Lakers on the Brink: Globetrotter Fans Despondent

We’ve complained a lot about this Lakers Celtics match-up from the start; about the Sea Monkey (just add water) nature of this Celtics team, the overblown claims of Kobe's greatness, and the seeming inevitability of David Stern's big media made for TV dream match-up that reinforced our most disturbing and unprovable conspiracy theories about the league. But we’re finding more to like about this Series with each passing game.

First we were reminded about Paul Pierce, realized that his story is much more compelling than we'd noticed, and discovered how much we could enjoy pulling for him here. Along with this came the peace of better understanding these Celtics and how they fit together.

Then we saw how this series could show that Kobe is not, in fact, “the best player in the league.”

And now that the Lakers are on the brink, we’re glad that the Celtics are helping to put to rest the notion of Western Conference superiority. Note that both the Hawks and the Cavs played the Celtics better than the Lakers have. We’re also glad to see that the defensive-minded Celtics have kept the Lakers at or below 91 points in three of the four games so far. Folks might say that these games are ugly. This doesn’t bother us. Sometimes when two NBA forces collide, the teams play defense better than they play offense. Just because one of these results is more pretty to some than the other is does not mean that the result is more correct. And some of the most memorable NBA playoff moments come when an individual rises above the wreckage – like LeBron’s 48 point one-man demolition derby in Game 5 of last year's Eastern Conference Finals against the Pistons. In the first four games of that series, the 90 point barrier was broken only once, by one team, yet that ugly series gave us one of history’s greatest NBA Playoff moments.

The self-styled “purists” who believe that a 135-125 Suns victory over the Nuggets or Warriors is so much more preferable to a Cavs/Pistons game, or one of those good old 71-68 Knicks/Heat/Pistons slugfests from the 90s tell us about “basketball the way it was meant to be played.” If these people feel so strongly about this, they should take comfort in the fact that they’ll always have the Harlem Globetrotters. We do love the Trotters.

And of course, there’s Donaghy. People want to dismiss his charges that the league fixed and manipulated games through referees as a criminal playing on conspiracy theories in an effort to avoid jail time. Maybe they’re right. But there are millions at stake in the outcome of these games. If you believe that everyone has a price, it’s much harder not to wonder if there’s something to Donaghy’s charges. Also, it would only take a few people strategically placed in the most important games to have a big influence. If more funny business was going on, we assume that it would have involved referees much smarter than Donaghy apparently is, so what Donaghy knows might only be the tip of the iceberg. And to this end, we learn that federal agents are interviewing veteran ref Dick Bavetta.

In the above linked Free Darko piece, Shoals says that "Tim Donaghy's not a shock, he's confirmation that basketball's like everything else. . . . [a]nd if we've learned to cope with that, or at least suppress it . . . then we should be able to sit the f*ck back and enjoy these Finals." This sounds like postmodern bullsh*t to us ("everything is like everything/nothing means anything/blah blah blah"). We prefer to think of our sports as not like everything else in an important way. And we're not sure how we can cope with something that hasn't played out yet. There’s a long way to go here, and a lot to think about. How this plays out will have major consequences in every major sport. One consequence that’s already occurred is that, with the refs under the microscope, we can all feel better about picking the Celtics today to close out the series in LA. We’ll call this a gift horse and not look it in the mouth. The pick: Celtics +7 over the Lakers.

2008 NBA Finals, Stakes is High: Can Celtics Bring Order Back to "Best in the League" Discussion?

So far this Finals series looks like it might provide us with merciful relief from the insulting chorus of claims that Kobe Bryant is “the best,” or worse, “clearly,” or “unquestionably the best” player in the NBA.

Best we can figure out, people think that Kobe is the best player in the NBA because he has the prettiest jump shot. Or is it because he’s a Laker? A combination of both? What else could it be? His obsession with dominating the court (obsessive compulsive disorder)?

If the Lakers don’t at least take the Celtics to game 7, how is Kobe any “better” than LeBron? LeBron played hurt throughout these playoffs, and still came within one shot of a game 7 overtime with these Celts. Would he have been able to do more with this Lakers roster? If the Lakers don’t win this thing, anyone who wants to say that Kobe is better than LeBron has to also say that the Cavs roster minus LeBron is better than the Lakers roster sans Kobe. Could the latter be true? Are, say, Gasol, Odom, and Fisher worse than Ilgauskas, Delonte West, and who? Szczerbiak? Joe Smith? Tough one, but we don’t hear anyone asking these questions when they tell us that there’s no question that Kobe’s the NBA’s best. Oh, where have you gone Kelly Dwyer?

And are either Kobe or LeBron better than Paul Pierce? Probably. But we owe a special debt of gratitude to Free Darko’s Shoals for reminding us that Pierce is the Celtics’ guy. For all of the attention that’s focused on Garnett -- he’ll get 20, he’ll get 10, he’ll D your face off, and he’ll do it every day -- he’s not the guy like Pierce is the guy who will make plays to take over a game and win it. And this is how it played out against the Cavs. Thinking about the Celtics in this way -- with Pierce as the guy, and Garnett as the most solid of supporting cast members, or even with Pierce as the leader at one end of the court, and KG as the leader at the other -- makes them seem a lot more dangerous. And so does the fact that everybody’s favorite Celtic, Eddie House, should be getting more burn due to Sam Cassell’s injured wrist.

We’re not going to pick this one because it will hurt too much to feel like we’ve walked into another one of Mr. Stern’s traps, but; GO! CELTICS! Help us turn this “Kobe is the best” noise OFF.

2008 NBA Finals Preview: A Pierce-ing Analysis

The much ballyhooed NBA Finals matchup between the Celtics and Lakers starts tonight in Boston. We’re not crazy about either of these teams, or the idea of either of them getting a title, but we have to pick one of them. We’re picking the Celtics for three primary reasons.

1) Selfish crybabies shouldn’t get to win Championships. We realize that Kobe has matured as a person and a player. We also realize that life isn’t fair. But, and we’re not going to get into a detailed history here, what should have been a Lakers dynasty that should have won two or three more NBA titles was broken up because LA wasn’t big enough for both Kobe and Shaquille O’Neal. Kobe wanted the Lakers to be “his team.” This is similar to when Stephon Marbury left the Timberwolves because the team wasn’t big enough for him and Garnett. So now the Lakers are Kobe’s team. Because Kobe got what he asked for, and because he has so much to lose by not winning one without Shaq, there might be an element of added pressure on him in this Series. There’s also a Ray Allen/Kobe Bryant feud at play here, which favors the Celtics if only because Allen’s been dead-on in predicting how Kobe’s career will play out. And we’ve been reading lately about how Kobe Bryant cannot stand to lose; how he has for his whole life been “obsessed with dominating the court.” How does this play out? Is this the result of an inferiority complex? An obsessive disorder? These things don’t generally play out well.

2) If these games are fixed or manipulated in any way, and, as we’ve discussed, there is a tremendous perceived financial incentive for the league to fix these games, this favors the Celtics. If each game means millions more for the league, then we’re more likely to see a Game 7. Game 7 would be in Boston.

3) We think that the Celtics have better roster chemistry than the Lakers. We think that the Kobe/Lamar Odom/Pau Gasol troika has a similar skill set, and we compare Odom and Gasol to a poor man’s Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden as those two players fit with LeBron (see Venn diagrams here). These three are all primarily scorers. The Celtics should have a drastic rebounding advantage against the Lakers in this series, despite Odom’s and Gasol’s size. And finally, as explained in the best piece that we’ve read about this Series, by Free Darko’s Bethlehem Shoals, the X factor in this series is not Kevin Garnett, it’s the perpetually underrated Paul Pierce:

“Underrated on draft night, almost died from a stabbing, excelling with a relative lack of fanfare, suffered through some doldrums just as Garnett did, dealt with criticism, and now, is the real moral center of this series. He should be the pride of the Celtics, and as a Los Angeles native, this series couldn't have higher stakes for him. Checks the stats; as Nate Jones reminded me, dude's always energized by playing in front of the city he still loves. Pierce is about to hijack these finals the way Tony Parker so often with the Spurs, making himself into the marquee name when there's a surefire Hall of Famer defining his legacy.” (Read the rest here).

The Pick: Celtics +150 to win the 2008 NBA Finals over the Lakers.

Western Conference Semifinals Game 2: All Jazz Hands On Deck

We received the following insulting email this afternoon from the folks at Sportsbook.com:

"Hi [Cleveland Frowns],

Here's Sportsbook.com's Game of the Day:
The Lakers are peaking at the perfect time as they have won 13 out of their last 14 games straight up while covering their last seven games. Their average margin of victory in those seven covers was an impressive 15.4 points. In fact, out of those seven games, only one opponent was able to keep the final score within single digits. Utah, on the other hand, is just 1-4 against the spread in their last five games. Finally, the three times they visited the Lakers this season, Utah lost by double digits each time. Considering the intel above, it’s hard to blame the 79% of early bettors pounding the Lakers (-7).

Regards,

The Sportsbook.com Team"

Regards? More like reTards. As best we can tell this email tells us that the Lakers are on a good streak, and the Jazz are on a bad one. Only someone who is retarded would consider this information to be “intel.” And if this is all the info that the “79% of the early bettors pounding the Lakers -7” are going on then we can, in fact, blame them. We can blame them for BWR -- betting while retarded. This intel-insulting message from Sportsbook.com gives us reason enough to take the Jazz and the points tonight, but we probably would have anyway. We’re still mad about Kobe’s MVP award, and the Jazz looked good to us on Sunday even though they lost by 11. Deron Williams was all over the place, demonstrating his dopeness and consistently setting his teammates up with wide open looks which they consistently clanked off the iron. We expect them to hit more of these wide open shots tonight. Plus, now Kobe has his stupid award, so the Heisman effect will be more likely to have kicked in by now. Our attitude toward the “79% of early bettors pounding the Lakers” is aptly demonstrated in the above photo of Utah forward Andrei “I Must Break You” Kirilenko. The pick: Utah Jazz +7 over L.A. Lakers.

Update -- 5/8/08-- 7:36 AM: The NBA obviously really wants to see the Lakers in the NBA Finals. We thought we didn't have to worry about this after the Tim Donaghy scandal last year, but the refs were all over the Jazz last night, who were whistled for ten more fouls than the Lakers, and more importantly, shot only 16 free throws to the Lakers' 43. If the refs had it in for a team (like we think they do for Utah), they'd have to be careful to call enough fouls on the other team so that things wouldn't be too suspicious. They'd try to call these fouls against their favored team when these fouls wouldn't matter. There were more than a few times when Utah would pull down a defensive rebound and the refs would whistle the Lakers on a ticky-tack foul, giving the Jazz the ball out of bounds, when they already had the ball and a fresh shot clock anyway. These fouls are inconsequential to the outcome of the game. Phil Jackson himself even noticed the inconsistency of the refs, complaining publicly after game 1, saying: "It's a very uneven refereed ballgame. You know, they're calling little fouls one place and not fouls the other. It makes it very difficult to play a good, emotional game. So, that's tough. " This is exactly what the refs were doing, but we think they were doing so to create an advantage for the Lakers, who shot 16 more free throws than the Jazz in Game 1.

We still think that the Jazz look like a better team than the Lakers, but the refs are simply not letting them play their game. Two Utah starters have fouled out in each of the two games, and Utah star Carlos Boozer sat for most of the first half last night with foul trouble. Conspiracy theory? Excuse? Perhaps. But we can't deny what we see out there. And the free throw numbers don't lie. Plus, there is a lot of money to be made with a Lakers/Celtics NBA Finals. If markets are efficient, we have to be suspicious. David Stern was interviewed at halftime of last night's game and couldn't help himself, gushing like a schoolgirl about the turnaround seasons of the Lakers and Celtics, saying that these two teams "give hope" to the fans of other NBA teams. Nonsense. With the way this Lakers/Jazz series is playing out, it's precisely the opposite.

One last note: We're not blind to the possibility that the Jazz might be being punished by the Basketball Goddz for this. Yikes.

Update -- 5/7/08 -- 1:26 PM: We're not the only conspiracy theorists out there. T.J. Simers has this to say in today's LA Times:

"NBA Commissioner David Stern stopped by the press room before the game and said he had just met with the referees, I presume to remind them how excited he is about the upcoming Boston-L.A. Finals.

For some reason when this game started, the refs called four fouls on Utah, none on the Lakers, and then tagged Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan with a technical foul.No need to make it so obvious, guys.If Stern is worried about a Lakers-Celtics matchup, he ought to be spending most of his time with Boston. . . .

Utah shot the ball well early, but once the referees got into the game, it began to tip toward the Lakers. No doubt Tim Donaghy would have bet as much.Stern's crew took Utah's best player, Carlos Boozer, out of the game with a pair of first-quarter fouls, and then added another 19 seconds after he returned to start the second quarter. Boozer finished the half with no points, the refs doing the best job of defense on Boozer in the NBA this season.

Bryant also picked up two fouls, but his second came with the Lakers up by 15 with less than 30 seconds left in the first quarter and Bryant probably headed to the bench anyway for a rest.Final first-half stats, the Lakers making 15 of 19 free throws, the Jazz going four for six from the line and Stern being treated to a 14-point Lakers advantage.

The Lakers had 27 free-throw attempts, Utah eight after three quarters, and the Jazz still managed to keep it close. But that's the NBA for you, every game seemingly arranged so it will somehow remain close going into the final two minutes -- like that really happens.The Lakers won, Bryant got his Podoloff, and all in all, a good night for Stern and the NBA."

These are facts.

Note: We expressly disavow Simers' statements in his piece about Kobe's MVP award.

LeBron Robbed; Kobe to Win MVP; Cleveland Frowns Throws Up Jazz Hands

So it looks like Kobe Bryant is our 2007-2008 NBA MVP. Kobe is our MVP even though LeBron joined Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan this season to become the third man in NBA history to average at least 30 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists per game. This is so beyond dumb that it’s hard for us to get worked up about it. By every measure LeBron James is having a better season than Kobe, and I don’t think it can be questioned that the if the two players switched teams, the Lakers would be better, and the Cavs would be worse. (Would any Cavs fan trade LeBron for Kobe? No.) Anyone who wants to argue this point must explain why LeBron has elevated his Playoff game in each year of his career and was able to singlehandedly lead the Cavs to the NBA Finals last season, while Kobe has struggled to lead a stronger supporting cast to a .500 record for the last three seasons without making a peep in the playoffs. Kobe proponents point to the Lakers better record in a better conference. Kelly Dwyer, in two excellent posts at Yahoo Sports about why LeBron should be MVP, responds well to these dummies:

“[Kobe] shouldn't be handed an MVP just because Andrew Bynum can ball now and the Grizzlies decided to hand the Lakers Pau Gasol. Meanwhile, James is just destroying people in Cleveland. Pulling in more rebounds on a team that owns the boards even without him (there's not a lot of stray rebounds to go around) and racking up assists on a team that can't shoot straight (44.1 percent, 24th in the NBA).

And yet, those who still consider Bryant to be having the better season than LeBron have no issue overlooking the fact that Bryant scores less, shoots worse, rebounds worse, assists worse, and plays on a team that averages fewer possessions than James' team. To them, Kobe's better because ... well, he just is.

The, "LeBron plays in the East!" cry is getting a little old. LBJ averages 29.8 points, 47.4 percent shooting, 7.1 assists, and 7.9 rebounds against Western teams. When James plays, the Cavs are 16-11 against the West. Kobe averages 29.7 points, 48.8 percent shooting, 6.5 boards, and 5.4 assists (again, in games with more possessions) against the West -- awesome -- but for some reason lets his averages go to relative pot against the East. You'd think it'd be because of the Lakers blowing Eastern teams out, but Kobe actually averages more minutes per game against Eastern squads than against Western outfits, and contributes less. Weird.

Worse, James is going to get burned by voters who will credit him for MVPs likely won from 2009-2019 and hand it to Kobe just because he's playing "unselfish" basketball."

LeBron dominates while carrying a bad team on his back, putting up better stats than Kobe in all major categories. He's nearly averaging a triple double in the playoffs, while playing with a bad back. Kobe is less productive on a better team. Kobe’s award makes clear that the NBA MVP award has become a lifetime achievement award like the kind that they hand out at the Oscars or Grammys. Dumb dumb dumb.

The least we can do about this injustice is make a play on the Jazz to beat the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals. We’re not crazy about Utah; we’re concerned with Carlos Boozer’s poor play against Houston in the first round (and with the fact that he is a traitor), we’re pretty sure that the Lakers have a deeper bench; and we know that the NBA is salivating over the prospect of a Lakers/Celtics NBA Finals. But even aside from Kobe’s stupid award, these Lakers just don’t appeal to our BrownsTown sensibilities. We think that Kobe’s MVP award might have the same effect on him that the Heisman trophy has on college players playing in big bowl games. Plus, Utah’s Deron Williams is dope, we’d take Mehmet Okur in a knife fight over anyone on the Lakers roster, and, perhaps most importantly, don’t f*ck with Jerry Sloan. Finally, this play goes well with yesterday’s series play on the Magic because the Jazz are 3 to 1 underdogs, which means that we’d come out substantially ahead even if these two plays split. All reason enough to wave our Jazz hands. The pick: Utah Jazz +300/100 over the Lakers to win the series.

Update: 5/4/08, 3:43 PM --