No National Media Love / Experts Picking LA

[ERod86]

I certainly won't imagine that I could change your mind, but after the Colorado stuff, the league dropped Kobe like a hot potato and started promoting Lebron and Wade, and for the last couple years all I ever heard was people not giving Kobe his proper due, acting like Shaq did it all by himself and that almost beating the Suns with Smush Parker and Kwame Brown in the starting lineup was nothing.

Kobe is getting exactly the same treatment the Cs are getting. The media is very excited to have great selling points back.

Also, I wasn't trying to say something about your personality. I just thought there was such a big miss, I was offering the only ideas I could think of. Not an accusation or a statement of truth.

[Bahku]

I certainly won't imagine that I could change your mind, but after the Colorado stuff, the league dropped Kobe like a hot potato and started promoting Lebron and Wade, and for the last couple years all I ever heard was people not giving Kobe his proper due, acting like Shaq did it all by himself and that almost beating the Suns with Smush Parker and Kwame Brown in the starting lineup was nothing.

Kobe is getting exactly the same treatment the Cs are getting. The media is very excited to have great selling points back.

Also, I wasn't trying to say something about your personality. I just thought there was such a big miss, I was offering the only ideas I could think of. Not an accusation or a statement of truth.

Guess we can agree to disagree ... but I'm with you on the media's present outlook, (and the NBA's), ... I think they were praying for a Lakers/Celtics match-up, and are literally in heaven over this whole thing. It will be interesting to see what kind of spin they put on it now, what they do with the Kobe/Big Three stuff, and how the officiating leans in the series, (though I can guess). I'll also concur that they are almost as hot on LeBron, Duncan, Dwight, and CP3, though the D-Wade murmur has waned a bit of late. Thanks for the good discussion, ER.

[RmbrRuss]

friends:

  I hate to spoil the parade...but...it will be very difficult for this Celtic team to beat this Laker team.

Only way it happens is a repeat of the 1969 thing when the last Russell team beat the West, Baylor, Chamberlain
Leviathan. Incredible, wonderful..but totally improbable.

The matchups are bad for us..Perk is too short v. Gasol and too immobile v. Odom. Odom v Garnett is close but KG wins. Ray Allen cover Kobe? If he's had success before, more power to him...but Tony Allen didn't get tuned up v. the Pistons and he should have been. Better not leave Fisher alone; he and the rest of the Lakers do not miss open shots like the Cavs and the Pistons. Rondo should blow by Fisher a lot but the back wall of the Lakers is a lot bigger and Rajon doesn't have his "to the hoop" reperotire down like Chris Paul and Parker yet. Moreover,
Lakers can bring in Farmar who is very physically talented. Kobe should be able to blanket Ray Allen...
and then be shifted to Pierce if Paul gets too feisty. The Lakers have a lot of covers to throw at Pierce to beat him up...
In another thread analysing defense, someone lamented the former "dirty' play of the bad boys Pistons. Well, that is the only way Boston will win this series.  You didn't see our Celts playing patty cake w this year's Pistons did you? It was rough traditional Eastern basketball..ugly!.....but I haven't seen us win many pretty games this year...in fact , a lot of simply impure survival. If the team plays with the heart of Kendrick Perkins, who is pure guts..and the coaching staff is sharp(HMMMM!) and smart, we have an outside chance..but I do not expect the Celtics to win..and I've been watching all the history since the 50's. May the spirit of Auerbach cast the molucca upon the Lakers.  Best Luck to us.

 

[cdif911]

friends:

  I hate to spoil the parade...but...it will be very difficult for this Celtic team to beat this Laker team.

Only way it happens is a repeat of the 1969 thing when the last Russell team beat the West, Baylor, Chamberlain
Leviathan. Incredible, wonderful..but totally improbable.

The matchups are bad for us..Perk is too short v. Gasol and too immobile v. Odom. Odom v Garnett is close but KG wins. Ray Allen cover Kobe? If he's had success before, more power to him...but Tony Allen didn't get tuned up v. the Pistons and he should have been. Better not leave Fisher alone; he and the rest of the Lakers do not miss open shots like the Cavs and the Pistons. Rondo should blow by Fisher a lot but the back wall of the Lakers is a lot bigger and Rajon doesn't have his "to the hoop" reperotire down like Chris Paul and Parker yet. Moreover,
Lakers can bring in Farmar who is very physically talented. Kobe should be able to blanket Ray Allen...
and then be shifted to Pierce if Paul gets too feisty. The Lakers have a lot of covers to throw at Pierce to beat him up...
In another thread analysing defense, someone lamented the former "dirty' play of the bad boys Pistons. Well, that is the only way Boston will win this series.  You didn't see our Celts playing patty cake w this year's Pistons did you? It was rough traditional Eastern basketball..ugly!.....but I haven't seen us win many pretty games this year...in fact , a lot of simply impure survival. If the team plays with the heart of Kendrick Perkins, who is pure guts..and the coaching staff is sharp(HMMMM!) and smart, we have an outside chance..but I do not expect the Celtics to win..and I've been watching all the history since the 50's. May the spirit of Auerbach cast the molucca upon the Lakers.  Best Luck to us.

 

I shall respectfully disagree - if the Lakers pose matchup problems for the c's, it goes the other way too.  Kobe can't guard Pierce AND Allen, so Odom/Radmanovic will have to take one of them and will get serverely out quicked. That's the key matchup IMO.. Fisher can't guard Rondo, and when he breaks to the backline, he just needs to hit the rotating big man for an easy layup - as for Perkins on Gasol, I agree, that's not a good matchup, but I think Powe and PJ Brown do match up well there - plus Perk is a tough matchup for any of the Lakers bigs on the boards... It will be about adjustments in this series no doubt, and making sure we exploit their bad matchups more than they exploit ours.  I don't think its gonna take a miracle to win this thing, I do think its gonna take hard work, smart basketball and maturity, which the celtics have shown over the course of these playoffs - if the season was their infancy, the hawks were the toddler stage, the cavs and the Pistons were adolescence, this is the series where the celtics become men

[Cman]

I certainly won't imagine that I could change your mind, but after the Colorado stuff, the league dropped Kobe like a hot potato and started promoting Lebron and Wade, and for the last couple years all I ever heard was people not giving Kobe his proper due, acting like Shaq did it all by himself and that almost beating the Suns with Smush Parker and Kwame Brown in the starting lineup was nothing.

Kobe is getting exactly the same treatment the Cs are getting. The media is very excited to have great selling points back.

Yes he was dropped like a hot potato, but that was four years ago and now it is clear that the league has been busy rescusitating Kobe's image.  I am pretty sure I saw some staged photos of Kobe with his family recently, and then there is the one-on-one heartfelt interview with Stephen A. Smith on ESPN.  Kobe even coyly bites his lip like Bill Clinton did after the Monica Lewinsky affair...

[Yakmanev]

These are the same experts that said Chicago would be representing the East in the Finals. Now they are picking #1 in the Lottery

They are the same guys that said the Celtics wouldn't have home court in the first round.

These guys think the Lakers are going to win because they are a better offense. We all know what truly wins titles and we are much better at that.

I'm telling you the Celtics will handle this quicker than anyone expects.

[coco]

When it comes to our best five vs their best five, we could probably keep up with the Lakers but it really comes down to...can our bench shot-down theirs?

The truth is that we used to back when we played defensive minded players such as EHouse, Powe, TA and JPosey combined with RA or PP.  And pair them up against the likes of JFramar/Sasha/Turiaff.  But now, with slow-footed Cassell/PJ comming off the bench we'll probably have some issues.

Basically, our two energy players(EHouse/TA) have been taken out of the rotation....

[cdif911]

The truth is that we used to back when we played defensive minded players such as EHouse, Powe, TA and JPosey combined with RA or PP.  

This may be the first time anyone has ever called Eddie House a defensive minded player... Eddie, print this out and put it on your fridge!

[coco]

The truth is that we used to back when we played defensive minded players such as EHouse, Powe, TA and JPosey combined with RA or PP.  

This may be the first time anyone has ever called Eddie House a defensive minded player... Eddie, print this out and put it on your fridge!

Compared to Sam Casell, Eddie is a lock-down defender 

[hpantazo]

These are the same experts that said Chicago would be representing the East in the Finals. Now they are picking #1 in the Lottery

They are the same guys that said the Celtics wouldn't have home court in the first round.

These guys think the Lakers are going to win because they are a better offense. We all know what truly wins titles and we are much better at that.

I'm telling you the Celtics will handle this quicker than anyone expects.

That's right, defense wins championships !! The national media is just dazzled by the laker's offense, just like the old days.

[teddykgb]

friends:

  I hate to spoil the parade...but...it will be very difficult for this Celtic team to beat this Laker team.

Only way it happens is a repeat of the 1969 thing when the last Russell team beat the West, Baylor, Chamberlain
Leviathan. Incredible, wonderful..but totally improbable.

The matchups are bad for us..Perk is too short v. Gasol and too immobile v. Odom. Odom v Garnett is close but KG wins. Ray Allen cover Kobe? If he's had success before, more power to him...but Tony Allen didn't get tuned up v. the Pistons and he should have been. Better not leave Fisher alone; he and the rest of the Lakers do not miss open shots like the Cavs and the Pistons. Rondo should blow by Fisher a lot but the back wall of the Lakers is a lot bigger and Rajon doesn't have his "to the hoop" reperotire down like Chris Paul and Parker yet. Moreover,
Lakers can bring in Farmar who is very physically talented. Kobe should be able to blanket Ray Allen...
and then be shifted to Pierce if Paul gets too feisty. The Lakers have a lot of covers to throw at Pierce to beat him up...
In another thread analysing defense, someone lamented the former "dirty' play of the bad boys Pistons. Well, that is the only way Boston will win this series.  You didn't see our Celts playing patty cake w this year's Pistons did you? It was rough traditional Eastern basketball..ugly!.....but I haven't seen us win many pretty games this year...in fact , a lot of simply impure survival. If the team plays with the heart of Kendrick Perkins, who is pure guts..and the coaching staff is sharp(HMMMM!) and smart, we have an outside chance..but I do not expect the Celtics to win..and I've been watching all the history since the 50's. May the spirit of Auerbach cast the molucca upon the Lakers.  Best Luck to us.

 

I disagree with a lot of this....The Lakers are not very athletic at the swing position, they don't have a lot of guys to cover Pierce, in fact, if they have Kobe on Ray Allen, they might have nobody with a realistic hope of guarding him.  If there's one thing that is being blown way out of proportion, it's Lamar Odom's abilities as a basketball player.  He's not what people are making him out to be, and he's not an x factor.  He's an athletic big man with some handle, nothing more, nothing less, and he's not going to shut down Paul Pierce of all people, whom he probably won't be guarding anyway.

As far as LA having size, that's incredibly untrue as well.  They're much smaller than Detroit, and probably smaller than ATL.  Gasol may be 7 ft, but he's not a big player, and they're probably playing Odom/Radmanovic as SF/PF, which should mean that we'll have the ability to dominate the boards.  They're going to be the smaller team, unless Doc brings in Posey for Perk, which we'll probably see at times in the series, because we can get away with it.

[seccom]

As a Lakers fan, here is my observation regarding the ESPN experts and the Celtics:

If they were forced to make a prediction just before the first game of the NBA playoff between the Lakers and Celtics, I believe majority of them will pick the Celtics.

But the Celtics really had a very disappointing playoff run. I believe almost every experts pick the Celtics to beat the Hawks and Cav easily. But both teams push the Celtics to 7 games.

Against the Pistons, they play well enough to beat them in six games and finally won in the other teams' floor. However, I would say it is as expected.

So they are wrong twice (not totally wrong, at least Celtics won at the end), and meet expectation once.

On the other side, Lakers won easily against the Nuggets, meet expectation against Jazz and won easily against the Spurs. So the Lakers beat expectation twice and meet expectation once.

So, how do you (Celtic fans) expected them to pick?

However, as a Lakers fan, I still cannot say which team is really better until they play. Even though Celtics did not perform up to expectation in the playoff, they still beat Lakers twice last year. But the poor performance of the Celtics in the playoff give me hope.

Cheer....

[NicaraguanFan]

True is every Series is different.  It was expected Detroit's Series to be harder than the previous ones and we won in six games and with two victories on the road (we also lost for first time at home).

Celtics had stepped up everytime it was needed, so I have no doubt we will win this Finals.

NF.

[Pawtucket Pat]

As a Lakers fan, here is my observation regarding the ESPN experts and the Celtics:

If they were forced to make a prediction just before the first game of the NBA playoff between the Lakers and Celtics, I believe majority of them will pick the Celtics.

But the Celtics really had a very disappointing playoff run. I believe almost every experts pick the Celtics to beat the Hawks and Cav easily. But both teams push the Celtics to 7 games.

Against the Pistons, they play well enough to beat them in six games and finally won in the other teams' floor. However, I would say it is as expected.

So they are wrong twice (not totally wrong, at least Celtics won at the end), and meet expectation once.

On the other side, Lakers won easily against the Nuggets, meet expectation against Jazz and won easily against the Spurs. So the Lakers beat expectation twice and meet expectation once.

So, how do you (Celtic fans) expected them to pick?

However, as a Lakers fan, I still cannot say which team is really better until they play. Even though Celtics did not perform up to expectation in the playoff, they still beat Lakers twice last year. But the poor performance of the Celtics in the playoff give me hope.

Cheer....

Making the NBA Finals is never a disappointing playoff run. Ever. And while they struggled a bit in the first two rounds, Atlanta was a young, hungry, athletic team, and while we had a tough time against them on the road, we destroyed them at home every time. The Cleveland Cavaliers are an improved version of the team that was the Eastern Conference Champions last year and have arguably the best player in the league leading them, so it's hard to say that beating them in 7 games is a disappointment. They're a very, very good team.

And we won two games on Detroit's home court, including the clincher. It boggles my mind that people can consider this playoff run to this point a disappointment.

[GoldenThroat]

I believe the "experts" made the same predictions in the 2004 finals.

And they would have been right if the NBA had not blatantly fixed the series in favor of the Pistons through the use of corrupt officials.

4 Jump Ball Violations to open the first 4 games of the NBA Finals?  Please.

In all seriousness, is this what has been eating at Lakers fans for the last 4 years?  I am curious to know, because I gotta say, if this is it, if jump ball violations (whatever they may be) are the worst of your worries, then you live a charmed experience.  Gotta say that the reality check known as the Boston Celtics are going to be quite the wake up call for you Lakers fans. 

LakerLanny is a notorious/ridiculous conspiracy theorist from Laker boards. Please do not take his opinions about how the league has some sort of vendetta against the Lakers ( ) as something that's indicative of the opinions of most Laker fans.