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

The last time the Lakers went 7 - 0 to start the season it was 2001 and they finished the season with the NBA Title.

The Lakers are not playing like a championship team, but they are winning like a Championship team and for this time of the season that is good enough.

So what is their formula for success?

Hang in there and let Kobe takeover in the end.

The success formula allows them to win for now, but they have to develop into more of a team if they want to seriously make a title run.

We do have some very good stretches,” Fisher said. “It’s something we can build on. We know we have a long way to go. We’re only in November. We want to keep winning. (But) I think we’re relying on Kobe’s ability to make plays too much in the fourth quarter. … So, that’s something we’re going to have to correct.

“Teams know the ball is going to be in his hands down the stretch. We have to be able to do things so that there are other options. We have too many other guys who can make plays. It doesn’t always have to be Kobe.”

source

Photo source Newscom

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

One of my favorite hoop sites is basketball reference.com

Today, why don’t we look at playoff games for a player’s career?

So who has the most NBA playoff games in their career that is still playing?

1. Robert Horry 244 - Somehow this guy gets himself on teams that win it all and he makes big shots.

2. Shaquille O’Neal 203 - The big guy was the dominant player in the game for most of his career.

3. Tim Duncan 155 - The big fundamental always seems to get the job done and creates a mismatch on the court.

4. Derek Fisher 154 - Just like Robert Horry, this guy finds a way to play for winning teams and makes big shots.

5. Kobe Bryant 152 - What Kobe did last year cemented his legacy as one of the best players in the game for all time.

6. Rasheed Wallace 149 - The mercurial center for the Pistons can be whatever he wants to be on a given night and he plays superb defense.

7. Lindsey Hunter 141 - Lindsey may be done, but Joe Dumars keeps talking him into one more year. The speedy backcourt player is one of the best one on one defenders of quick point guards.

8. Sam Cassell 136 - You could see age catching up to the quick shooting Sam Cassell as he played for the Celtics last year. Sam could always get his shot off in the playoffs, which is a special skill in itself.

9. Bruce Bowen 130 - a key member of Tim Duncan’s team, Bruce can stop any forward or big guard in the league.

10. Chauncey Billups and Tony Parker 117 - both excellent guards at the point position for their respective teams. Tony is more of a penetrator and Chauncey is known for his big shots.
Photo source Newscom

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Could Ronny Turiaf be the newest Golden State Warrior?

Image details: NBA Finals Game 6: Los Angeles Lakers v Boston Celtics served by picapp.com

The Laker machine is just as stable as ever, but they may have to lose a player or two. Don’t count the Lakers and Kobe Bryant out just yet.

The Golden State Warriors on Thursday signed Los Angeles Lakers forward and restricted free agent Ronny Turiaf to an offer sheet.

According to a report on the Los Angeles Times’ web site, the Warriors offered a four-year, $17 million contract to Turiaf, who averaged career highs in points (6.6), rebounds (3.9) and minutes (18.7) last season.

source

Give a hand to the Warriors. They lost team leader Baron Davis to the Clippers. Baron wanted to play with Elton Brand, but he skipped out and went to the 76ers on advice of his agent, David Falk.

The Warriors then signed Corey Maggette from the Clippers to a five year contract and now they are after Ronny Turiaf of the Lakers.

The Lakers still have the right to match the deal and keep Turiaf, but they are way over the Luxury Tax level and will want to keep Sasha Vujacic for his 3 point shooting. They stand to lose either Vujacic or Turiaf, unless something else happens.

For those Laker fans that are worried, remember that Andrew Bynum returns this coming season.

The Clippers will be…well, the Clippers, what else?

Meanwhile, Golden State will just as crazy a team as ever!

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Boston Celtics rule the world or at least the NBA World.

Paul Pierce is MVP and played fantastic.

Kevin Garnett reminds us that anything is possible.

Defense rules and the Lakers better get one.

Redlasso gives us this video from after the final seconds.

source RedLasso

Kevin Garnett was so emotional that he was crying one moment and shouting out the next moment. Boston absolutely dominated the last game of the series.

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Paul Pierce cannot be stopped. Not by Kobe. Not by anyone.

Image details: NBA Finals Game 6: Los Angeles Lakers v Boston Celtics served by picapp.com

Sam Posey or SAM missile. He just keeps burying 3’s.

Paul Pierce, not Kevin Garnett. It is the Paul Pierce series. Hey, Kevin is averaging a double double, but it does not matter. Paul Pierce is dominating.

Pierce had waited for his chance to be one of those generational Boston sports icons, and the Celtics had stopped surrounding him with a fighting chance. It was getting late in his prime, late in his patience. He watched Tom Brady win his Super Bowls and David Ortiz his World Series, and he could take it no more. This town is the best in the world for winners, and just the worst for everyone else.

These forever New England stars are remembered for the most clutch championship performances. Pierce was the forgotten, dismissed talent, a victim of unfair circumstance when the city never had less tolerance for losing causes.

Suddenly now, Pierce returns for Game 6 in these NBA Finals on Tuesday within a victory of a championship, within a whisper of his wildest dreams. Maybe the regular season belonged to Kevin Garnett for the Celtics, but the playoffs belong to Pierce. History is closing fast.

source

Phil Jackson has a pink top of his head. What is that?

Pau Gasol racks up the stats, but plays soft most of the time. Lakers need Andrew Bynum.

Kobe Bryant can’t score on 5 Celtics at once. They are playing great defense. Kobe will get his, but it will take a lot of shots.

Boston by 23. Is this a series of big leads by both teams or what?

Ray Allen had his eye poked in the first quarter and has done nothing since.

Halftime.

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Kobe Bryant is ready, but is Pau Gasol ready?

Image details: NBA Finals Game 4: Boston Celtics v Los Angeles Lakers served by picapp.com

The Lakers blew it in game 4. A 24 point lead and still they did not win. The Celtics stepped up the defense and Paul Pierce went crazy on offense and that was it.

The Lakers have to face game 5 as a game to get respect.

Let me lay it out for you.

First off your leader has to be cool. Kobe Bryant is the ultimate cool right now.

Bryant insists the Lakers have moved on since their Game 4 collapse. There’s no time to dwell on what happened, all that counts now is what happens next.

“We’ve got to take care of business on Sunday,” said Bryant, who spent much of the past two days relaxing at home with his family. “So what are we going to do? How am I going to get my teammates in the right frame of mind, make sure they’re energetic, and that’s what it’s been all about.”

Bryant said he spent much of the past two days reading a Harry Potter book to his daughters.

“It was awesome,” he said. “He had more problems dealing with Voldemort than what we have dealing with the media and the Celtics.”

source

Lord Voldemort? Hmm, that would be interesting.

Garnett goes up for a rebound and what is this? Lord Voldemort has pulled out his wand and, oh my gosh, the ball just exploded. Did you see that? Kevin Garnett is just lying on the floor in a crumpled heap.

Anyway, secondly you cannot think beyond this next game.

The finals are in a 2 - 3 - 2 format. The Lakers almost came from 20 down to win game 2, but did not. The Celtics came from behind to win game 4. That made the series 3 -1. Hopeless is the major feeling right now. No NBA team has come back from 3 -1.

Even if the Lakers can get up for game 5 after the major disappointment of game 4, they would still face game 6 and 7 in the house of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen. Not to mention the ghosts of Celtics past like Red Auerbach and Larry Bird. It is human nature to just not believe you can win all three games in a row, but you can always convince yourself to win the next game, the one right in front of you.

Third the Lakers have to play a complete game with enthusiasm. Derek Fisher is a veteran and understands the playoffs, but does Pau Gasol or is he and his other teammates just happy to be there?

Fourth, Kobe Bryant has to get hot. He cannot just dribble into the paint and dish off. If he is the best player in the league and Phil Jackson is such a good coach, then a new strategy has to be devised to make Boston unable to stop Kobe. Right now Boston is over playing one side of the court and it is working. LA has to find a way to get down low or get open shots on the weak side.

Back to game 5. The Lakers need this game for respect, and then if they lose in Boston, they lose in Boston and that is that.

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Paul Pierce, with a lot of help, put the clamps on Kobe Bryant

Image details: NBA Finals Game 4: Boston Celtics v Los Angeles Lakers served by picapp.com

The Lakers are done. They had a 24 point lead in the second quarter over the Boston Celtics.

Even in the 3rd quarter the Celtics were down 20 points.

Then the Lakers stopped scoring.

What was it? It was Celtic defense and Paul Pierce scoring.

It didn’t help that Kobe was being locked down by Pierce. Kobe just could not get his jumper going at all. Every time Kobe drove to the middle of the floor, he was met with a welcoming committee from Boston and most of the time had to pass off to an outside shooter. That is fine, but then the Celtics would recover fast enough to cover the outside shooter as well.

Sam Posey made a couple of clutch 3 pointers late in the game and had 18 points. It seems that there is a new Boston bench star in every game.

Kevin Garnett had a very quiet 16 points and 11 boards. Paul Pierce was very dynamic especially late in the game with 20 points in spite of missing all 3 of his 3 pointers.

Kendrick Perkins left the game with a strained shoulder. We will have to wait and see how bad that is. Paul Pierce tweaked his ankle late in the game, but continued to play.

The Lakers wasted a brilliant game by Lamar Odom, who had 19 points on 8 for 11 shooting and 10 boards.

At one point in the third quarter, they flashed a graphic saying the Lakers had missed 9 shots in a row.

Where do the Lakers go from here? Game 5 is in LA and then the last two games are in Boston. No team has ever come back from a 3 -1 deficit. It is hard to imagine the Lakers winning the next 3 games with 2 of them in Boston.

It will be interesting to see the two team’s mindset for game 5.

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Tim Donaghy is facing charges on gambling on NBA games. He just happens to be an NBA ref.

The league wanted a million bucks from him for costing the league money.

Tim fired back with allegations of the NBA fixing some playoff games, including the famous seven game series between the Lakers and Sacramento. The NBA and David Stern have denied the allegations.

If Tim Donaghy’s latest allegations are true, Kobe Bryant won his last championship with the help of an NBA conspiracy.

And Scot Pollard is still ringless because some guys in suits determined it would be that way.

Even with Bryant chasing another title in a marquee NBA finals matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, the league still can’t escape the Donaghy mess, now nearly a year after learning the former referee bet on games he officiated.

source

Scott Pollard a current Boston Celtic and Derek Fisher a current Los Angeles Laker take a look back.

In a letter filed Tuesday in New York, Donaghy’s attorney made a series of allegations about officiating corruption and misconduct within the NBA. The most damning accusation centered on the 2002 Western Conference finals, when the Lakers rallied from a 3-2 deficit to beat the Sacramento Kings.

Donaghy said two referees known as “company men” worked the controversial Game 6, when the Lakers shot 27 free throws in the final quarter and scored 16 of their last 18 points at the line in a 106-102 victory.

The injured Pollard, who now plays for Boston, was on Sacramento’s team, while Bryant and Derek Fisher played for the Lakers squad that went on to sweep New Jersey for its third straight championship.

It’s funny really, because my good friend RonB and your intrepid author have often argued (in jest to be sure) that the NBA is fixed. Didn’t David Stern want a Boston vs. LA Laker series this year? That is funny, we got one.

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Kobe Bryant walked off with a victory in game 3 of the NBA Finals

Image details: NBA Finals Game 3: Boston Celtics v Los Angeles Lakers served by picapp.com

Kobe was cool and calm and had an excellent game.

Los Angeles Lakers 87, Boston Celtics 81

Bryant scored 36 points with an MVP-worthy performance; Sasha Vujacic added 20 points and the Lakers, teetering on the brink of falling into an impossible hole in the NBA finals, beat the Boston Celtics 87-81 in Game 3 on Tuesday night.

L.A.’s brightest sports star, Bryant was California cool.

source

This took the pressure off his teammates and they also played excellent ball.

Vujacic, the self-proclaimed “Machine,” made three 3-pointers, including a crucial one from the left corner with 1:53 left that gave the Lakers an 81-76 lead. Pau Gasol finally flexed his muscles with two inside baskets in the fourth quarter and Derek Fisher, who took an $8 million pay cut to come back and play for the Lakers, made two free throws with 1:33 remaining as the Lakers held on.

source

Meanwhile the Boston 3 party was going solo with only Ray Allen showing up.

But it took everything they had to keep that streak alive as the Celtics, two wins from their 17th NBA title but only 2-8 on the road in this postseason, made the Lakers play a more physical, Eastern Conference-style game and nearly walked away with a win.

Ray Allen scored 25 points—15 on 3-pointers—for the Celtics, but only one-third of Boston’s Big Three showed up.

Kevin Garnett scored 13 points on just 6-of-21 shooting and Paul Pierce, playing a short drive from his childhood home, had only six points, missed 12 shots and was in foul trouble all night.

Game 4 is Thursday night.

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

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

Can Paul Pierce take his injured knee and guard Kobe Bryant and still score points?

Image details: NBA Finals Game 1: Los Angeles Lakers v Boston Celtics served by picapp.com

Doc Rivers is cautiously optimistic about his two injured starters.

Pierce (sprained right knee) and Perkins (sprained left ankle) spent much of the media-access portion of practice riding stationary bikes, and coach Doc Rivers indicated he was more optimistic about Pierce’s chances of playing against the Lakers than he was about Perkins’s, even though the fifth-year center said he figured to be about 75-80 percent.

“There’s still aching in it right now, but it’s all right,” Perkins said of his ankle.

As for Pierce? “The swelling is down a little,” he said, after showing up at a news conference wearing a multilayered sleeve on his knee. “Still some stiffness, can’t quite all the way bend it like I want to, but it’s definitely a step forward.”
source

In a classic, don’t say what you want to say comment, Derek Fisher of the Lakers had this to say about Paul Pierce.

“It obviously changes their personnel,” said Lakers guard Derek Fisher. “Paul is a very talented player. He’s their go-to guy in a lot of situations, so, for whatever reason, if he doesn’t play, then a lot of things change. It doesn’t mean that they’re any worse.

“I mean, they went on a 6-0 run while he was out, so I was pretty happy to see him come back,” Fisher added. “We played them pretty even after that, but that 6-point difference after he left continued to change the momentum of the game.”

If either Perkins of Pierce are missing for game two, the Celtics are a considerably weaker team. The pressure would be on Kevin Garnett, big time, to score and rebound. Who would guard Kobe Bryant? Sam Posey? Who would keep Gasol off the boards?

Even if they do come back, how effective will Paul Pierce and Kendrick Perkins be?

Coach Rivers will remain cautiously optimistic!

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.