Thank you, OKC, for reminding me how rough things could be for my beloved Cavaliers. Sure, they lost to the Bulls by 2 on the road, but the Lakers got smoked. That score doesn't really indicate how bad this game was.
The starters for both teams were pulled for the fourth quarter, which is insane to see in a playoff game. I'm sure it's happened in 1 vs. 8 blowouts before, but I seriously doubt it was the 8-seed blowing out the 1-seed in any of those other games.
Kobe Bryant, who was actually in the conversation for best player in the league at some point in his overrated career, put up a whopping 12 points and didn't play a minute in the fourth. How does a "killer" like "Black Mamba" (which he totally ripped off from Kill Bill 2 and never credited, which is fucking low, Kobe) let this happen? Isn't he the most competitive player in the league?
Of course, it's not like he had much help. Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum led the Lakers with 13, but Gasol was terrible, grabbing only 4 rebounds. The Lakers as a whole gave a pathetic effort in the rebound department (not to mention every other department of the game), as evidenced most egregiously by a series in the 3rd quarter where Russell Westbrook took and missed a poorly conceived pull-up jumper, chased down his own rebound ALL THE WAY ON THE BASELINE, AFTER IT HIT THE FLOOR (!!!), and passed to Nenad Krstic (who converted a 3-point play).
I know I lambasted the Cavs for their performance in Game 3 on Thursday night, but at least they had enough heart to fight back from a 21-point deficit in the 3rd and put themselves in position to win the game. The Lakers just rolled over, and I can only hope that the Thunder win Game 5 in LA and really put the pressure on. We'll see how much "heart of a champion" is left in Kobe and the gang, or if they're the soft cowards they looked like in OKC on Saturday night.
No comments:
Post a Comment