Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Game 2 - Bummer

Kobe and Phillip stuck to their game plan of going inside. It almost worked in game 1 and it completely worked in game 2. Kobe had a better game. Efficient and made most of his shots. He still did not hog the ball like he is used to. The Suns couldn't defend, rebound or run. They fell big early. They were down 15 at the half. They got back admirably. But they should could not get over the hump. They got within 3 points a couple of times, but just could not hit that tying big shot. They were right there, but they either missed a 3 or turned the ball over or couldn't secure the defensive rebound.

I am finally a believer in the "Big Chief Triangle". His strategy of going inside and exploiting the Suns is just paying off beautifully. Everybody was hoping that Kobe would go crazy and that would be the only way the Lakers win the series. Kobe routinely scored 40+ against the Suns during the regular season and the Lakers routinely lost. So Phil came up with a different strategy and this is messing up the Suns completely. Both their offense and defense is a mess and are having a lot of problems rebounding. Of course the other part of this is that Phil has the stature to come up with something like this and convince Kobe to follow it. A lesser coach probably can't communicate and implement it even if they were smart enough to come up with this strategy. That's where the rings and the reputation helps big.Mike D'Antoni says they lost because they didn't run like they should. I think it's not that simple. They couldn't run because of all the things Lakers did. I think D'Antoni sometimes is obsessed and very adamant about the run-n-gun. I am afraid they have bigger problem in this series than just being able to run-n-gun-n-win. Hope the Suns figure something out soon on the road.

Los Angeles 24 29 21 25 99
Phoenix 22 16 29 26 93

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Lamar Odom 9-12 0-0 3-5 1-7 5 4 2 1 3 21
Luke Walton 3-8 2-2 0-1 0-4 1 2 1 0 4 8
Kwame Brown 4-8 4-7 0-0 1-2 0 3 0 2 1 12
Kobe Bryant 12-24 4-6 1-1 0-10 5 4 1 0 4 29
Smush Parker 3-6 2-2 0-1 1-4 3 3 3 0 4 8
Sasha Vujacic 3-6 2-2 3-4 0-2 2 0 0 0 1 11
Devean George 1-4 0-0 1-3 0-6 1 0 0 1 2 3
Brian Cook 2-4 0-0 1-1 1-2 2 1 0 0 4 5
Jim Jackson 1-3 0-0 0-0 1-2 1 0 1 0 1 2
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Andrew Bynum - - - -
Ronny Turiaf - - - -
TOTALS 38-75 14-19 9-16 5-39 20 17 8 4 24 99

FG %:.507; FT %:.737; 3PT %:.563Points of TO:20

Team rebounds:7
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

PhoenixSHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Tim Thomas 4-12 0-0 3-8 1-9 1 0 0 1 3 11
Shawn Marion 5-15 2-2 1-4 2-9 0 1 1 0 1 13
Boris Diaw 5-10 3-3 0-0 0-4 2 4 0 1 3 13
Raja Bell 8-15 4-4 3-5 0-3 3 0 1 1 6 23
Steve Nash 10-17 7-7 2-7 2-7 9 6 1 0 4 29
Leandrinho Barbosa 0-5 0-0 0-2 1-2 4 2 1 1 2 0
Eddie House 1-3 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 1 0 1 3 2
James Jones 0-1 2-2 0-1 0-1 0 0 0 1 1 2
Brian Grant 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 2 0
Pat Burke - - - -
Kurt Thomas - - -
-Amare Stoudemire - - - -
Nikoloz Tskitishvili - - - -
TOTALS 33-78 18-18 9-27 6-35 19 14 4 6 25 93

FG %:.423; FT %:1.000; 3PT %:.333

Points of TO:16
Team rebounds:6
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1

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