Some Laker game. The first quarter was awful, and I think it had something to do with the quick turnaround for the Lakers--they had only one day to prepare for the Nuggets, which led to confusion on the defensive end and plenty of breakdowns. The Lakers gave up something like 3 uncontested dunks that quarter.(By the way--it seems like the Lakers' defense gets stymied a lot. I feel like maybe our basketball IQ is lacking on the defensive end? Or maybe the system is just too failure-prone? I mean, if one person is late on his rotation it will often result in an easy layup/dunk. I don't know how many times I've seen someone blast past a Laker on the wing, and the baseline help is just nowhere in sight. And it seems that teams are good at coming up with offensive schemes that scramble the Lakers D and leave people wiiiiiiide open--like what the Rockets were doing with Brooks penetrating and swinging it to the weak side. So maybe it's a design flaw in the defensive system: when it's not implemented perfectly, it totally implodes. I dunnow.)
Ah well. It's good to see Kobe back--you don't realize until you see him play another team how thoroughly Battier and company had shut him down. He had the one 40 point game, but that was basically a fluke. I'm expecting him to average over 30 this series and make a difference in every game.
It's also good to see him in the post. I feel like he can hit fadeaway jumpers in the 8 to 10 foot range all day long--and of course draw all sorts of fouls by doing his nifty spin moves and up and under stuff. Kobe in the post = good.
Anyway, a loss would have been disaterous. If we can just start playing at tip-off rather than halfway through the second quarter, I think we might actually get through this series without too much trouble.
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