Lakers Edge Warriors, Get Run Over by Thunder

Lakers 104, Warriors 101

First, some thoughts on the Warriors game that the Lakers won on Tuesday night in Oakland. Kobe was at it again, taking 24 shots. Pau had to play 39 minutes to do it but managed to get 16 shots, hitting half, with 17 rebounds. Only Gasol and Matt Barnes shot well that night. Media types were ecstatic about Kobe’s two big shots at the end, missing the point entirely. Sure, Kobe’s great but it’s because Kobe sometimes isn’t great that the game a) needed to be that close against a team of rookies and recycles and b) made Kobe and Gasol play too many damn minutes. The Sitting of Kobe kerfuffle from the previous game against the Grizzlies had the media swarming over it like hyenas tearing at a carcass on the Serengeti Plain. Of course, it was a non-story. Brown got Kobe back up again after two minutes and 45 seconds but couldn’t get a timeout for about a minute and twenty seconds. So Bryant was out of the game for a grand total of four minutes and six seconds.  And why did Brown sit down Kobe?  Simple. Because he was a) playing poorly and b) out of control. It was a rare bit of decisive coaching that Brown has shown and the only implicit criticism of Kobe that he has managed thus far. In the obligatory (yawn) post-game Q&A with the media, Brown was unable to say that he sat down Kobe for the above reasons, which were obvious to me at the time, and I’m sure to most who were there or saw it on TV. I mean Kobe violently punched the chair before sitting down. Mike Brown rests his case right there. Also the Lakers trailed by 14 points when he sat Kobe down. When Kobe returned 4:06 later, they were down by seven points. Brown knew what he was doing. Nothin’ new to see the media trying to find a story where there isn’t one. They are beholden to the corporate entities that they represent to create content, aka news, for the masses to consume on a daily basis. Something to do between commercials. Also evident in this “story” are the deep feelings people have about Kobe. The non-haters really feel he’s above criticism. That’s a problem. But Bynum was the big story in the Warriors game. While Brown “sat down” Kobe for a brief time, Mike Brown flat-out benched Andrew Bynum and kept him out of virtually the entire second half. That was an even better move by Brown. Not only did Bynum take an ill-advised shot—a grandstanding 3-pointer early in the 24-second clock—but his puerile behavior on the bench, smiling a lot and playing to the TV cameras, and his lame comments to a reporter after the game, bode poorly for the Lakers.  Because of Bynum’s immaturity and Kobe’s God complex, the Lakers are underachieving. Barnes was brilliant, scoring 18 points on 7-10 shooting (3-5 on 3-pointers), with ten rebounds, three assists and two blocked shots. Dude played his normal game i.e., all over the floor.

Thunder 102, Lakers 93

Two nights after shooting 9-24 against the weakass Warriors, Kobe Bryant shot 7-25 as the Thunder ran over the Lakers. For most of the first half, the Lakers looked sharp. They won the first quarter, 30-18, and still led by five at the half. The Thunder blitzed the local lads for a 34-19 third quarter and coasted home. Why is Kobe heaving up 25 shots while Bynum needed to play 40 minutes to get 15 shots, hitting ten of them? That’s 60%. Kobe shot for 28%. Put it this way: Bynum missed five shots; Kobe missed 18 shots. Meanwhile, Gasol took a mere 11 shots. Another clinker: World Peace took 13 shots. Two more than Gasol! For awhile last week it looked like the Lakers were on to something. Namely, Kobe  was taking fewer than 20 shots and the Towers were taking more shots. Actually, they were on to something but no one seemed to know just what it was. The last two games—one they eked out against a terrible team and one they got trampled on by a very good team—makes me think that maybe they haven’t been reading my blogs.