the nuggets lost their poise at the end. kobe was the man. the lakers are still getting very little out of their guards. if sasha or fish could make half their shots, these games would not be close.

 

As much as the Nuggets have failed on the court at the end of Games 1 & 3, the fault really lies with George Karl. Chauncey Billups admitted he was taken aback that the Nuggets didn't have designed inbounds plays when he arrived in the Iverson trade. The fact that the Nuggets lost any chance of winning Games 1 & 3 b/c of blown inbounds passes is telling. No way you ever have your shortest guy inbounding the ball at midcourt against a 6'10" Lamar Odom, and no way do you NOT have your best or second best passer inbounding the ball.

How many times have you heard announcers stating that one of the most dangerous players teams fail to defend on inbounds plays is the guy passing the ball in? Well, there was no worry for the Lakers last night b/c there was no way in the world that Kenyon Martin was going to get the ball after he inbounded it. Odom could focus entirely on hounding the pass, b/c he knew there was no designed play where Martin would get the ball back on a quick give & go. Why not have Carmelo inbound the ball to Billups, with a designed play to have Carmelo either dart to the basket to receive a quick pass back from Billups, or at least to get thru a pick or two to free himself up from his defender?

The Nuggets utilize a horrible inbound scheme that chews up 2-3 seconds before the player that's to receive the pass finally gets open. Horrible coaching........

Otherwise, the Lakers won that game b/c of basically 3 players - - Kobe, Ariza & Pau. Not much contributions from elsewhere, which has pretty much been par for the course for the playoffs thus far.

 

So the Laker supporting cast finally showed up.....

Will they show up in Denver on Friday night? I sure hope so

 

Its good to come on here and say I'm proud of the whole team, and how they played tonight. EVERYBODY showed up tonight. This is the team that I watched all season.

And I'd like to thank the refs for letting BOTH teams play tonight.

GO LAKERS!!!!

 

Great team effort.

 

the laker bigs actually played some good defense in the post.

 

Gasol, Bynum and Odom are better players than Nene, K-mart and Birdman. Its nice to see them actually play like it.

This Laker team is driving me crazy. When they are on, watching them play is a thing of beauty. I have never seen a team with such a lethal combination of length, basketball IQ and skills.

They are just not as mentally tough as I hoped they would be. I like the Laker matchup vs Orlando much better than the matchup vs Cleveland. This has been an amazing NBA playoff season. Just about every series has been interesting and fun to watch.

 

is anybody else exited to see shannon brown getting the hang of the tri.
Lets not forget seeing him posterize birdman made my day.
Lakers in 6

 

Awesome game last night. I liked how we used our bigs last night. The pick and roll and the post up game really opened up the offense for us. One thing I still dont understand is why Phil keeps bringing Fish back in (and I love Fisher).

 

I gotta comment on the sore losers that are the Denver Thuggets.

I cannot believe that bum Karl is sitting there and blaming this loss on the refs... commenting that Carmelo got "beat up". Earth to Karl, Melo had 13ft attempts while Kobe had 10ft attempts. Both were getting to the hoop, and getting hacked. Which I'm ok with, if they are going to call the game consistently... which they did in this case.

Also, we had 35ft attempts compared to their 30ft, thats a +5 comapred to the +14 they had in game 4. So I guess game 4 was officiated correctly? But game 5 wasn't? What a load of crap.

And then you have one of the players on the nuggets, who wanted to remain anonymous, say "The Lakers payed 50k for a game 5 win". Are you kidding me right now? What a bunch of crybaby, sore losers. It all starts with their coach, he's a bum. If the thuggets were a good team coached by a good coach, they would shut up and take care of business at home and force a game 7. Instead of resorting to blaming the refs.

/end rant