys like MJ, Magic, Bird had a win or die trying attitude and hated nothing more then losing. Three shots and only one point in the second half of a game seven? Inexcusable!!! I like what Charles Barkely said on TNT about Kobe's second half performance. He only took three shots and kept passing the ball around so he could blame his team mates for the loss and not him and then just like magic the press conference comes on and Kobe does exactly that.....LOL priceless!!
Phil WANTED to coach the Rox? As in he would have chosen the Rockets over the Lakers? I don't think Les even has a daughter.
i'm guessing McKie was still injured. when did Jimmy get hurt? there has to be SOME reason [besides defense] that he didn't get any PT. was it a JJ-Kobe-Toni Braxton feud?
It's certainly not easy, but I don't think it's THAT hard to find a middle ground between 3 shots and 24 shots. But being an MVP-caliber player isn't supposed to be easy - that's how I look at it. MVP caliber players do what's necessary to maximize their team's abilities. Nash very clearly does that. Kobe did it over the course of a season, but he doesn't necessarily do it game-to-game. He can't control tempo. He can't actively find ways to get players involved - he can pass to them, but he doesn't really get them the ball in a position to make a play like a Nash or even Lebron James does. I think that's difference between LeBron James and Kobe. Even if the Cavs had lost, no one questioned that James was having a great series - same with Gilbert Arenas. The way they score and the way they play just fits better into a team mold than what Kobe does. It's almost like with Kobe, there's no middle ground. He's either in a "I have to score" mentality, or a "I have to let everyone else score" mode - it just rarely ever looks like he's truly a part of a team game.
