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

Joe D has done it again. This time he has lured high scoring combo guard Ben Gordon to the Detroit Pistons for a reportedly 55 million buckaroos and 5 years. A hefty price, but well worth it.

So what does Gordon bring to the Pistons? Ben Gordon brings the ability to shoot and score from range in a playoff situation. If you watch enough NBA ballgames, you will notice that some players can accumulate stats in the regular season and not do it in the playoffs. It is actually a rare ability to score when well guarded. Rip Hamilton can do it on the Pistons and now Ben Gordon will also bring that ability to the Pistons.

Gordon, 26, has been nailing three-pointers and creating his own shot since he came into the league as the third pick of the 2004 draft.

He is scorer who is a great shooter and adept at running the pick-and-roll. He stands 6-feet-3 and carries a career scoring average of 18.5 points. His compact body allows him to get into the paint and finish through contact. The only real knock is that he’s too short for shooting guard since he lacks the playmaking skills to play the point. That leads to defensive mismatches when paired against taller and more athletic players such as Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade.

Gordon has been on the Pistons’ radar for quite some time. and he upped his value when he averaged 24.3 points during a classic seven-game series against the Boston Celtics in this year’s playoffs.

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Will Ben Gordon co-exist with Rip Hamilton? Many think so.

With the trade of Chauncey Billups to the Nuggets, the Pistons needed a long distance scoring threat at guard and now they have one. Rip can only shoot threes from a set shot position. Nothing wrong with that, but you do not get a lot of those opportunities in the playoffs.
Image: Zuma Press

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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 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.

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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.
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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.

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

My first views of Shannon Brown came at Michigan State University. You could tell this guy was awesome right off the bat. He became an instant starter on a team loaded with talent, but there was just no way to keep him on the bench. Unfortunately he left after his sophomore year for the NBA and was drafted by Cleveland.

All of my friends, and me included, thought that playing for LeBron would be perfect for Shannon Brown. He was quick, strong, and could shoot, although a bit undersized. But the leap to the NBA was greater than we thought.

Shannon Brown can get up in the air!

Now one of our favorite Spartans is also a Laker and in the finals playing alongside Kobe Bryant. What could be cooler? All Spartan fans will be rooting for him! We are excited, but Shannon is even more excited.

The way the Los Angeles Lakers reserve point guard has bounced around the NBA for three seasons, he is fortunate — and he knows it. A little magic has come into his life.

The former Michigan State and Mr. Illinois basketball star is stoked as he awaits his first NBA Finals, against the Orlando Magic. “I’m very excited. It’s one of those opportunities where people play in the league for 15 years and don’t get a chance to play in the NBA Finals,” Brown said.

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