#3 - 11/1: Atlanta Hawks 110 @ LA Lakers 118 (2-1)

[Optms]

Looks as if Bryant is an attack mode early in the season. He's rebounding the ball better then I had thought he would. Great sign. Good win. Odom is looking great, too. Bynum is shooting 83% from the free throw line. I'm loving that.

[semi-sentient]

Meh. We have a lot of work to do.

Kobe is playing very selfish basketball right now and overcompensating for Pau being out. In the first two games he wasn't all that bad considering all the easy misses, but last night he was just straight chucking -- Iverson style. Can't say that I was too impressed with his defense either. I know he's going to try to conserve some energy for the playoffs, but if he's going to be lazy out there then he needs to make up for it with some smarts by knowing who has the hot hand and not letting that guy get good looks (like JJ was).

Bynum was impressive on offense once again, but he did have some issues grabbing rebounds tonight. No way Zaza should have been getting offensive rebounds over him. He needs to be more alert and put more effort in on the defensive end.

Odom and Artest played well and are the reason we won.

Our bench is just pathetic. Remember back in 2008 when we had one of the best benches ("Bench Mob") in the league? What the hell happened?

[Sedale Threatt]

...and A-Rod is freaking clutch

First time in the history of the Interweb this sentence has ever been written.

[SApuro_]

Talk about Atl laying an egg in the third quarter. They came out flat and showed once again they can't hang with the big boys. Good win for LA. Kobe getting 41 was nice but do you really want him shooting 29 times?

[Sedale Threatt]

Talk about Atl laying an egg in the third quarter. They came out flat and showed once again they can't hang with the big boys. Good win for LA. Kobe getting 41 was nice but do you really want him shooting 29 times?

Go read the previous 20 pages. You'll have your answer.

[picc]

Too much positivity in this thread. Time for some cynicism.

I've had about enough of Kobe's roaming defense when the opponent isnt a superstar. He was leaving people (like JJ) wide open. And chucking on the other end to boot. Very dissapointing game from him, 41 pts and all. 18 first quarter pts for Johnson? Kobe is waaaay better on D than that, but you'll never know it cause he's too busy trying to be Ed Reed.

My favorite was when he left Johnson at the three point line to double Josh Smith in the post.

And cant forget about Kobe leaving JJ at the 3 line again so he could go double Marvin Williams who was futiley trying to back Artest down.

And lets not overlook the fact that 99.9% of the time Kobe will not pass on a fastbreak no matter how many defenders there are.

Only consolation is that he starts off every season looking like **** and getting better over the course.

[DubaLakers]

Did you guys see Shanny's double dribble? That was embarrasing that's something a weekend warrior would have a hard time doing it's so fundemental. It was just odd, like he lost focus/concentration on one of the most basic of bball actions. There was no pressure at the time.