Allow me to give my thoughts

.... on the NBA's Western and Eastern Conference Finals. If you don't wish to read 1,000 words from me ripping Kobe Bryant or listen to me whine incessantly about the Cavaliers playoff choke job, I suggest you stop reading this right now. In that case, I recommend going back and reading my old blogs like Jorgen does when he is bored at work.

I've spent way more time watching the Eastern Conference games but I'm going to start by talking about the Western series. The series price originally came Lakers -250 which was interesting because the Lakers were roughly 1/5 to win the whole thing at Caesars at the time. Was Sherman panicking before this series? You bet he was.

The #1 thing I consistently find so fascinating about Mr. S and his fellow Laker fans is their undying loyalty to Kobe Bryant. It's very possible that right now there is no athlete more beloved by his own fans than Kobe is by Lakers supporters. They worship the guy. They defend him no matter what. They still think he's better than LeBron James which is just laughable. This is all fascinating to me for several reasons:

1. Kobe Bryant is obviously a gigantic douche.

He's just not like a likeable guy. He's completely phony. Every exchange he has with teammates, fans, media members, etc... seems forced and uncomfortable and just generally akward. I don't care what anyone tells me: There is no way the other Lakers players like Kobe Bryant. For one thing, he's about as likely to pass them the ball on the basketball court as Bennett and Jorgie are to pass on a backwards number at the Golden Nugget. I'm sure Kobe's teammates respect him for being such a great player and I'm sure they appreciate the fact that he is capable of carrying them on his back when he's hot, but there is no way they like him. Let alone adoringly fawn over him the way the Lakers fans do.

2. Kobe forced Shaquille O'Neal out of town because he didn't want to share the spotlight.

Why does everyone pretend like this never happened? The Lakers won three titles with Shaq as their #1 guy and Kobe as his sidekick. They probably could have won 1 or 2 more titles together but Kobe wanted to be the lead dog and forced the Lakers to deal Shaq to Miami, where he won a championship with Dwyane Wade leading the way. Wade is not the player Kobe is so it stands to reason that had they stayed together Shaq and Kobe could have definitely won at least one more NBA Championship. But Kobe didn't want it that way. He wanted to be the guy. Shaq was a likeable guy, a great player, and he lead the Lakers to 3 world championships, winning 3 NBA Finals MVPs along the way. Kobe forced him out of town while he was still good enough to win another title. And nobody in Los Angeles seems to care or even remember that it happened. I just don't get L.A. fans at all.

3. There once was a girl named Katelyn Faber....

I don't want to go into too many graphic details but I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. Innocent people settle out of court with their accusers all the time. Don't they?

Nobody in Los Angeles seems to be bothered by this whatsoever. I just don't understand these fans.

Aside from the reasons above, let's not forget that the "Kobe as Top Dog" experiment in Los Angeles wasn't working at all (And rumors ranged from Kobe demanding a trade out of town with Chicago as a possible landing spot to Kobe SIGNING WITH THE CLIPPERS a few summers ago) until David Stern forced Grizzlies management to trade Pau Gasol to the Lakers for nothing 2 years ago. Look at the results of the 3 Kobe-led Lakers team, prior to the Gasol trade:

- In 2007, the Lakers lost 4 games to 1 in the first round of the NBA Playoffs to the Phoenix Suns as the #7 seed. (That same year LeBron James led a similar, if not worse, cast of supporting players to the NBA Finals as a 22-year-old.)

- In 2006, Kobe and the Lakers lost 4-3 in the first round to Phoenix, also as a #7 seed. (That same year, Shaquille O'Neal and the Miami Heat won the NBA Championship.)

- And in 2005, the first Kobe-led Lakers team without Shaq in the middle didn't even make it to the postseason.....

Kobe was 26, 27, and 28 during those three seasons. Those are prime years for most athletes but with a mediocre supporting cast he could barely lead his team to the postseason and was unable to win even one playoff series. That tells me all I need to know about the ridiculous LeBron-Kobe "Debate." As I said above, LeBron took a similarly crappy team to the Finals in 2007 at the ripe old age of 22, and he is back in the Eastern Finals this year with a team of crummy supporting players, white guys, and a dopey Brazilian guy who looks like Sideshow Bob. By the time he is 27, LeBron would be able to carry a team of me, sharp shooting farm boy Jorgie, a hungover Scott, and my 60-year-old mother to the second round of the playoffs. I'm sorry but if you think Kobe is as good a player as LeBron is, you don't know shit about basketball.

But nobody in L.A. ever talks about any of this. They just blindly love Kobe. What a sports town.

For all my Kobe ripping, the fact remains that he is one win away from taking the Lakers back to the Finals for the second straight season. Unfortunately for Nuggets backers, the Western Conference finals were wrapped up last night in L.A. Denver's only hope was to win last night and play the game of their lives on Friday night in Denver. Now they would have to win Game 6 at home, then go on the road on Sunday afternoon and beat the Lakers, the refs, David Stern, and ABC in Game 7. That's just not going to happen. Even if Carmelo gets over his little baby flu bug, Denver still has no shot of winning a Game 7 on the road. Sorry, guys.

Let's turn our attention to the Cavaliers and the Eastern Conference Finals.

* Okay, first of all, as most of you already know, I have a bet on the Cavs to win the championship at 20-1 and I was too stubborn to hedge it before the Orlando series because I reasoned that it would be dumb to hedge against an -800 favorite. I realize that I am a moron and as usual I made the wrong decision, but I want it to be on the record that while I have been panicking hard core during this series, I have been no worse than Ed or Jeff who both laid huge prices on Cleveland to win the East. Do you have any idea how much those guys need to bet on a -600 favorite to make it worth their while? Between the two of them, they probably could have bought a small island with the money they are going to lose on this series.

* I also want to address idiots like ESPN's Skip Bayless who are blaming LeBron for Cleveland's current 3-1 deficit. This could be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. LeBron is averaging 42.3 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 7.3 assists during this series. And he really should be averaging closer to 10 assists per game. How many times has #23 driven into the paint, waited as the defense collapsed on him, and then kicked it out to Mo Williams, Delonte West, or Zyndrunas Ilgauskas for a WIDE OPEN shot only to watch as it clanked off the iron? During Game 4, I compared LeBron to a father who puts the ball in the hands of his young son, lifts him up to the point that the child is hovering over the rim, then tells his son to slam it through the hoop. Only these guys are professional basketball players. (Mo Williams actually made the All-Star team this season believe it or not.) And they probably couldn't even make that shot. Yeah, it's LeBron's fault. Skip Bayless might be the most clueless sports reporter on the planet.

* LeBron tries to get his teammates involved. He doesn't want to be like Kobe hogging the ball and settling for dumb outside shots on every other possession. But if you are playing basketball and you realize that you are the only person on your team that can make a shot, would you really keep passing to your teammates? I know I wouldn't.

* There was a sequence during Game 4 that I feel was a perfect microcasm of this series so far. Trailing 93-88 with with just over 5 minutes left, LeBron took and hit a tough jumper to cut the lead to 3. Orlando missed and the Cavs came charging back down the floor. LeBron drove to the rim and somehow saw and managed to kick it back out to Delonte West who was wide open for 3 in the corner. This wasn't a tough angle. It was a direct shot from the corner. There were no defenders in the area. They had all wisely converged on LeBron. I would've expected myself to make the shot. And West missed. Of course, he did. Mickael Pietrus grabbed the rebound and the Magic rushed frantically up the court for no apparent reason and Rashard Lewis forced up a stupid 3 pointer with a hand in his face. *Good.* And Orlando is up by 6 again.

* Cleveland still had a great chance to win at the end, up by 1 in the final seconds. Orlando gets the ball and instead of setting up a play or calmly working it inside to Dwight Howard so he can dunk over Ilgauskas, Pietrus forces up a ridiculous 3 from corner and clanks it off the rim. If there was any justice in the world, Orlando would have lost the game right there for taking such a dumb shot but Delonte West falls to the ground trying to grab the rebound and it rolls out of bounds. Still down by a single point, the Magic inbound it to Rashard Lewis, who turns to his right and forces up a stupid fadeaway 3 point shot from the wing, probably the hardest spot on the court to make a 3 from. (Again I want to reiterate that Orlando was only down by 1 and they have a center who couldn't possibly be stopped down low.) *Good.*

Son of a bitch.

The refs tried to help Cleveland out and LeBron made two ridiculously clutch free throws (Something no one will mention the next time he misses one in the 2nd quarter) to force overtime with 0.5 seconds left but Orlando was able to pull away for the win in overtime.

* I watched a great deal of Game 4 with fellow Cavs bettor and fellow panic junkie Ed Salmons and he kept saying that Cleveland should just let Orlando gunners like Pietrus and Rafer Alston shoot the 3 anytime they want it. And Ed was probably right about that. If you let guys like Pietrus and Alston take dumb 3's instead of passing it inside to Howard or having Lewis take it to the rack, in the long term you are probably much better off. Except in this particular series those guys never miss. None of the Magic players ever miss. Orlando made 17 3's on Tuesday night. Rafer Alston made 6 himself. Rafer Alston. And this is a game that went to overtime so every one of those shots was precious. Orlando is just shooting out of their minds right now and Cleveland, well other than LeBron James, Cleveland couldn't make a shot right now unless you lifted them up over the basket and instructed them to drop it in.

* If you watch the game tonight, look out for the 25 times that LeBron drives to the rim and kicks it back out to his teammate for a wide open shot. When that loser clanks the shot like a JV high school player, think of me cringing and cursing and think of Ed frantically texting me a complaint. Because it's going to happen. Over and over and over again.


I know I wasn't funny today. I've just watched more NBA basketball in the last week than I did over the entire regular season combined. And I didn't want to be the millionth person to write about how bad the officials have been for two reasons:

1. Aside from a few weird calls like the foul on Pavlovic at the end of Game 2, the officials are helping my team, Cleveland. Thank you for that, guys.

2. Everyone who actually watches the NBA and isn't a complete idiot, already knows that the officiating in this league is beyond abysmal, so there's no reason to talk about it until you are hoarse.

You gotta believe that the refs will be helping out Cleveland tonight. And the Cavaliers are at home. And at some point, Orlando's secondary players like Alston and Pietrus have to finally miss shots.

At least I hope so. Or there will be a lot of panicking tonight. And I'm not just talking about Ed and Jeff.



Enjoy the game.