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TonyMontana wrote:Brah............ Good post, but like I said this team isnt HUNGRY right now. They're still in the offseason mode.

But you cant discredit O.T for their great game either. Those young guns are ballin and they will surprise a lot of teams out there. Im even going to go out and say they will make it to the playoffs this year. Durant is ballin out of control. Kid has game and like I said we have a bullseye on our back and EVERY team will come at us everynight to prove they can beat the Champs and dethrone us.

Awaiting Magicfairies response.

Magicontinues wrote:
Orrrr, we are missing Pau, we have a new starting SF, and Kobe had flu like symptons last night, we are lucky he played at all.

Soooo, how about we give them a freaking break guys, not judge them as "not being hungry" after a 3-1 start, not bad, relax fellas, get a life, go with the flow. (and I would bet, just get older, as you all sound 14, seriously)

iamworthy wrote:Under the circumstances of this team right now (2nd best player being out) I had no problem with Kobe's aggressiveness. I actually thought we had good shot distribution with the starting five. Kobe, your first option and starting SG took 22 shots, Bynum, second option took 15, LO, 3rd option took 11, Ron-Ron had 8 shots, and D-Fish took 6. 3 players scored over 20 pts, 4 out of the 5 starters had double figures, and fish having 9 pts. Our bench pretty much sucks. The moment you try to give more shots to guys like LO, is the same time when he starts missing. LO by nature doesnt even want to shoot. Did Kobe take a couple of bad shots....Yup, but its really not a big deal. He took 14 free throws and anyone who watched the game knows he should have went a couple more times. The thing that concerns me is the TO's. Artest in the triangle right now is a nightmare, but the only way he is going to learn is if he's playing. Kevin Ding had a pretty good blurp in his article about how Artest is pretty much lost. But its the regular season so I dont take to many things seriously.

Anklebreaker702 wrote:This 1 doesnt take a lot of thought for me. Kobe is showing ball hogging at its finest. You guys need to quit making excuses for him. Do you guys really think when Pau gets back he's going to magically turn into unselfish mode? R ight now he needs to treat Drew as if he was Pau, so that way when he gets back its a smoother transition.

supaflash wrote:So I was reading throught the game thread for last night and I just saw complaint after complaint on Kobe's shot attempts.. I'm curious, was it that bad? He was only 9-22. Granted 7 turn overs but there was several comments that he got fouled a few times that didn't get called that resulted in missed shots and turnovers, so if you consider that out of his total he had a nice game.

I dunno, but given the situation I would have wanted him to shot a lot, playing sick its hard to stay warm and in the flow of the game if you are not constantly involved so usually its best for him to just attack attack in that mode. Plus when you are in that sick haze, its harder to focus on the game as a whole, to see all the stuff going on and focus on it for good passes, much easier to just focus on yourself and moves and do that. I dunno, i've played sick in that haze before and I would have done the exact same thing?

Also with Artest and Fish not hitting anything last few games, the bench just sucking, and LO being the up and down LO, what other options were people expecting last night? The Thunder are underrated, especially defensively, they have held all their opponents this year in the 80s, they are a long athletic group of guys on the perimeter with Westbrook, Thabo, KD and Green. I'm not so sure, without Pau that we wanted the ball in anyone but Kobe and Ron's hands too much. Probably could have dumped to Bynum a little more, but without Pau I think there are certain teams that the offense isn't going to run well against without Kobe doing his thing. Unless our bench starts stepping up bigtime.

Anyway, I just saw so much hate messages on Kobe's shooting last night but he seemed to keep the game and offense in enough flow I was just curious what people were thinking afterwards. We shot 52% as a team, I just don't think people understand the benefits of a player like Kobe that can consistently attack a team and cause so much attention and focus, even if he ends up being a bit of a volume guy at times. The overall turnovers by everyone concern me the most, at least 4 by every starter? That is troublesome. Was Kobe really disrupting the offense that much or was it just generally sloppy? Don't get me wrong I love facilitator Kobe, when things are runnign smoothly, but when they are not, there are times when I'd much rather lose on Kobe's shoulders then to watch some of these scrubs try and manufacture offense on their own. There are times when watching LO, Fish, Ron, Luke, Jordan try and manufacture offense and its just downright painful.

Thoughts? I couldn't watch the game but I'm just wondering if our offense was really in good enough shape to move and share the ball more or if Kobe needed to be aggressive.

Its is really hard to tell Kobe's mindset sometimes, but I wonder if his early season aggressiveness is his own personal plan, part of the coaching?? Is he grinding out Pau being down and Ron still adapting? Trying to prove he's still a scorer? Setting up facilitating later by being aggressive early? Saw something with the bench and other guys that he believes he needs to? Not totally sure, I'm betting its probably a combination. Who knows, he is a lot fresher then he was to start last season so maybe he's just going at it earlier...

SashAlex wrote:Absolutely the same feeling ! Kobe makes me hate and love him at the same time during a single game. '

Guys in my country who watch sometimes NBA, mostly watching the playoffs, told me last'year "This guy, Kobe Bryant, I don't know how he's one of the best or maybe the best when he needs like 25 touches to score 30 points ?!" They asked me which was his career high in points and I told them it was 81 back in 2006. They were like "How many shots did he attempted, 100 ?!" - smiling jokingly. I told them that as a Laker fan at least I got used to that, but still without any clue why he sometimes simply shuts by himself our offense down and makes you worry about every offensive possesion, every jump-shot he takes fading away with two guys on him, that's not gonna get it going ! Our starting unit, even without Pau, is great, go and give them the ball, pad your assists numbers, whatever, but don't force so many shots, please ! Someone needs to tell him there is no more Smush Parker and Kwame Brown in the team !

Even LeBron has impressed me these last two seasons by not forcing too much with a worse team than Kobe's had.

But Kobe's what Kobe is ! He told to the camera "He( Battier ) can't guard me, game 2 of WC semis." Well, who can guard you when you need 25-30 touches to score 30-40 points ?!

But, who am I to judge the MVP of the last NBA Finals ? Go ahead Kobe ! Keep the ball as much as you want, put it under your jersey and run with it circles around the court !

supaflash wrote:Yeah I am disappointed by the lack of hunger, mostly by the bench mob, these guys just don't look like they are ready. Its early, but habits and mindset start early.

Look at the Cs bench, granted if they had KG out and Sheed starting, they'd be a little thin too, but guys like Daniels and House and Sheed are not only producing, but the biggest part is they are defending like crazy. For the most part, other then a few outbursts, I think our starters have been good defensively, but when our bench comes in, people just kill us. Farmar, Vaginacek, and Walton can't defend a bag of chips and Powell and Shannon are still a little green. Shots falling will come and go, but this bench needs to focus on D.

Asianiac_24 wrote:My problem last night with Kobe was not how MANY shots he took, but what TYPE of shots. I don't care how many shots Kobe takes, as long as its a good shot, I'm good. But there were a number of occasions where his teammates were open and he still jacked up a shot.

TonyMontana wrote:[
Like I said before if we played Boston in a seven game series even with Pau we would get stomped away.

Magicontinues wrote:

TonyMontana wrote:[
Like I said before if we played Boston in a seven game series even with Pau we would get stomped away.

That's a ridiculous claim at this point, How about we wait until Pau get's back, Artest starts clicking with his new teamates, Phil plays our bench more and they start click (which by the way will have Odom on it, you don't think that will make our bench stronger?) Before we start giving the championshiop to Boston, for hells sake, ya think?