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the official 08 NBA playoffs thread

^So when Boston can't score, it's not because the Lakers played good defense? My guess then is you think when the Lakers can't score, it's because boston plays good defense?

I'm sorry Axl...get your east coast biased bullshit outta here with that "what this series tells us" garbage. The Eastern Conference might be better than the Western
Conference because the best team from the East may beat the best team from the West? Good lord...

That's like saying the NFC was better than the AFC last season because the Giants beat the Pats...

Sacramento would've made the playoffs in the East with their record...'nuff said.

The Lakers gave Boston a good shot last night to take a commanding lead in this series and still came out on top. Odom and Gasol were non-factors for basically three quarters and they missed a ton of free throws. Boston's offense was just horrendous... but GOD FORBID the Lakers get any credit for playing some good perimeter D and getting the Celtics to shoot a lot of mid-range jumpers. 8)

WTF was up with Boston laying down at the end of the game? They quit down six with over 30 seconds to go...no fouls, no timeouts, no Doc Rivers screaming at his team to foul...they just gave up. Um, this is the Finals right? Giving up like that even if the odds are not in your favor is just plain pitiful.
 
hehehe, I knew that would rile up some of the troops. where you at, West Coast? your teams is in the Finals and you are a quiet, quiet bunch. staying true to the LA sports fan stereotype, much? ;)

if you have watched any Celtics games these playoffs, you would know that Paul Pierce is off when he is not playing at home. hence, their horrid away playoff record. since I refuse to charter the words "Lakers" and "good defense" synonymously - I conclude that the lack of Boston's shots going in is more of tribute to them simply missing clutch shots when away from the Boston Garden.

also, if you have watched the Celtics through the playoffs you would also know that they do lay on their backs at times. usually when they have a comfortable lead (what's up Atlanta and Cleveland?). Boston can look like they have no hustle to them at all, and yet they almost beat the Lakers at their home court who play very whimsically.

but, let's look at my points and please tell me where I am wrong:

1) Boston is a better team than most of us thought. this isn't accounting for the regular season - when they had the best record in the NBA, of course. this is accounting for the first and second round playoff near losses when they looked like they might be the whipping boys of the lowly Atlanta Hawks. I said before that playoff experience (lack of) might come back to haunt them and it did haunt them - but they simply have enough stud players that they got over that hump and went back to their winning ways.

2) the Eastern Conference might be better than the Western Conference. granted, a couple weeks ago when this was hypothesized at the sports bar I frequent by a drunk crying in his beer because his Utah Jazz lost, I was shocked. now? not so much. if you take LA, easily the best team in the West, and put them in a series against Detroit - a team that might not have the flash for scoring but is fundamentally more sound (rebounding, defense, etc) I think I would have to pick Detroit on top. simply because LA plays soft and they play young. a team like the Pistons would eat that up. and you know it. sure, the parity between middle-tier teams is great - but I would take the top 4 teams in the East over the top 4 teams in the West. I wouldn't have said this months ago, but now I am sure of it.

3) the Lakers are soft, the Lakers are young. how is this not a fact? when my man Lamar Odom (whom I love watching play) is not on his game, the Lakers are soft. when their bench flops and doesn't score and get scored on - they are young to the point of it being detrimental. and tell me why a giant like Pau Gasol can not play defense?

I am not trying to be bias, I am rather ambivalent towards this year's Finals. I am just pointing out what I see to be true.

where you at West Coast?
 
Yes, the Lakers are a young team. You better watch out for them for the years to come. After they take this series, who knows how many more they will win in the next for the next 5-10 years as they age and progress...
 
Even in your attempt to not be biased, I can just smell that East Coaster viewpoint reeking from ya heh. And hey, it's not my job to talk the Lakers up dude...that's Benefit's deal. ;) But here goes...

Basically your reasoning that the Eastern Conference is better than the Western Conference is based on your opinion Detroit could beat LA if they played in a series? We are talking about the Pistons, who lost to the one-man army of Lebron last year, and then to the '90s All-Star team + Dwade the year before, and had the buffoon known as Flip Saunders coaching them. Dude, the Lakers minus Gasol (didn't have him then) and Bynum walked into Detroit and almost beat them, with a shot at the buzzer to decide the outcome. This was before they became the team we see them as now. It was during the near end of the Kwame Brown days...

C'mon Axl...I respect your opinion more than to accept that horseshit argument as reason to believe the Western Conference is weaker than the Eastern Conference. Also, "and you know it" doesn't really cut it for me, since I NEVER considered the Pistons a serious title contender when Flip was coaching them. NEVER. Sure...they've had the experience and players who have won it all, but my opinion once Larry Brown left and Flip replaced him, they were no longer true championship material.

So the first time the Lakers have faced some real adversity in the playoffs being down 2-0, you're dogging them for being soft and young? Isn't Boston supposed to be a really tough place to play? Utah was a tough place to play...took them a third game there to figure it out. I wouldn't say the Celtics demoralized the Lakers in those first two games...maybe caught them off-guard and took it to them with their intensity (and a little ref help ;))...but nothing in those games told me Boston was clearly the better team between the two. If anything, I think Boston should be concerned that the Lakers have yet to really get their game firing on all cylinders this series and still have been competitive...even taking Boston's best shot in game 2 and nearly turning a 24-point lead into nothing.

Basically...all the Celtics did was win at home like they were supposed to. Now the Lakers have to do the same, which they've done all postseason long. One down, two to go...

As young as they are and however big a loss it has been not having Bynum, the Lakers are right in the thick of things. From the tone I get out of your posts, it's as if you've written them off in this series already. Let's at least wait for them to lose their first home game in the playoffs this year before putting the noose around their necks, shall we?

Pau Gasol can't play defense eh? Well I wouldn't say he is a premier defender or anything, but wasn't he guarding Garnett when he went 6-21? Sure, Pau sucked on the offensive end, possibly the worst I've ever seen him play, but it's not like he was burned on both ends of the floor. He at least did his part to keep Garnett in check by doing his part in getting Garnett to fire away from the perimeter.
 
please take a look at statement number 3 to see why and how the Lakers blew a 25 point spread tonight.
 
:(
15.gif


... good bye world.
 
Now that was unbelievable...congrats to the Celtics and all their fans. They showed what a champion was tonight.
 
Did anyone else see Kobe's post-game press conference?

One angry motherfucker.

QUESTION FROM MEMBER OF THE PRESS:

"What are you guys gonna do tonight after a devastating loss like that?"

KOBE BY *FAR* THE MOST PISSED OFF I'VE *EVER* SEEN HIM - MORE THAN AFTER BEING ELIMINATED IN THE FINALS IN '04, MORE THAN THE IMMATURE ACTING OUT AGAINST SHAQ AND PHIL BACK IN THE DAY, EVEN MORE THAN AFTER BEING ACCUSED OF RAPE:

"Wine.

Some beers.

And shots.

Like 20 of them."

Coincidentally, that concoction, while extremely intoxicating, would be the third fewest amount of shots Kobe's ever had in one evening.
 
FYI, Everyone is forgetting that Boston played their worst basketball in the first 2 rounds of the playoffs this year...

..and still won. This is the regular season juggernaut, back as a matter of fact (rat tat tat tat)
 
its over... .boston celtics nba champions.... Ray Allen deserves a ring


i thought kobe handled himself very well after that disgrace of a loss..... im sure they are all pissed...


If you want to see what meditating everyday does to your life watch phil jackons speak, move, act, piss, and shit


the dude is so collected
 
Last edited:
L O V E L I F E said:
"Wine.

Some beers.

And shots.

Like 20 of them."
Click to expand...
When I saw that on TV I thought it was hilarious.


As for my boys, I think they did it on purpose. They want to be the first team to come back from a 3-1 deficit in the finals. They aren't satisfied just winning it, they want to set some records and do it with gusto. Don't count them out quite yet. The fire is a-burnin' in their hearts.
 
Any time Kobe passes the ball on the perimeter, he will immediately start calling for it and demanding it back while waving his arms vigorously.

I don't really know how I feel about that.
 
Phil Jackson, a guy who has always acted like the smartest man in the room, is getting out coached by the lowly basketball mind of Doc Rivers. this is the most schocking thing to happen as of yet in the Finals for me thus far. Phil, my man, when I am looking at the halftime locker room coach cams, you aren't even ironing your shirt. what kind of coach wears a wrinkled shirt to the Finals? one that probably will not win it.

Ray Allen does deserve a ring. but question: why are so many females obsessed with this ugly dude? bitches love Ray Allen, man. was it because of that one stupid movie?
 
Bitches (or women, as we call them in civilized society) don't love Ray Allen, homie.

They love Jesus Shuttlesworth.
 
I would like to go on the record and say a few things about Game Four's Lakers' collapse:

(1) MJ's supporting cast for each of his six championship teams was quite a bit BETTER than Kobe's suppporting cast in '08;

(2) The '08 66-16 Celtics, while NOT quite as great as their regular season record might suggest, are still quite a bit better than ANY of the six teams MJ's Bulls faced in their six career NBA Finals (excepting MAYBE, the '93 Barkley-KJ-led Suns, but even that one's close);

(3) With all of that said, if one could hypothetically replace an in-his-prime Kobe with an in-his-prime-MJ for the second half of Game Four this past Tuesday's bedwetting, it is my opinion that an in-his-prime-MJ would NEVER have let a 24 point lead (20 in the third quarter) completely evaporate.

Granted, Pippen would probably have played A LOT better D than did any Laker other than Kobe (four steals to go with his 10 assists for the game - EXTREMELY impressive stats, particularly for a non-point guard) during that gruesome 57-33 stretch to end the game, but at the end of the day, when the teams are relatively equal overall (which I've contended from the outset of this series that they are), and when you're playing a pivotal Finals game at home, and you have THAT large of a lead, if you're the best player in the league (which MJ undoubtedly WAS and Kobe undoubtedly IS), you should be able to whatever it takes NOT to wet the bed to the point where you lose a critical game in which you were up multiple times by 20-plus points.

Overall, Kobe has at least five (and probably closer to ten) additional seasons in which he can and will improve his overall body of work so that when we all sit down after his retirement, and discuss who was the greatest player of our lifetimes, there will be legitimate arguments on both sides.

But with that said, not closing out Game Four will remain a stain on the record of the glorious career of the player who *I* think is the greatest I've ever seen.

- LL
 
I'm starting to question my man love of Kobe Bryant and it is making me feel very complex emotions.

I'm not even going to watch the game tonight.
 
TopRocka said:

FYI, Everyone is forgetting that Boston played their worst basketball in the first 2 rounds of the playoffs this year...

..and still won. This is the regular season juggernaut, back as a matter of fact (rat tat tat tat)
Click to expand...

This Celtics team is excellent - no doubt about it - I said it BEFORE The Finals started and I would still be saying it, even if these Finals were hypothetically tied at 2-2 now (which, obviously, they're not).

But with that said, do you REALLY think that putting up a 66-16 record in a HORRIBLE conference, followed by a 4-3 win over a BAD team, a 4-3 win over an OK team, a 4-2 win over a very good team, and a 3-1 lead over an excellent team (for a total of 81-25 - a 76% winning percentage overall) makes this team a "juggernaut?"

Perhaps the best team in a parity-at-the-top-stricken league (not unlike the '07 Spurs) . . . but a "juggernaut?"

I offer you and your fellow loyal Celtics fans a hearty "congratulations" on being most of the way towards a seventeenth title, TopRocka, but I would think that even you would admit that NEITHER of these Finals teams this year is in the category of the '80's Lakers champions or the '80's Celtics champions, or the Kobe/Shaq threepeaters, or the MJ six-out-of-eighters, or even the '90-'91 Pistons.

IMO, this is Season Number Six in a row of "More Than One Excellent Team, But ZERO *Great* Teams" in the NBA.

On paper, this Celtics team LOOKS extremely impressive, and indeed, they are, by default, the best team in the NBA this season . . . but I will stand by my long-standing contention that while he is extremely likeable, extremely hardworking, and extremely good at many facets of the game . . . Kevin Garnett is one of the most UNCLUTCH "Superstars" the game has ever seen.

Fortunately for the Celtics, as much as Garnett is extremely OVERRATED (and has been throughout his entire one-and-out career), one Mister Paul Pierce is (and has always been) an UNDERRATED beast.

Peace,

LL
 
Benefit said:

I'm starting to question my man love of Kobe Bryant and it is making me feel very complex emotions.

I'm not even going to watch the game tonight.
Click to expand...

Cool.

You wanna come over - we can each get onstage at Botanica Bar in front of seventeen drunkards and then watch a past-its-prime Family Guy.

To Many Kobe-Is-The-Greatest Threads In The Future,

LL
 
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