Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times: “If one side of the Lakers’ locker room is inhabited by a grimace, the other side is occupied by grace. If Kobe Bryant is the Lakers’ heat, then Lamar Odom is their humanity, a simple guy fighting through life’s complexities with sad smiles and soft wisdom. ‘We had a saying in my old neighborhood,’ he says Friday in the gentlest of New York accents. ‘Either you ride, or you get rolled over.’ These days Odom is riding, hard and fast and purposeful, across the spring courts, through our collective consciousness, maybe into a new Lakers contract, certainly into a new Lakers reputation. With his unselfish versatility — he recorded a double-double against the Orlando Magic in Thursday’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals — he is a perfect complement to Bryant’s attack. With his open emotions — he waves to fans, he laughs with referees, he eats candy bars at halftime — he is a perfect complement to Bryant’s personality. ‘What do I bring to the locker room?’ he says. ‘I guess I just bring Lamar.’ He not only wears his heart on his sleeve but around his neck, which is constantly adorned with a rosary. He also wears it on his sneakers, in tiny black Magic Marker names and numbers, a lifetime in little scribbles.”
John Schuhmann of NBA.com: “For both the Cavs and Lakers, the high screen-and-roll is a key part of their playbook. But James and Bryant use it in different ways. When James comes off a high screen, he’s looking to attack the basket. He wants to use his 275-pound frame as a projectile that you wouldn’t dare step in front of. And with his strength and agility, no one finishes better at the rim. He can take a hit from the massive Dwight Howard under the basket and still find a way to get the ball through the hoop. If James does decide to shoot a jumper coming off the screen, he usually steps back to do it, giving himself some extra space. Bryant doesn’t need extra space. And he doesn’t need to get to the rim. He’s very willing and very able to get his points from 16 or 17 feet away. But when he came off of high screens on Thursday, the Magic big men did not come out to stop him, and he was able to step right into a comfortable mid-range jumper. … The Magic are actually willing to live with Bryant getting 40 points too. They won games where James scored 49, 41 and 44 points in the conference finals. And they beat the Lakers in the regular season with Bryant scoring 41. Orlando’s defensive game plan is to let the star get his points, but keep the supporting cast from contributing much else.”
Jonathan Abrams of The New York Times: “When cousins in the United States sent him videos of N.B.A. games, Bryant studied the feet of Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. ‘I’ve always worked on it, always worked on it since I was a kid,’ Bryant said. ‘I just watched different players — Olajuwon, Michael, Charles — and just all kinds of footwork and just tried to emulate them. Playing soccer, I think, had a lot to do with it as well. It’s just growing up overseas.’ Eventually, Bryant teamed with Lakers Coach Phil Jackson, who used to have another great jab steppers. When Jackson coached the Bulls, he walked into the team’s training center one day and found Scottie Pippen tutoring Jordan on a corner sequence. ‘Because Scottie could make the footwork and dunk with his left hand, and Michael always envied that,’ Jackson said. Jackson also appreciated the value of other sports. Before the draft, he used to ask prospects about their athletic experiences. ‘Basketball is a very skilled sport,’ Jackson said. ‘But we need guys that can throw the basketball like a baseball and we like guys that have footwork like in soccer.’”
Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel: “Heading into Game 2 on Sunday, the Magic — unlike in the Cleveland series — are the team that has to scramble to adjust. ‘I think their size — always a huge factor for them — and length bothered us, not only Dwight,’ Van Gundy said. ‘They deflected a lot of passes, and we threw passes off target. They contested shots at the rim. I thought all their big guys were all active, and that, combined with their size, made it very, very difficult for us.’ The Magic were out-rebounded by the Lakers 55-41 and were hammered in the points-in-the-paint department, 56-22. ‘We didn’t make anywhere near a good enough effort on the glass to even say whether or not we can even rebound with them or not,’ Van Gundy said. The matchup problem presents a challenge for Van Gundy. If he decides to go bigger — using more of power forward Tony Battie and/or center Marcin Gortat — he takes shooting off the court. It gets away from the style his team has played all season. ‘We can’t spread the floor out at all then. Maybe it’s something we look at, but I don’t know if it helps or hurts, to be honest,’ Van Gundy said. ‘It certainly would help defensively, but offensively … we can look at some things in terms of just who plays. We’ll at least have to look at.’”
Marc Berman of the New York Post: “The New York City point guard sat the entire second quarter so Nelson could dust off the cobwebs after not playing since Feb. 2 with a severe right shoulder injury. Nelson had a good first few minutes, but faded (3-of-9, six points). Worse yet, the Magic lost their lead in the second quarter and got blown out 100-75, leading to second-guessing that Van Gundy tried to fix what wasn’t broken. Alston said the club is now in ‘an adjustment period,’ claimed he wasn’t briefed on the change and felt he wasn’t himself in the second half after the second-quarter benching. ‘As far as Rafer having that affect his play in the second half, that’s up to him,’ Van Gundy said. ‘If I’m looking from the outside, that sounds like an excuse to me.’ Alston wasn’t backing down from Van Gundy’s excuse charge. ‘I’ll give you a good excuse,’ Alston said. ‘I sat 12 minutes real game time. I sat about 30 minutes real life time. There’s your excuse. It’s different. I don’t care who it is. You start the game, get in the flow, finish the first quarter with a lead. Then you sit for a long period of time. Now I have to catch up to the rest of the guys. Kobe’s rhythm, Fisher’s rhythm, some of the guys on my team’s rhythm.’
David Wharton of the Los Angeles Times: “A hint of youthful rebellion — if not desperation — marked Alston’s game, fueling his preternatural quickness and knack for improvisation. Each day, it seemed, he showed a new move. There were staccato one-handed crossover dribbles. He went between his legs and around his back, flipping a no-look pass, all in one motion. He bounced the ball off the defender’s head — off ‘da heezie — grabbed the rebound and darted past. Unlike other players, he managed to do all this while pretty much staying within the rules. One day, Alston started a fastbreak by skipping down court as he dribbled, kicking his feet up in a strange kind of dance. ‘The defender thought I wasn’t paying attention to the ball, so he runs for the ball,’ he recalled. ‘I wrap it behind my back and throw it to my teammate for the dunk.’ As is often the case with Rucker league games, there was an emcee and he began singing ‘Skip to My Lou.’ ‘Word filtered out, and the next game there were a couple thousand people there,’ Naclerio said. ‘By the time Rafer was 15 or 16 years old, he was a cult legend.’”
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports: “The greatness of Shaquille O’Neal demands that his name, his legacy, never drifts far from an NBA Finals. Even when he’s long out of the league, that’ll still be true. For the immortals, the lifetime benefits include the exhaustive examination of the next generation’s stars to your standards. How does Tom Brady measure to Joe Montana? Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan? And, yes, Dwight Howard to Shaq. Mostly, here’s how a burgeoning talent is born: A gifted young star emulates his idol and eventually becomes his peer. So why does Shaq get such glee out of belittling and ridiculing those centers who came before and after him? ‘Sometimes I wonder about his maturity,’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told Yahoo! Sports on Friday. ‘He doesn’t need to do that. He’s achieved so much. ‘I don’t know why he stoops to that.’ Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t need Shaq’s approval, but Howard is 23 years old and Shaq owes it to the league, to common decency, to be civil with this kid. His treatment of Howard has been kind of sad, especially considering that Howard grew up wanting to be him.”
Mike Cranston of the Associated Press: “‘I love Allen,’ Brown said yesterday. ‘Everybody documents our issues, but think of the body of work when he played for me. Pretty incredible. And I know he has a big chip on his shoulder now. He told me he’d been to Charlotte.’ Brown just isn’t so sure Iverson as a Bobcat would be a good fit for either side. For one, Iverson would have to play for a lot less than the nearly $22 million he made last season, and the Bobcats would have to clear salary-cap space to sign him. Iverson, who turns 34 tomorrow, would also have to adjust to a lesser role – something he struggled to accept with the Pistons. And would Iverson want to join a team that hasn’t won more than 35 games in a season? ‘I want him go to where he knows he can win,’ Brown said. ‘I think from my standpoint, I don’t know if we’re ready to win at the level I think a kid at his age, what he’s done, should have. I want to see him go where he could win a championship.’ But Iverson’s agent, Leon Rose, said his client would be willing to play for Brown again.”
John Conzano of The Oregonian: “It’s graduation season, a time to honor academic achievement, but instead of discussing outstanding student athletes, we’re talking about one of the feel-bad stories of college basketball. The Tigers finished as the NCAA runner-up two years ago, and reached the final 8 for each of the two seasons before that and the Sweet 16 last season. Now we’re learning how. Maybe the real indictment comes when you shrug because you figure it was probably coming. Dozier, played on all four of those Memphis teams but was originally headed to Georgia. His test results were thrown out after an academic review committee at the university questioned whether his SAT score (1,260 out of 1,600) was too high for a student who scored in the fourth percentile on a prior aptitude test and had a C-minus grade point average in high school. I asked former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian about fixing tests once, and he said, ‘It happens all the time.’ So today I’m not so much wondering about the frequency of cheating but why nobody in college basketball seems to care until a big-name program gets caught for academic fraud.”
Diane Pucin of the Los Angeles Times: “As newspapers in the United States lose staff and fewer media members travel to big events such as the NBA Finals, over 250 international journalists have already arrived in Los Angeles and more are expected in Orlando, according to the NBA. Tim Kane is running an elaborate operation in a separate trailer at Staples Center that provides TV feeds to 215 countries in 42 languages. And in many of those countries there are no commercials sold, so while we’re watching ads foreign viewers get extra shots of Jack Nicholson or scenes from Los Angeles. Matt Brabants, vice president for international television for the NBA, said the major growth in the last five years has come in Asia. ‘China of course,’ Brabants said, ‘but all of Southeast Asia, Singapore, India, those are huge growth markets. Not only are those markets wanting game coverage,’ Brabants said, ‘but they want more out-of-game content, more than just a nightly game. Turkey is a great example. With Hedo Turkoglu doing so well in Orlando, Turkish television wants more Magic games but also more features on the NBA.’”
(Photo by Noah Graham NBAE/Getty Images)
