The final obstacle to the Lakers' 2009-10 championship was removed when Lamar Odom agreed to return. Without Odom, the Lakers were still going to win the Western Conference and make the NBA Finals for a third consecutive season. Then they would be crash-test dummies for Eastern powers who have buffed up: Cleveland with Shaquille O'Neal, Boston with Rasheed Wallace, Orlando with Vince Carter and a one-year-older Dwight Howard. With him, and with no cataclysmic injuries, this budding junta cracks down on its opposition. NBA champions tend to repeat themselves, especially when they're as young as are the Lakers. Odom again gives the Lakers an irresistible matchup when he starts, a clear edge off the bench when he doesn't.
The NBA is also numbingly predictable. There aren't that many variables. The Lakers won't go into a team slump or pull a key rotator cuff. Their goalie won't lose it overnight. They will be there next June, sure as the marine layer, and no one will see daylight or, with Odom spreading his limbs on the sideline, much of anything else.
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Someone explain to me how Boston has the bad rap for sports cities. I gotta tell ya, this is basically par for the course from the Land of Fakerdom. Keep in mind this is a newspaper columnist, not a blogger. But in Tinseltown, no one can really tell the difference between the two.
Another example. Two seasons ago the Celtics swept the Lakers during the regular season, totally dominating them home and away. It was so bad, the Lakers looked at themselves in the mirror and decided they didn't like what they saw. So they went out and got Pau Gasol.
To no avail.
The Celtics clobbered the Lakers in the Finals. Bob Ryan called it the first six-game-sweep in Finals History. The following year, the Lakers won the first regular season game against us, winning at home in a game that was tied with three minutes to go.
How did Fakerdom respond?
LA Times columnist Mark Heisler called us the worst 27-2 team in NBA history, describing the Celtics as a team of lilliputians who get cricks in their necks looking up at giants like Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol, and Lamar Odom.
So is it any surprise that the Faker media has already crowned the champion for 2009-10? I mean, Lamar Odom just came off a good year and all, including a pretty good run in the playoffs. Of course, he was in a contract year, and in non-contract years he's been up and down, unpredictable, and, well, kind of soft. There's no chance he'll get fat now that he has a fat contract is there?
And what about the rest of the team? You don't know how Team Purple will respond with a title under their belts, a short offseason, and the possibility of facing tougher competition in the West. Derek Fisher is 35, and if Celtics fans are big enough to admit Eddie House isn't a point guard, when will the Lakers admit Fisher isn't one either? Now he's a 35-year-old two guard trying to play the point. He's not old, but 34-year-old Ray Allen is? We haven't even talked about injuries to Kobe and the boys yet.
Never mind.
Let's just have the Fakers hoist up banner 16 this fall when they are scheduled to hoist up banner 15, and give everyone else some time off.
5 comments:
I don't normally swear when I post, but fuck the motherfucking Fakers. They caught a break (as did the rest of the L) when KG, Powe and everybody else went down. We know it, they know it and anyone with half a fucking NBA brain knows it. Can't wait for this season-I think it's going to be better than 2007-08 if we stay healthy and get a solid back-up PG. Really, I think this squad can be special. Just have to be sure not to burn out the starters and grab another PG as I said before and we are looking SOLID.
Hey JB. Better than 08? Yeah, it's possible. We'd need a whole lotta health, though.
Wasn't that a zeppelin song--whole lotta health?
:)
I hope you are right. Health is the key.
You are absolutely right that health is the key for every team that is contending.
It is just like in 07-08. The Celtics are getting no love and that's fine with me. It will give the Celtics more motivation. Let the other teams aim for them while the Celtics fly under the radar and take home #18
The Lakers are going to win the West in 2010 barring some kind of miracle. But no team in sports has such an unlikeable fanbase as the Lakers. The first group in history to try to rationalize 15>17.
Good point, the Kid.
I got a ton of hate coming at me for this post over at Fernsten's Follies.
I mean, do you think D.Fish is a traditional point guard?
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