Lakers Thread

Have Odom take Diaw, which will be interesting, and have Luke or Devean take Marion. Then we know Kobe will dominate, this wasn't even a must-win game, and Kobe went off for 51, think about it in the Playoffs, they need to win, Kobe'll keep shooting and shooting to try and win it for them.

Also, like I constantly say to my friends, you can't be Kobe Bryant in a seven game series. It just hasn't, won't and will not happen.

- Ur getting ahead of urself a bit there mate. If Kobe's gonna step it up... so will the Suns. Don't forget that once it counts, the Suns might start to play even harder defence on Kobe... and if Kobe's gonna throw up shots I don't think its the best game strategy. And the Suns will outscore Kobe, I know that. What the Lakers need is for the big men to step up. Phoenix don't have a guy as storng as Kwame on the court and LA's got to use this advantage. They need to also slow down the Suns on offence, try and control the game with defence. I think thta's the big challenge for LA.

The role players have got to step up big time if they want to even win one game against the Suns. Hoepfully, they can pull off a win against the Suns next game they play!

Oh yeh.. Kobe will need his teammates more in the playoffs than the regular seaosn, if they want Kobe to lift them to a win, the whole team has got to keep a game close.

I was joking about the you can't be Kobe in a 7 game series comment, but seriously you can't, you can beat his team, but not him.

But I agree with you, but I didn't bring that up, as much as I would love for them to do that (slow it down, control game with defence, etc.) but I highly doubt that will happen. I think the Laker's will try to do that at first, but if it doesn't work. Kobe will just come out shooting like he's getting shot at by a whole army, and hopefully his aim will be on target, because the other Laker's might not be doing a whole lot.

But, this isn't even the situation at the moment. After the Lakers loss, and Kings win, they fell to the 8th spot and up against San Antonio. A series against the Suns would be much more intertaining I think, so hopefully they can move back up to 7th.

But I agree with you, but I didn't bring that up, as much as I would love for them to do that (slow it down, control game with defence, etc.) but I highly doubt that will happen. I think the Laker's will try to do that at first, but if it doesn't work. Kobe will just come out shooting like he's getting shot at by a whole army, and hopefully his aim will be on target, because the other Laker's might not be doing a whole lot.

- Jax had better tell the whole team to play well then! I'd rather see the Lakers lose in a team effort rather than as a one-man show.

But, this isn't even the situation at the moment. After the Lakers loss, and Kings win, they fell to the 8th spot and up against San Antonio. A series against the Suns would be much more intertaining I think, so hopefully they can move back up to 7th.

- If LA stays in 8th, I hope Dallas overtakes the Spurs! Kobe can beat Dirk and Kwame can be useful if he's not playing too well - he can elbow Dirk in the face

MVP is about being the best! is not about being the best for a while and then go down hill.... Kobe has been the best and is the best so far this season. He should win it! He is the most dominant 1-on-1 player on the NBA.

^^ Still voters have always chosen the player from the best team to win the award since the early 90s.

So with ur definition of MVP... should the NBA award the Finals MVP to the best player in the playoffs? Do you think that if a player averages 35 ppg and his team loses in the playoffs and he was the best player in the finals series... should that guy win it? I doubt that that player would still get the award.

Jerry West did it, right? It was the first and only time in the history of the NBA, IIRC.

Correct. Funnily enough, he was also the very first Finals MVP winner period, which means the inaugural winner goes against the standard set by every award since. Or maybe the current standard goes against the original idea that it truly goes to the best player on either team, not the winner...though I personally feel the best player on the winning team should claim those honours.

Lakers win at home, against Clippers! Lamar Odom played very well, had many dunks that pumped them up. Kobe scored I think 38, ending his 40 points streak, but they won! They're still tied at eighth spot with Kings, who won the Rockets today too. This Lakers team play extremely well if other role players step up, such as Kwame, Luke and Brian. Good luck Lakers!

Jerry West did it, right? It was the first and only time in the history of the NBA, IIRC.

- He did... but that was in the 60's... since the 90s, the best player on a good team usually wins the award.

Yep, Lakers won today behin d 23 and 15 from Lamar (?) I think that was right and 38 from Kobe. It was a win against the Clips which is always

My favourite play in that whole game was near the beginning when Smush just dived for the ball when a big man was dribbling and got the steal. It just looked so cool.

I've been reading about Smush and lost a bit of respect for him for being a bit of a sook in the game vs Dnever. Jax went with Walton, Lamar, Kobe, Kwame and George in the 4th and bench Smush and Smush wasn't happy bout it.

Yeah... but whatever... I still like some of his steals, also his once on Mobley was cool.

^^ Still a bit of a sook!

- He did... but that was in the 60's... since the 90s, the best player on a good team usually wins the award.

As I said, West remains the only player on the losing team to get Finals MVP honours. So that standard would actually be from 1970 onwards.

^^ Yep, that would be true. I was investigating MVP for the regular season and all of them have been on winning sides high up in the standings cept for when Kareem won it when LA went 40-42... so I don't think it will be any different this season with the MVP. It's going to Nash, Billups or Dirk IMO

^^ Was that Kareem's first season in LA?

^^ Still a bit of a sook!

WTF is a sook Sit?

Parker has some long @$$ arms. lol

Huh? Imagine... Long ass arms... Reminds me when my friend said "My ass fuckin' aches" when he fell on the ground during a ballgame. I was like? WTF? "You ass is fucking eggs?" WTF?!

Back on topic, MVP is voted by media people right? I think Kobe won't get it, people hate him so much because he's good. Either love him, or hate him.

Yeah. He's like 6' 4" and he has a wingspan (whatever it's called) of like a 6' 10". At least that's what I heard.

Anyways, on the MVP thing. I dunno if the media people votes for the MVP. I wish they liked Kobe. It shouldn't be on if they like them or not. It should be on how they did in the season. If they helped their teammates be better players and that stuff.

If they helped their teammates be better players and that stuff.

I doubt Kobe did that this season.

If they helped their teammates be better players and that stuff.

I doubt Kobe did that this season.

He did though, but in his own way. By taking all the shots, it's less shots that his teammates have to take, meaning less chances for them to embarrass themselves. So in a way, he does make them better.

I doubt Kobe did that this season.

For those who claimed Kobe could never be an MVP because he couldnt make his teammates better like Nash, O'Neal and James do, take a look at this:
http://www.82games.com/pelton13.htm
analized in Jan, Kobe's prime of this regular season, though.

Stats don't tell the full story. Seriiously, I think you should go to the LA locker room, not as a reporter and ask who actually likes Kobe. I'm pretty skeptical when Lamar talks up Kobe... I think he repsects Kobe but doesnt like him too much. I could be wrong though.

But it just really got to me in the game vs New jersey I think. Kobe goes for a very bad shot... and there open were brian Cook and Lamar Odom. I mean, thats pretty normal, what mad eit stand out was that both of them were jumping up and down with their hands in the air.

It's not that I don't wanna see Kobe sink that shot but he's gotta make smart choices too... and that shot was not smart at all...

On the topic of MVP, I agree with most people. Kobe's the best player in the NBA and he is the Lakers' MVP... but the team record really is a bit sus and the guys who vote for MVP want the best player to be in a good team. Steve Nash and how he's led the Suns to a pretty fucking good record is definitely much mroe worthy than Kobe. I'm sorry Laker fans but it's the truth.

Theres a difference between being the best player and being the most valuable player in the NBA. Sure, it could be both but this seaosn - it didn't happen.

MVP is voted by a board of bball experts, past players and coaches i think... but it has been publicised that these guys look for teams with a winning record and you will usually find a player worthy of the award.

EDIT:

Pieces of 8

Bryant has been picking up the remnants of his shattered image since 2003, and though his popularity still wanes in some NBA precincts, his makeover has accelerated along with Laker fortunes this season.
By Mike Bresnahan, Times Staff Writer

The boos have subsided for the most part, although San Antonio and Sacramento still get a little boisterous, and Philadelphia will never let its native son forget his roots, showering Kobe Bryant with the same rude greeting its fans offered Santa Claus one unforgettable football Sunday.

Bryant has moved forward from a year ago, when the Lakers staggered to a 34-48 record, and has become the face of a team pushing for a playoff spot believed possible by only a handful of pundits before the season.

If last year's Bryant was driven and demanding, this year's edition might be more so, playing with an edge and impelling teammates to follow along his way, for richer or poorer. He hit for 62 points in three quarters against Dallas, then upped the ante with 81 in four against Toronto, maneuvering the Lakers toward a likely playoff appearance and witnessing an uptick to his image, which was shredded after sexual assault charges were brought against him in July 2003.

Bryant still declines to answer questions about the Eagle, Colo., incident, doing so twice in an interview with The Times, but he provided some insight into the importance of image, how he feels about the direction of the Lakers and what makes him push and pull on teammates.

"That's how I am," Bryant said. "I'm more determined than my opposition all the time. What you see from us as a team, what you see from us when we play now, we play with that edge."

To watch Bryant work is to witness an athlete dominate a craft with nary a smile — every possession personal, every miss to be scrutinized later on tape. He steps on the court with a scowl, rarely changes expression except to plead his case to referees, and then concludes games with the same glower, even if his final shot is the winning one.

He gave notice during a preseason practice, booting a water bottle across the court when the team couldn't make enough free throws to end a conditioning drill. Since then, he toppled a TV monitor and yelled at Lamar Odom after a last-second loss to Washington in December and, more recently, gave second-year guard Sasha Vujacic a healthy shove on the bench during a home loss to hapless Seattle.

Bryant says he sees results.

"You see it from Kwame [Brown], Sasha, Lamar, all the guys," Bryant said. "They play with that chip.

"Since training camp … I've been pushing them all the time to play that way just by being hard on them, being tough on them…. When you go into a hostile environment when the playoffs come up, you have to be able to respond to optimum pressure situations. In practice, I'll talk a lot. I'll put the pressure on them and try to get them to look within themselves and get confidence in themselves to come through in those situations.

"And then when they come through, you've got to pat them on the back. You've got to let them know, and I think they understand how I am. They understand that that's my leadership style. There's a million different ways to be a leader, many different forms of it. This is the way I go about it."

Bryant's first season without Shaquille O'Neal was characterized by a constellation of spats as the burden of a franchise in transition weighed heavily on 26-year-old shoulders. Left in Bryant's wake last season were tiffs with former teammate Karl Malone, Seattle SuperSonic All-Star guard Ray Allen, then-teammate Chucky Atkins, and a season-long barrage of cross-country insults delivered from O'Neal's new Miami address.

This season, Bryant has waged a tug-of-war with referees — only Rasheed Wallace of Detroit has more than his 14 technical fouls — and he received a two-game suspension from the league for elbowing Memphis guard Mike Miller on the chin in a December game.

Laker fans have adored his efforts, chanting "M-V-P" at nearly every home game, and some members of the corporate world — specifically, Nike — have edged up to the Bryant trough, although others haven't always shared the love: The January edition of GQ magazine labeled Bryant the fifth most-hated athlete in pro sports, a few spots behind loquacious football star Terrell Owens and controversial slugger Barry Bonds.

But the re-branding of Bryant was bolstered somewhat by his 81-point outburst in a 122-104 victory over Toronto on Jan. 22, a single-game effort surpassed only by Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game for the Philadelphia Warriors in March 1962.

Nike, which signed Bryant to a five-year, $45-million endorsement deal in June 2003, a month before assault charges were brought against him, tested the waters last July with a two-page ad in Sports Illustrated. Nike then targeted February as a jumping-in point for Bryant's signature shoe, the Zoom Kobe I, with a "love me or hate me" commercial blitz during the All-Star break.

The commercial was shot last summer at the Laker training facility in El Segundo with a script that was "basically how I felt at the time," Bryant said.

"I think to a certain degree, it's something that everybody goes through. I just said it," he said. "A lot of people, whether it's a writer or a coach or whatever, certain people love your work, certain people don't like your work. In our position, people have a greater platform to criticize us."

Sales of Bryant's shoe has been brisk, not at the level of LeBron James or the ever-popular Michael Jordan, but in the same sphere as Kevin Garnett and Carmelo Anthony, according to analyst Matt Powell of SportScan Info, a pro sports retail tracking firm.

"Retailers signified it was a good start," Powell said. "I'd say it met expectations, for sure."

Despite his push-and-pull with teammates and referees, Bryant, who grew up the son of an NBA player and has been part of the Laker spotlight for 10 seasons, acknowledges the importance of image and the clout it can carry.

"I think that the things that I've been through in my life, I pretty much have grown up in front of the city of L.A. — positive times, bad times, whatever — and I think where my image really comes into play is being able to impact people in a good way," Bryant said. "Not everybody's perfect. I'm certainly not perfect. So I just try to help young kids growing up, challenge them to be better, not to settle for people's expectations of them or people casting a negative image upon them. It's tough to battle through that, fight through that and be better the next day."

Bryant, for his part, salted away one of the league's longest-running feuds, shaking hands with O'Neal before the Lakers and Miami Heat played in January. (O'Neal initiated the detente and Bryant went along with it, seemingly relieved it had finally happened.)

On top of it, there have been few problems meshing with Laker Coach Phil Jackson.

The player-coach relationship was a blistering topic when Jackson agreed to rejoin the Lakers last June, partly because of Jackson's withering critique of Bryant in a tell-all book, partly because of Bryant's lukewarm response to Jackson's hiring with a brief written statement.

Jackson occasionally criticizes Bryant's shot selection, and Bryant sometimes veers outside of Jackson's share-the-ball philosophy, but they have otherwise coexisted peacefully.

"Life's too short to be carrying grudges or whatever," Bryant said. "We understood one another extremely well from a basketball standpoint. The important thing for us was to put it behind us, move on, and accept this challenge we have in front of us."

Said Jackson recently: "I'm really happy for Kobe. I'm happy for myself in this regard that we just slip right back into that mode of concurring with one another. We've even picked it up to another level, where his leadership is developing to the point where he's showing caretaking capabilities as a leader."

As the Lakers struggled to stay above .500, Bryant had enough of a question about the organization's future to make a series of midseason visits to the Playa del Rey home of owner Jerry Buss.

The Lakers are over the salary cap until after next season, and Bryant's high-contact style of play ensures he won't last forever. Already this season he has fought through a sore ankle, balky wrist, sore hips, knee tendinitis, back spasms and, most recently, a bruised calf.

Earlier this season, as the Lakers were losing as often as winning, no less an authority than Jackson mentioned the importance of not wasting the peak seasons of Bryant's career.

Bryant, two seasons into a seven-year, $136.4-million contract, has pledged patience after recounting past Laker blueprints — win a lot, rebuild for a short period, and win some more — with Buss and team vice president Magic Johnson.

"This organization has done a great job in rebuilding in years past," Bryant said. "I've talked with Dr. Buss, spoken with Magic, and they want to win as badly as I do. They're going to do everything they can in their power to make sure that we do get back to the top. I trust them completely. Absolutely."

^ Good read.

More Kobe news, he has basically won the scoring title and says he'd vote for himself for MVP.

EL SEGUNDO - Even if the Lakers come up short in the first round of the playoffs, even if the Maurice Podoloff Trophy for MVP goes to somebody else, Kobe Bryant at least can take something of significance from this season.

With four games left in the regular season, Bryant is almost certain to win his first NBA scoring title and could become the first player since Michael Jordan in 1987-88 to average 35points per game.

It would be only the third scoring title in Lakers history since the franchise moved from Minneapolis, with Shaquille O'Neal (29.7 ppg) winning in 1999-2000 and Jerry West (31.2) winning in 1969-70.

"I think it's an accomplishment on this path that we're on to try to get back to the top," Bryant said. "It's just about the journey, enjoying the journey, and the accomplishments and achievements that we have along the way just makes the journey that much more exciting."

Bryant is averaging 35.2ppg and would average 33.4 ppg even if he failed to score in the last four games. Philadelphia's Allen Iverson is second in the NBA in scoring at 32.9ppg and Cleveland's LeBron James is third at 31.7 ppg.

If Bryant maintains his season average in his last four games, Iverson would need to score 66.3 points a game to catch him.

From the start of the season, Bryant has been steadfast that winning a scoring title means little in the larger picture of the Lakers becoming championship contenders again. Even so, the numbers he has put up this season have been remarkable.

He scored 81 points against Toronto - second only to Wilt Chamberlain in NBA history - and 62 points in three quarters against Dallas. He has scored 50 points or more five times, 40 points or more 25 times and has been held to less than 20 only three times.

"I really don't give it that much thought," Bryant said. "A lot of people talk
about it and they say how difficult it is to do. I just go out there and I work hard every night and I just try to do what I can to help us be successful."

Bryant is 46 points away from matching Elgin Baylor's franchise record for points in a season (2,719) set in 1962-63. He has been pushing toward the playoffs as well, averaging 43.4 points the past five games and shooting better than 50 percent.

It was imperative for Bryant to make scoring a priority this season after the Lakers traded two double-figure scorers last summer in Caron Butler (15.5 ppg) and Chucky Atkins (13.6 ppg) in exchange for Kwame Brown and Laron Profit.

"I try to lead by example and the way that I go about doing it, my role here on this team is to put the ball in the basket," Bryant said. "So I go out there and I try to do what I do best and try to make it infectious and contagious to everybody else."

Assistant coach Brian Shaw, meanwhile, made a strong case for Bryant as MVP when he filled in for Phil Jackson with reporters Monday.

"The knock will be that he shoots the ball a lot, but we need him to shoot the ball a lot," Shaw said. "When he walks out there on the court, the confidence he gives the other guys on the team I think is unmatched."

Bryant was asked who would get his MVP vote after Sunday's game and said matter-of-factly, "I'd vote for myself."

http://www.dailynews.com/sports/ci_3696501

Good to see that Kobe is confident about himself and leading the team into the playoffs!