Seven foot freaking seven! No wonder the Lakers lost.
What the hell?
Ryantific and I just got done watching tonight’s Lakers-Rockets game and are trying to figure out how Los Angeles lost to Houston – a team the Lakers spanked during the regular season. Here are some of the reasons we came up with:
- How many beers did we drink?
- Was it the Swine Flu?
- Was it the economy tanking?
- Was it the state of the newspaper business?
- Was Joey Crawford officiating?
I guess it was just good ol’ fashioned basketball played by the Rockets, a solid basketball team from center on down to the point guard position. They’re not a deeper team. They’re not a better team. But they are a bigger team, at least with their starting five.
There’s no doubt they present some matchup problems for the Lakers, who were all but forced to ditch their fun-n-gun brand of basketball for a slow, half-court game that obviously benefits the Rockets.
Watching just a quarter of Monday’s game it became obvious Yao Ming is too big for Pau Gasol, and if Bynum’s not playing up to speed, the Lakers are in trouble.
Lamar Odom is the X Factor, but he and Gasol played like they played in the NBA Finals last season and appear to be playing hide-and-seek again.
Kobe did his thing, but was only effective from the perimeter (not exactly a stellar 14 of 31) thanks to some hard-nosed defense from Shane Battier and Ron Artest – who also scored 21 points and had 7 ASSISTS and just might have outplayed Kobe in Game 1.
And it’s pretty clear who won the point guard battle tonight – tiny Aaron Brooks, all 6 foot, 160 pounds (that’s what they list him at anyways) of him, had 19 points against the defending Western Conference champs.
So there goes home court, and there goes an easy sweep into the next round for the Lakers. Looks like this will be a series after all. Well, hopefully it’ll be a series. But if Odom, Gasol, Bynum and Co. don’t start playing, maybe it won’t be one.
On a positive note, Phil Jackson ripped Craig Sager‘s hideous Butterfinger-colored suit tonight between quarters. B-R-U-T-A-L.
And Artest’s hair was hideous. I’m about to write another worst haircuts in the league story again.
