Kobe Bryant has proved all his critics wrong.  There can be no more doubt any longer.  He has gotten the Los Angeles Lakers to the finals and produced a championship without Shaquille O’Neal.

This tiresome argument that has been discussed and dissected around the NBA is finally over!

Currently he is the best player in the entire league.  He has beaten Wade, James, and Anthony.  There is no player more dominate that Bryant and this season has proven it.

He strikes fear into every opposing team he faces.  He has beat double and tipple teams numerous possessions.  Nobody has been able to stop him.  He has beaten the Shane Battier aka “The Kobe Stopper”, Ron Artest, Dahntay Jones, and  Michael Pietrus.  The best perimeter defenders the NBA has to offer.

He is a shooting guard with no apparent weakness.  His jump shot is amazing.  He has the best mid range in the game.  Who has not seen him make impossible fadaway 16 ft jumpers with two guys guarding him again and again and again.

He can still drive and finish at the rim whenever he wants.  He is not as strong as LeBron James but easily has more acrobatic moves to counter any opposition.  I have noticed that over the years the refs are reluctant to give “freebie” calls the way they do stars like Dwayne Wade or LeBron James.  It seems at times like all a player has to do is breath on them and they are at the line.  Stu Jackson must have sent an NBA mandate stating that Bryant has to get knocked down to get to the free throw line and earn every one he gets.

He was criticized for being a ball hog in the past.  That arguement has no water any longer.  He has shown himself in the last two seasons to not only be a willing but also exceptional passer and playmaker.  He easily gets six assists a game and gets his teammates, especially Trevor Ariza, many wide open shots including uncontested threes since so much attention is paid to him.

He has always play defense well.  Many players with the offensive responsibilities do not play commit themselves on this end.  They have neither the energy or the desire.  Kobe has been on NBA All-Defensive Team for almost every season that he has been in the league since 1996.  He hustles, goes for loose balls, and rarely ever gives up on plays.  Most people fail to notice this critical part of his game.  Fisher, another great defender, and him have won championship because they both are committed to defense and make a back court that really difficult to score against.

Give this guy his just due.  He has proven everything.  Sure he is a Laker, and everything in the NBA eventually always goes their way, but he has worked hard to establish himself as the best player in the NBA.  He has been a match up nightmare for the other 29 team in the west and east.  Kobe Bryant is the best the league hs to offer and the air apparent to Michael Jordan.

Kobe Bryant

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Lakers Kobe Bryant has Proved Critics Wrong

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You’ve all got to understand something about the NBA playoffs.  Its all about match-ups.  I do not care how good of a team you are there is always another team that might give you hell
and you had better hope that you do not see them when it counts.  Remember the top seeded Dallas Mavericks loosing to the eighth seeded Warriors several seasons ago.  That is a prime
example of a severe match-up problem happening at just the wrong time.  If Dallas would have played another other team in the playoffs they could and most likely would have beat them.

Fast forward to the present which is what this whole discussion is really all about.  The Orlando Magic versus the Cleveland Cavaliers.  This is a huge match-up problem and probably more than people realize.  It is going to fully test what Cleveland, lead by their superstar LeBron James, is really made out of.

The Orlando Magic is a team that is constructed a lot like the Houston Rockets, lead by Hakeem Olajuwon, in the mid nineties.   They have beast in the middle who is an absolute nightmare for any opponent who is surrounded by almost nothing but three point shooters.

That “beast” is Dwight Howard.  He is a double double nightmare every night.  He will get you 20-30 points in the paint while taking down 15-20 rebounds.  You have to double team him!  No buts about it.  But wait, you have two former all-star forwards in Hedu Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis who can shoot the lights from the three point line out and more supporting cast in Aston, Lee, and Michael Pietrus who at times can do the exact same thing.

The Cavaliers have the best defense, hands down, in the NBA this year but Orlando is stretching them to the max.

LeBron James is a nightmare himself and one who it takes a whole team to guard.  But Orlando has three people during a game that at times will command a double team.  The Cavs bigs are not strong but not every fast.  Ben Wallace, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Anderson Varejao are not going to be guarding anyone for long stretches of time at the three point line.  Its just not going to happen.  And yet, that is what they are being forced to do and when that happens those two guys can put the ball on the floor and drive to the basket.

Hense Turkoglu getting to the line 12 times in Saturday’s game three.

This is a fantastic match-up to watch.  The Cavaliers, everyone’s favorites in the Eastern Conference for the entire season,  have breezed through the first and second round of the playoffs without much resistance.  The Magic have had to fight and claw their way to every win up until this point.  Now a battle tested team is meeting a great but relatively green team in the final round of the playoffs.

Great to watch.

What can the Cavs’ do?

They should at the San Antonio Spurs game plan against the Phoenix Suns several years ago.  The Suns were built much like the Magic.  They had Amare Stoudemire dominating on the inside with dunks, layups, and drives assisted by the great Steve Nash.  He was surrounded by nothing but three point shooters in Nash, Johnson, Richardson, Marion, Barbosa, Bell, etc..  The Suns had way more firepower than the Magic have right now.

How did the Spurs guard that.

Gregg Popovich came up with a brilliant scheme that worked to perfection.  He let Amare roam free.  He tried to make life as hard as possible on him but never doubled team him.  He told his defenders to stay at home on all the shooters.

End result:  Amare was torching the Spurs on the inside but they hit very little threes.  They shut down everyone else but Amare.  He was scoring 40 points a game but everyone else was scoring 10.

Let’s see what coach Brown can devise……..

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NBA Match Up Problems

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I’m going to start off with the most obvious.  They have the best player since Michael Jordan on their team.  I do not want to hear about LeBron James right now.  I know he is good.  I know he is a 6’8 freak so definitely will win a championship before he retires.  He is the face that David Stern wants on his NBA product.  But sometimes we get so obsessed by what will be that we loose track of what was and what is.  Look, Kobe has won three championships and they were back to back.  I do not want to hear anything about him having Shaq.  That certainly helped to have a Shaq in his prime but Kobe was a major part of that championship to.  Shaq came in the league in 1992 and did not win a championship until 2000.  I wonder who was the missing piece?  Kobe Bryant.  He is not an easy to person to like.  I must say that I do not know him personally but he has never been one of my favorite players.  Being from Texas I have been a Spurs and Rockets fan to be honest.  But I have watched 100s of Bryant’s game and I can tell you now Kobe Bryant has not flaws.  That is not easily said by me.  He is an excellent shooter proficient at the three point shot and mid-range jumper.  If you give him space he will shoot the lights out and has done so numerous times.  He can also get to the rim as well as any player in the league.  Kobe is able to twist his body in mid air allowing him to draw the foul and get any shot up he wants.  He is a fantastic and artistic finisher.  He has proved himself to be a good and willing passer having excellent court vision when the mood suits him.  The final two facts about Kobe Bryant’s game, and this sets him apart from his peers at present and puts him right under Michael Jordan, is that he has always been an above average to great defensive player especially considering his offensive responsibilities and his clutch factor.  There is nothing that he cannot do.   And this is only the first reason Los Angelas is #1 and they only way they can be defeated is by totally imploding inwardly.

Two years ago the Lakers were literally handed from above a gift.  This was probably one of the most lopsided none sense making trade in the last twenty years.  If anyone up to this point thought the NBA was rigged they had ample reason at this point to be fully validated.  I am talking about the  Los Angelas Lakers acquiring Pau Gasol.  People do not fully understand that this single trade put the Lakers at the top and as long as they have Bryant and Gasol they are going to be an extremely hard team to beat.  Why do you think this is?  Pau Gasol has easily been one of the best and talented big man is the game for the last several years.  You never heard about him because he played in Memphis, one of the smallest markets in the NBA, and go little to no recognition.  It also did not help that during his first two years Hubbie Brown ran a 10 man rotation severely limiting Gasol’s minutes and being on a team for many years with little to no championship talent.  I would say that for many years only Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Rasheed Wallace, and Dirk Nowitzki  were the only power forwards better than Gasol.  He has a very refined and skilled post up game and a reliable if not deadly mid-range jump shot.  He has always been an excellent passer for a big man and when you put him into an offense like the “triangle” his passing becomes murderous for the other team.  Could you imagine the damage Pau could do in the King’s “Princeton Offense” they used to run back in their glory days under Rick Amderman.

So already we have the best player in basketball joining forcing with the fifth best power forward in the entire NBA.  Are we scared yet?

Derrick Fisher is scary.  As a Spur’s fan you have to understand that I still have nightmares from the 2004 playoffs when he killed us with .4 seconds of the shot clock.  I still feel a slight twitch from that.  He is an excellent physical defensive point guard, a great leader (president of the NBA Association Executive Committee), having a penchant for hitting clutch shots throughout his whole career, a great three point shooter, and a player that never makes any mistakes.  He is not the assist king like Steve Nash but there is nothing glamorous about his game.  While he will never be on ESPN highlights secretly every coach in the league would give their right hand to have him leading their team.

Lamar Odom is their next secret weapon.  He is a 6’10 “point forward” who can do a little bit of everything.  His biggest flaw is that he is lazy.  If he consistently live up to his potential the Lakers could have gone deeper into the playoffs even before they acquired Pau Gasol.  He can step back and shot threes, loves to pass, can drive to the hole, but more importantly get you tons of rebounds, many being offensive, during a game. He is a mismatch waiting to happen on any given night and how the Lakers have the luxury of this beast coming off their bench.

Let’s not forget about Trevor Ariza.  He and Derrick Fisher are the absolute glue to this team.  He is a another great athletic defensive player with long arms and knack for disrupting passing lanes.  He is on his way to one day being what Bruce Bowen was three years ago.  He allows the Lakers to have a defensive stopper at the small forward spot who can make life a little tougher on the opposing side’s oftentimes best scorer.

Add all this up and you have a dangerous team.  Bynum, Farmar, Vujacic, and Walton finish the bench off fairly nicley.  They all have their complementary roles and quite frankly Vujacic and Farmar can get hot at any moment and start draining threes from all over the court.  When these guys get hot the Lakers are impossible to beat.

Phill Jackson is a great coach and I take nothing from him but he has one hell of a team.  With the talent he has anything short of winning a championship is an abysmal failure. The Las Angeles Lakers are the best team in the NBA and I truly feel sorry for any team that tries to stand in their way.  Nothing is impossible.  The eight seeded Warriors beat the Dallas Maverick several years ago in one of the biggest upsets in NBA history.  So anything can happen.  Its just not going to be this season…

WB

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Why are the Lakers So Good

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2009 NBA Playoffs Preview – Western Conference
By Greg Coleman

Best Team in the Conference – Los Angeles Lakers

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. The Lakers have the NBA’s best player and arguably the NBA’s best leader. They have an assortment of talented big men in an NBA that suffers from far too few talented big men. They also have the NBA’s deepest bench. Combine those factors with the stinging memory of just how the Boston Celtics closed them out in last year’s NBA Finals and will be hard to find another team in the Western Conference that is any better.

Team Most Worthy of Not being in the Playoffs – Utah Jazz

The team that faced the Los Angeles Lakers in last year’s Western Conference Finals, is simply not the same team from a season ago. Key players like Carlos Boozer have either been injured or under-productive. They’re not as good defensively as they were in 2007-08. More than that, the Jazz have not played with the same consistency that helped get them to a high seed in the playoffs last year. They will be an easy-out for the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round.

Upset Special – Mavericks over the Spurs

While the Mavericks have shown the tendency to completely disappear when the pressure is on, the San Antonio Spurs do not have the offensive fire-power to beat the Dallas Mavericks. Add G Manu Ginobili to the Spurs lineup and they are a Championship contender. Remove him and they become just another team in black and white jerseys. The rest of their aging roster will not be able to fill Manu’s void.

Mavericks in six games.

Most Important ‘X’ Factor in playoffs – Lamar Odom

If Odom can be the player that he has been off of the bench this season, in the playoffs, he could make the Lakers virtually unbeatable. If he’s the player that folded under pressure in last season’s playoffs, then the Lakers will have to find contribution from others. Odom has the potential to make other teams’ benches look like garbage squads.

Team to make it to the Finals – Los Angeles Lakers

Let me repeat this: young, talented, motivated and oddly while being so young, experienced. Combine those factors with the fact that they have the best player on the planet playing for them, the Lakers could open a lot of eyes by beating the West easily, again.

Finals Pick – Cavs vs. Lakers

It’ll be exactly what the fans, the networks and the NBA will want: the two best players on the planet, slugging it out for NBA supremacy. It will also be time for people to stop saying that Kobe Bryant cannot win an NBA title without Shaq. The Lakers depth and fire-power along with their ability to defend any team in the post will prove too much for the Cavaliers. Still, the rivalry shall begin.

Greg Coleman is the founder and Senior Editor of ThinkPhillySports.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_Coleman
http://EzineArticles.com/?2009-NBA-Playoffs-Preview—Western-Conference&id=2240299

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09′ NBA Playoffs Preview

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Yao Ming is going to be effectively shut down.  Portland was not a very tough team and they shut him down in the playoffs with the exception of game one.  With Bynum and Gasol putting a body of great wall of china I would say that Yao may get 17 pts a couple games.  No more than that and he is going to be laden with foul trouble for at least two games.  Just watch and see.

This game was over before it started.  The NBA finals are going to include a match up between the Cavaliers and the Lakers.  That is the destiny of the NBA this year.  Its like the 80s when everyone knew the Bird and Magic were going to be seeing each other  in the finals.  This is no different.  All the other 28 teams are just a practice session for the two main champs.  Who will win?  It depends on the refs I am afraid to say.  Who they let go to the line more times LeBron or Kobe will make all the difference.  They gave Dwyane Wade a tittle back in 2006 when they put him on the foul line 25 times a game.  I think Stern wants Lebron to win.  Its would be good for the league and very good for business and his bottom line.  So I say the Cavs win it in seven games and LeBron James is going to be crowned the King.

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Can Lakers Be Challeneged By Anyone?

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