Kobe has Michael’s heart, he has michael’s fight, he has michael Coach in Phil Jackson, and guys what…whether you guys think his skill level is up their michael’s or not…it just doesnt matter cuz hes as close as anyone has come to being as individually amazing as the THE GREAT ONE.

So point is would you compare what a sixth grader has achieved with a high school gradute?!?!….No so everybody just calm down, enjoy the next couple of years with watching the lakers dominate the west….

KOBE + BYNUM + LOMAR + FISHER + VLAD RAD = STRONGEST ALL AROUND STARTING LINE UP IN THE LEAGUE…….

SASHA + FARMAR + LUKE + PAO + TURIAF = NOT ONLY THE MOST ENERGETIC GROUPS OFF THE BENCH BUT ONE OF THE MOST DEADLY SHOOTING BENCH TEAM IN THE NBA.

We…lol….(The Lakers), are going to be fighting for many championships in the next 5 or 6 years. Kobe will be about 35 by then. Will he get 6 Finals MVP awards? Probably not…i mean the chances are slim to none…but there are five games left in this series and if kobe takes over and finishes this serious the way i believe he will…then he will only need 5 more to catch up….lets all just wait and see what happens!!!!!

Either way let both of them just be their own person. Kobe had a great season, and great post-season run. Where I believe they differ is in the NBA Finals thus far. MJ had the higest ever scoring average for NBA Finals. That record will never be touched. And to cap that off he had 6 MVP’s to Kobe’s 0. Shaq deservedly won them back when he was in his prime and he was clearly the dominant reason for the Lakers titles. Kobe played a big part, but Shaq was the main reason.

Kobe is one of the best players ever that is for sure. But that is just a testament to how good Jordan was, that there is still miles of separation between him and the next best.

One thing I can say for sure is Sina is right we shouldn’t compare the two, but it’s for a specific reason. MJ would never have been locked down like this in the NBA Finals. MJ had lots of bad shooting nights. But never in the NBA Finals, he was far too good in the clutch and when it counted. HE was a warrior.

Kobe still has time though to become a warrior in his own right. But for now what we are seeing is Ray Allen affecting Kobe’s game, and Kobe yet to respond with his own blow. Maybe that will come tonight?

END this horible cycle of nonsence. There have been, are, and will be great players in the game. Just let them play without getting into their heads about whether they are GREAT ENOUGH.

come on. who really deserves this championship?

i guess we’ll find out in the next few games.

but here’s a good idea of what was wrong with the zebras in game 2. i found it on another blog.

The problem was that the Lakers weren’t playing significantly less aggressively than the Celtics, and still got hosed. It’s one thing to see teams get the short end of the stick and retreat into a shell. The Lakers, though, continued to go to the rack. Check the shot charts for Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/shotchart?gameId=280608002

Pretty much every shot is in the paint or just outside it – between the two of them, they took 23 shots. 18 of them were within 5 feet of the hoop. They shot 1 foul between them. Look at the comparable shot chart for KG – 2 shots in the paint. 4 free throws. There’s getting hosed, and then there’s inexplicable.

Don’t like ESPN? How about CBS: http://www.sportsline.com/nba/gamecenter/shotchart/NBA_20080608_LAL@BOS

30 shots by LA were layups or dunks. Boston had 18. Let’s amend that somewhat by noting that the Celtics were the recipients of a number of 2-shot shooting fouls. They were credited with SEVENTEEN shooting fouls – LA got THREE. If we were to give every one of Boston’s 2-shot fouls to the Celtics as a ‘layup’ or ‘dunk’ attempt (they had 14), that gives them 32 shots at the rim. Both of LA’s two-shot attempts were on layups, I believe (one by Fisher, one by Bryant). That gives LA 32 shots at the rim. Gasol and Odom had 16 of them, and received, again, one foul shot for their troubles.

I’ll reiterate simply because it bears repeating: Exactly even at the rim in shot attempts. Seventeen shooting fouls to three. On a night when the two teams took the exact same number of shots at the rim. That’s not bad, that’s borderline absurd. You pretend like the officiating got better in the second half? First half: 19-2, Boston. Second half: 19-8, Boston. Oh good, the Lakers got 6 extra free throws. “Fouls at the end of the game” don’t hold water, because LA only fouled once on Posey – let’s take that out. 17-8 in the second half, despite long stretches that saw LA play more at being matadors than at defenders because they were trying to avoid getting called for fouls!

I don’t expect LA necessarily be -ahead- in free throws. But one expects them to be within, oh, I don’t know, twenty? Fifteen too much to ask, perhaps? You’re calling out Odom – maybe he struggled because every time he tried to go in the lane, he got hammered or called for an offensive foul? The same is true of Gasol, who admittedly allowed the officiating to take him out of the game – but it took him out of the game because it was so egregiously bad that he attempted 11 shots right in the paint amidst a significant amount of contact, and was rewarded with one foul shot.

Lost in all of this is the fact that Kobe actually played really well against the “Kobe stopper” Boston defense. 30 points on 23 shots is plenty efficient (that’s just as efficient as 39 points on 30 shots, which was how he played in game 5 against the Spurs, when everybody couldn’t stop talking about how well he played). He tossed in 8 assists to boot. All this despite being saddled with 3 fouls early, all of which were on the floor. I don’t know that being “MVP” is worth the 20 or so FTAs it seemed to be against Utah, but, really, Kobe gets called for ticky-tack stuff 3x in the first half while Leon Powe spends his first 10 minutes in the game shoving Pau Gasol half into the stanchion every time down the court!

The ‘comeback’ almost buries the story more than it should, because the fact is that the officiating killed the Lakers. It pulled Kobe out of the game early, and as soon as he left the early LA lead evaporated (Lakers were up by 1 when he left, were down by 8 when he returned). When he got his 3rd on yet another nonsense call (I was unaware that being shoved into Paul Pierce by PJ Brown was considered a foul, but hey, I’m not an NBA ref – on the flipside, I can see better than Stevie Wonder, which seems to be something they all lack), the Celtics extended a 7-point lead to 12 at the half. And you’re fooling yourself if you don’t think that the tight officiating (at the Lakers’ end, and ONLY at the Lakers’ end, for the 2nd quarter) didn’t affect how LA played defense for the remainder of the game.

Sigh.

Just had to get that off my chest, sorry. Not going to get to replay the game again (unless Brent Barry really has found Doc Brown somewhere), but to pretend that the officiating didn’t CAUSE much of the other troubles that the Lakers had is to be naive at best on the way that a basketball game can be changed by a couple misplaced whistles.