Archive for the ‘The Bay To L.A.’ Category
The NBA season is a long arduous marathon, and perhaps the Lakers recent run of poor play is just another blip on the radar.
True they broke their three game skid, but it took yet another Kobe game winner to pull it out.
In the grand scheme of things playing like “garbage” against the Raptors probably doesn’t mean a whole lot.
It’s sort of routine for a Championship caliber team to lay up some stinkers against inferior opponents (we’ve definitely made an annoying habit of this though).
And losing three in a row doesn’t necessarily mean that much either, especially if you consider many of this decade’s NBA Champions did, at one point, lose three in a row.
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Last Saturday, before we played Portland in ‘Rip City’ I read that Kobe was a no go.
As soon as I read that I knew we were going to win.
I know, I know, yeah right. But seriously, I did.
And no, I don’t think we’re better off without Kobe, or some asinine idea like that.
It’s just that I knew what Pau, Artest, Lamar, Shannon, Fish, Farmar, and etc… were capable of, and I thought that they would relish the opportunity to prove that they could win a game on their own — and they did!
I’m sure we would’ve been thrilled to just get the one victory in Portland, but then we put the hurt on San Antonio too; and I’ll be honest, I had no idea that was going to happen.
Anyway, I’m sure you all remember when I wrote about how Kobe should sit right? I pretty much got destroyed in the comment section, but its okay because I feel a bit vindicated.
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This is disturbing: .39, .33, .38, and .19. That’s Kobe’s shooting percentages in his last four games.
Being just fans — without inside info on how much this is really affecting Kobe — we can only speculate, but it appears that recently, it’s affecting him a lot. From what I’ve watched, it seems to really affect his touch from about 12 feet all the way to the basket.
When I watch Kobe this year, I don’t see the hops that he once had, or even had last year. You can see when an athlete’s leaping ability has left him: instead of exploding and ascending when he leaps (a la Wade and LeBron), he simply jumps, lacking that rising action.
If you watch Kobe’s early games this season — before the finger, when he could still dunk with authority — he would be in full-stride on a fast break, jump off of one foot, and it basically looked like he arrived at the rim, instead of being truly above the rim. Now going back to his finishing, the lack of springs didn’t really affect this early in the year, because he had gotten stronger and more savvy around the basket.
However, now with his finger affecting his touch, combined with the lack of hops, Kobe has not looked like the Kobe we know when he’s trying to finish in traffic. It just seems that lately, he’s thrown up way more prayers in the lane than I’m accustomed to seeing.
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The Christmas Day game is just days away, I thought it would be appropriate to write about 12 things that we of the Lakers Nation may be wishing for, or maybe just 12 things we can be thankful for during the holiday season…
12. Ron Artest isn’t Drinking Hennessy During Halftime -
First, I can’t believe he would actually say that. There is a such thing as TMI (to much information), Ron-Ron, and that was the definition of it. Sometimes it’s best when an athlete doesn’t talk, or in Ron Artest’s case, doesn’t record music either.
But I must say, we can all be happy that Artest has made an “angelic” transition into our team. I love his 4.0 APG, and he is is only going to get better within the offense. And I’m really going to love him if he locks down King James on Thursday, and if he does that we should all pour ourselves some Henny’ and drink to Ron’s D! Ron, you can join us if you like.
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It pretty much goes without saying that Kobe Bryant is numero uno with Laker fans.
Some of us — like my buddie Kelley — take this to the upteenth level. Kel’ doesn’t like Kobe, he <3s Kobe (yep, that one required the <3, instead of love). His man crush on the Black Mamba knows no boundaries. In fact, Kelley will literally keep Kobe’s stats during Laker games. We’ll get a stop and it’s not, “Eff yeah good freaking stop!” No, Kelley will instead focus on the rebound Kobe just grabbed, and say something along the lines of, “Yeeaahhhh Kobe’s got three boards, seven more for a triple-double!” Seriously, that’s pretty much a real quote.
Anyway the point is we all love Kobe, and I see no reason why we can’t all enjoy some more Kobe Kontent.
Did anybody think that the Zoom Kobe IV, would not only be as cool, but be as good of a hoops shoe as it was? I mean seriously, the ZK4 had to be one of the better looking modern day sneakers, (realistically no modern day sneak will probably be as good looking as the old school ones, they’re just too techie now) and perhaps the best shoe I’ve ever hooped in (so responsive, so quick, so comfy, so great, and I swore I busted more turnaround fadeaways on my friends than ever before…then again that still wasn’t a lot).
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First off all, Allah bless you Kareem; you know all of the Lakers Nation are pulling for you.
So here we are nine games into the season and let’s face it: the games have been a little closer than we would probably like.
They’ve also included two absolutely abysmal games. (The Dallas Debacle and The Denver Turd Omelette).
Of course the blow outs of New Orleans and Phoenix — sans Pau and Drew for the Hornets game, and still without Pau for the Phoenix game — was a refreshing reminder of how good we really are when we’re as focused as we should be.
And even though — unless we go on some mind boggling win streak — we probably won’t be winning 72 games, we know the ultimate goal is the ring, and we have to play somebody in June right?
The only question is who…
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This piece was supposed to be posted before the season started, but I dislocated my ring finger and tore two ligaments in my pinky. Let’s just say it’s not easy typing with a Gary Vitti tape job.
Anyway, a week into the season and we can now safely answer some of our more persistent questions…
Kobe Bryant -
Kobe looked much better than he did a year ago at this time. Before my hamstring injury (you can’t sit down and type with a slight hamstring tear) I was going to write about how the Lakers were either going to see a 06′ Kobe or a Kobe we’ve never seen before, and one that we wouldn’t want to see. Well, we are seeing a new Kobe, but it’s a Kobe who looks an awful lot like the 95′ – 98′ Michael Jordan, or even a quicker, smaller, more athletic Hakeem Olajuwon (which of course makes sense with Kobe working out with ‘The Dream’ in the off-season).
Kobe’s always had the “fire” fadeaway, and the “cray cray” footwork, but he’s added the ball fake swoop under to the basket move, and the really insane post up dribble-spin move. I get lost in the myriad of Kobe post moves now — imagine how defenders feel.
However, Kobe may be putting out too much too soon. Hopefully he saves some over-priced fossil fuel gasoline in his tank for June.
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