Lakers bring toughness gain victory
June 13, 2009 by James Edwards
Filed under Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA Playoffs
NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.
The Los Angeles Lakers are a team known for talent and coaching and Kobe Bryant. What they are not known for is toughness. In last year’s series against the Boston Celtics, the lack of toughness haunted them and drove them out of the playoffs.
This year they face the Orlando Magic a team known for toughness with one of the toughest players in the league, the very physical Dwight Howard. Everyone felt the Lakers were the better team, but Orlando was hot and playing physical. Would the Lakers fold up and not play up to their potential.
Would Kobe play it cute? Would Pau Gasol play it safe?
Kobe and the Lakers are showing toughness
No, the Lakers came to play and have brought surprising toughness.
In these moments, two things became abundantly clear: The Lakers weren’t going to let Orlando’s physical play get to them, and the Lakers had added a thick outer callous since the Boston Celtics beat them up in last year’s Finals.
All season they have talked about being tougher. But toughness, like character, isn’t learned, but rather forged.Through experience, from failure, with regret and desire fueling the hot fire it requires to be fed.
It wasn’t until Thursday night though, that the Lakers were pushed hard enough to show how much they had hardened.
“It was a game we had to work so hard for and fight through so much and in the end it really paid off,” Gasol said.
No, the Lakers will never be compared to some of the Piston championship teams, last year’s Lakers, or even the Shaq Kobe Laker teams, but this team has found the toughness they needed to survive and gain victory.
Photo source Newscom
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