NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Phil Jackson is the best coach in the game today.

You want proof. 10 NBA Titles.

Big deal, you say? How about 10 out of the last 19? Now that is incredible.

Stuart Scott interviews Phil Jackson

With this last title, Phil Jackson has become the NBA coach with the most NBA titles passing Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics and Phil did it in the age of the free agent.

Those are staggering statistics, especially in this era of free agency, expansion and the salary cap.

Still, there will always be some - like the late Auerbach - who say that Jackson has only won with ready-made championship teams.

Jackson’s current superstar, Kobe Bryant, laughed at that notion Saturday.

“I can’t name one coach that won a championship with a bunch of scrubs, so that argument makes no sense,” Bryant said.

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Phil Jackson has left the game before and Read more

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

The NBA Title series ain’t what it used to be, by 10% to be exact. Ratings were down 10 percent according to an AP article in ESPN.

At first blush that seems kind of bad for a series featuring Phil Jackson going for his 10th coaching title and Kobe Bryant trying to prove he can be a one man band, but it has to be kept in the context of being compared to last year’s dream matchup of the Celtics and Lakers.

Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol did not have people turning on their TV's

Boston brought in Kevin Garnett and had a title starved large market in Boston. The Boston area has won in all other sports and they were ready for an NBA title. The Orlando market is a smaller area and Dwight Howard is less of a draw than the 3 amigos. That may change as Dwight improves, but it is fact for now.
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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Why do you doubt this guy year after year, thinking he can’t coach his way out of a paper box unless he has a superstar box cutter on his team. That is the excuse you have used for years. Oh, Phil, he has that superstar player, that is why he wins.

The only problem with that argument is the other coach, the one coaching the team Phil is beating, also has a superstar player on his team and he is losing. Meanwhile, Phil just keeps on winning and it looks like the Lakers led by a superstar named Kobe Bryant, will win the NBA title for Phil.

Kobe Bryant believes in Phil Jackson

So can Phil coach? You bet he can.

When Orlando’s Dwight Howard missed his two free throws near the end of regulation, Jackson, his Lakers down by three points, chose to inbound the ball and have the Lakers go the length of the court. He figured that an inbounds pass at midcourt would likely have drawn an immediate foul.

Going all the way down the court, the Lakers were able to get the ball in to Bryant, then to Ariza and then to Fisher.

“I do think some of it the credit does belong outside of myself, to my teammates, to Phil,” Fisher said. “Just the way that he’s willing to stick with certain people that he believes can help get the job done. It’s not always about statistically what is this guy going to bring to the table.

“A lot of coaches won’t have that kind of faith, confidence, that kind of perseverance to figure he’ll be rewarded in the end. Phil doesn’t have to say anything to me. We’ve been together a long time, been through a lot of games. We understand.”

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Pau Gasol is getting banged around by Dwight Howard, but what did he expect? Dwight has only one style of play and it involves a lot of muscle applied in a not so gentle manner.

Pau rubbed the back of his head to the referee for a visual explanation.

Then again, Pau is not the most physical center in the league and Dwight is going to have to be physical to compete with Gasol. If Dwight Howard lightened up for even a moment, the crafty Pau would destroy him on the offensive end.

Dwight Howard fights off the Lakers

Howard even seemed to acknowledge Gasol’s complaints, though he had not been told of them before his postgame news conference.

“I think with (Andrew) Bynum, he doesn’t mind banging,” Howard said. “With Gasol, sometimes you’ve got to be aware of what you do in the paint. Gasol is very smart. He’s been playing for a long, long time and I think with him, I’ve just got to be smart. I don’t want to pick up any cheap fouls and have to sit on the bench.”

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Hey, Dwight knows what he is doing.

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Orlando fans need to relax and enjoy, because they can win game 3. Usually the way these series go, the home team of the favored team (that would be the Lakers) will win big at home and be lucky to scrape a 1 point victory on the road.

Consider that Orlando had the ball and a chance to win at the end of game two and it bodes well for the Magic to win game 3. Especially look for Dwight Howard to have a big game on the home court.

Dwight Howard needs to reach out and take this game

On the other hand, Magic fans better put away the knives if the Lakers pull out game 3, because then all that is left to play for is respect. That does not win many titles.
In the mean time, please don’t blame Stan Van Gundy. He is doing everything he can.

Coach Stan Van Gundy pulled out everything imaginable from his bag of tricks on Sunday, and somehow the Magic almost turned the Finals on its ear before losing in overtime.

Van Gundy is desperate enough now in a series of must-win games that he might resort to the ol’ “Picket Fence” from the movie Hoosiers, the Ted Williams shift or the Veer. Well, he could always use the World’s Tallest Line-up, where every player is at least 6-feet-10.

“I’m not sure I’ve got another lineup to throw out there that you haven’t seen now, OK, unless I’m going to play like Dwight [Howard], Marcin [Gortat], Tony [Battie], Rashard [Lewis] and Hedo [Turkoglu]. I don’t have another one now,” Van Gundy said.

“We played with no point guard. We’ve played big. We played conventionally [with point guards]. We’ve had Rashard at the three [small forward], we played Hedo at the one [point guard], two [shooting guard] and three.
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The Magic had an opportunity to win game two of the series against the Lakers when Courtney Lee took an alley oop pass and attempted to bank it off of the backboard and into the hoop with the scored tied. The replay shows Pau Gasol getting his hand caught in the rim as the ball is hitting the backboard.

Is that goaltending? If so, the Orlando Magic should be headed home tied 1-1, not down 0-2 heading into Tuesday night’s Game 3 of the NBA Finals. source

This is just too freaky, because they just aired the 72 Munich Germany USA basketball loss to Russia, where Russia gets 3 tries and 2 additional seconds to hand the USA their first ever Olympic loss. Doug Collins had seemingly gave the Americans the lead with 1 second left on the clock and that is when the shenanigans began.

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

There was David Stern giving his annual pre finals state of the NBA address. This year it was quite interesting, as it was announced that the Charlotte Bobcats would most likely be up for sale. That in itself would be news, but you really have to realize how tough it is to make a buck in the NBA.

News has leaked in recent weeks that Bobcats majority owner Bob Johnson, who founded the team in 2004, was losing over $10 million annually from his original $300 million investment and wanted out before he was even more in the red.

Charlotte is currently valued at $284 million by Forbes. Once boasting one of the league’s more robust attendance averages at the old Charlotte Coliseum, it currently ranks 29th among the NBA’s 30 franchises in net worth.

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Now stop right there and give it some thought. The Charlotte Bobcats have never been very good and do not have a marquee player to exhibit to the NBA marketing gurus. Tough to sell a team that is considered a joke.

The Magic must make money with Dwight Howard, right?

Now how about a magical team like the Orlando Magic. They must be making tons of bucks, right? This is where you might be surprised. This is where you realize just how bad the economy really is.

While the Magic are ranked 17th by Forbes with a valuation of $349 million, the franchise was expecting in May to lose $15 million to $20 million this season.

Martins said at the time that the amount the team lost this season would depend upon its playoff run. Reaching the Finals will definitely lessen the blow, but the Magic certainly have even more riding on the opening of their new arena in 2010.

The Magic have received some good news in regards to that opening, though. Sports Business Journal reported last month that a $100 million loan the Magic were seeking to help them finance their contribution to the arena was close to going through.

The approval of the loan will make the team the first mid-tier professional franchise to secure financing that big since the slowing down of the credit markets at the end of last year.

Stern has even promised them the All Star game to help them out. Now if the Magic are struggling, how can the Bobcats expect to turn a profit?

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

What is up with Shaq and all the Dwight Howard bashing. It just never seems to stop with this guy.

First let us lay the ground work. You will find me to be a big Shaq fan, even watching Kaazam and trying to enjoy it, even putting up with all the anti-Kobe stuff. So why does Shaq have to go after Dwight Howard?

In the past year alone, Shaq called Howard an “impostor” and insisted that, “Everything he’s done, I’ve invented,” and on and on. On opening night of the NBA Finals, Shaq posted a goofy photo on Twitter of what a Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy child would look like. After five years of this, Howard still doesn’t get the reason that Shaq revels in ripping him.

“I can’t tell you why he’s said a lot of discouraging things,” Howard said Friday at the Staples Center. “I wish he wouldn’t say it because he’s one of the few guys that we all look up to.”

For most, O’Neal’s motives are transparent. Somehow, Shaq thinks it diminishes his own legacy if Howard achieves something significant sooner than he did.

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Shaq smiles, but then opens his mouth

Shaq even worries about Jabbar and rips on him as well. Now wouldn’t it be funny if Shaq goes to a team in the East and has to play against Dwight Howard to get to the NBA Finals. Now then, justice could be served.

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

The Lakers are primed and ready and feel that no team can stop them from taking the NBA 2009 title series from the Orlando Magic.

Who cares about the Celtics and the injured Garnett?

Who cares about the Cavaliers and the non-talking LeBron?

Who cares that Dwight Howard seems to be coming into his own and was more than Cleveland could handle?

Kobe is focused

Not the Lakers, their focus is only on winning the title and not on who shows up to play against them or how they got there. Even though Jackson could retire and Kobe could go free agent, the Lakers will have no distractions. They will only have their eyes on the prize!

Like the Celtics last spring, the Lakers’ hunger was evident on the eve of the Finals. Their resolve combined with their playoff experience of the past two seasons makes them the favorite of many pundits to win the franchise’s 15th NBA championship.

“Obviously, we’re mad,” Gasol said. “We’re upset about losing in the Finals, especially the way we lost. Also, the last game, we just felt we could have given it a better shot than we did. But it didn’t happen, and now we’re here again.”

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NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Have you figured this out yet? Dwight Howard will stay in Orlando because he is under contract for the next 4 years to the Magic. Still Dwight Howard is saying all the right things and why not, with the NBA Finals coming up and the whole world taking a look at Dwight Howard the basketball player instead of Dwight Howard the dunker.

Dwight is loving the fans.

“I tell my friends this: I want to stay here. It will be based upon the city. We want the support of our fans. That’s what carries us, that’s what inspires us, that’s what keeps us motivated.

“You want to feel loved. That’s the biggest thing. I show my love to the community. I show my love to this city by stepping on the floor every night and playing as hard as I can. That’s all we want back.”
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Dwight Howard the player

So just when we are feeling secure, out of Dwight Howard’s mouth comes this…

While he expresses his commitment to Orlando, Howard says he understands Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James — who can become a free agent in 2010 — weighing his options.

“You just don’t want to say something. You want to wait and weigh your options,” Howard said. “Everybody can say that LeBron should stay in Cleveland. That’s where he’s from. But you have to think about what’s best for you and your family.

“That’s the way I look at it.”

Oh, well, maybe Dwight the player will slam a few home for us in the NBA Finals before he starts thinking of leaving for the Knicks or Nets or whatever. It is just business.

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