We were rooting for the Hornets

San Antonio Spurs

There's something so brilliant about being in the Western Conference Finals. There's something so annoying about facing the Spurs in the WCF:

Tony Parker - We just don't like this guy. We don't want to watch him do interviews and speak to his wife in French. We don't want to watch him fall on the floor (which we know is fake because his wife called him out on it) like his spine just got broken into 98037438 pieces when a gust of air hits him from some Laker running down the court.

Tim Duncan - We don't care to look at his Duncan-Face.
Actually, we're pretty sure nobody wants to look at it. We vote, every time he makes that face he has to spend a full 2 possessions by his own team looking at his own face in a mirror attached to his shoes.

Texas - We hate the entire state and a majority of the people in it. Sorry, there are some genuinely great people unfortunate enough to be from or in Texas and we don't completely fault you for that, but as many times as we've been to Texas there is absolutely NO convincing us that there is anything good about it. Period. If we could give Texas back to Mexico we'd do it ourselves. Gift wrapped with a large bow. Of course that's more than Texas deserves, we should just post her on Craigslist... "Take her, she's yours. You provide transportation."

Eva Longoria - Or Eva Longoria-Parker as she would have us say out loud. Look, we're down for the celeb cam during time outs or whatever, but this woman has nothing to do with basketball. Stop interviewing her during, before and after the games. We've never heard her say a single thing noteworthy about the game. Oh, wait, unless we're counting the time when she said that TP fakes injuries on the court. If we were Spurs fans we'd try to get rid of her on Craigslist as well. In fact, unless we are allowed to bring card board cut outs of her to hold up while TP shoots free throws, she's irrelevant.

Silver, Black & White - Raise your hand if you have the most boringest uniform in the history of Western Civilization... ::all SAS players raise their hands::


Aside from all of that... bring it on. We're ready to get our shouting on!

WCF Here We Come

We have no words for last nights game. Okay, maybe a few... some people may be upset that we blew the lead by so much. But, here we have a thought, perhaps we built the lead while we were feeling tough and alive in anticipation of having to dole some of it away later in the game. What if we hadn't built the lead so large and then the Jazz had their comeback push? Yeah, we like this way better as well. A win is a win is a win is a trip to the WCF!

In the words (and voice/accent) of Ronny Turiaf, "That's what I'm talking about baby!!"

Without further ado, we have a small futuristic glimpse into the roadtrip to the Western Conference Finals

Game 5 and beyond, Round 2 Lakers - Jazz

As expected, the boys took care of things at home. We know that it's the playoffs and we understand why, but what the hell happened to Ira Newble, DJ Mbenga, Coby Karl, and Chris Mihm? We're just sayin'.

A few notes:
We're glad Jordan is getting back to himself, he's got a ways to go, but he's getting there.
Kobe's back is like the 6th member of the team at all times, it gets a lot of press, more press than Kobe's fingers got, there might be some jealousy soon. In fact if any reporter out there sees this and would do us the favor of asking Kobe if his finger is jealous of the attention his back is getting, we would love you FOREVER!
How long do Upper Respiratory Infections last?
Sasha did not name himself The Machine, please, for the love of Godot, TNT and ESPN, stop saying he named himself that. Where does this folklore come from? What are you talking about? Please check with your buddies at KCAL/FSN, Joel Meyers & Stu Lantz.


Instead of talking about relevant things that may or may not have happened in game 5, how about we just give you some of the best quotes around the internet pertaining to this series?


There are 9 white guys on the court right now. Kinda rare.
&
(and I'm counting Farmar/Deron as one)
Comment by carter blanchard — May 14, 2008 on Forum Blue & Gold

Referring of course to the following line up in game 5: Pau Gasol, Jordan Farmar, Luke Walton, Vladimir Radmanovic, and Sasha Vujacic for the Lakers. Deron Williams, Andrei Kirilenko, Mehmet Okur, Kyle Korver, and Matt Harpring for the Jazz.

i love going to the game
i love the freaks at the game
i love the hippies the yuppies the gangbangers the lawyers the
corporate suits the trendy teenagers
the flaunters the humble fans the true fans the band wagoneers the
thugs the thoughtful
the fathers and mothers and kids the intelligent observers of the
game the drunken yelling morons
the hot silicone chicks with painted fingernails who parade around and
dont pay attention to the game
the black the white the brown the red the yellow
i love em all at the game
when everyone is rooting together
when we all come together
when we are all one for a little while but like it should always be
thats cool
From Flea's blog on NBA.com

and finally:
Luke Walton: Mitch Kupchak finished second in NBA Executive of the Year voting, and it was well-deserved. For the most part. But the six-year, $30 million contract he gave to Walton was as good a reason as any that Kups didn't come in first. The Son of Bill must have been channeling the spirit of his daddy's feet, because he played a pretty worthless 13 minutes: 1 point, 0-for-1, 2 rebounds, zero assists, 1 turnover, 1 steal and 2 personal fouls. And just think: The Lakers can look forward to five more years of this!
from Basketbawful



Let's go ahead and take care of things in Utah tonight shall we? If the guy with the "Not room service again" doll wasn't enough to make it a we're-gonna-win-so-you-can-shut-the-hell-up game, then surely the guy covering up his eye and screaming at D.Fish was. Maybe he got tuned out, as he should have been, by everyone on the floor and maybe that's why it didn't become personal, but it needs to be this time around. That guy is the reason so many people across the nation HATE the Jazz fans. Hate. We were going to write about how classless that was but we don't even have the energy to waste on such ridiculousness so just let it be said that some guy in Utah might be ball less soon, and we're not talking about anyone on the Jazz team.

Let's go Lakers!

Games 2, 3, 4 Lakers - Jazz

Game 2 - win. Enough said.
Game 3 - lose. But it was close enough to realize that we weren't honestly going to make it to the finals undefeated, so suck it up and lets move on.
Game 4 - lose. Very close, a few wrong moves and ... oh hell. Here's the dish. We were watching the game with people who don't like the Lakers. In fact 2 of these people actually HATE the Lakers, but there was a complete agreeance on one thing: the refs sucked the life out of that game. Rather than rehash everything that went wrong or anything that went right, we want to take a minute to talk about something else.

Jordan Farmar
Unlike the rest of Laker fans we're not going to take a day to hate on him. Instead we thought we'd point out the good he's done this year. Without him running the second unit for most of the year we wouldn't be here. So often this year it's been either the starters or the bench mob who've secured a game for us. Not often enough could you bill a win to the entire team. Which means, you have to give a bunch of credit to Jordan.
That said, a lot of people seem to forget that he's only in his sophomore year in the league. Frankly we'd be concerned if he wasn't having trouble defending the Jazz. If you watch closely enough, Derek Fisher is having trouble with the same guys. Oh, wait, you don't have to watch that closely. Notice in the past 2 games when Derek has left the floor early in the 1st quarter it's been Jordan who gets up off of the bench.

We're not gonna sap fest but since we're the self appointed joint presidents of the Stop Hating On Jordan Farmar & Say His Name Right As Well campaign we wanna say, "Stop hating on Jordan Farmar, and learn to sayhis name right as well!".

We still love you Jordan, Farm Life, J-Farm, Jordy, and you're still our hero!

M to the V to the P

Game 1, Round 2 Lakers - Jazz (or Jazz-Jazz depending on which website you look at) was thrilling, and there's something to be said about owning the game even after you got completely completely pwned on the glass - yes, yes they did - but since we pulled away with the win, the whole thing was 100% overshadowed by the team going out to dinner together on Friday night to watch the Jazz-Nuggets game.

We all know that this is not the first time they've done team things, but apparently this is a big big deal. Whatever whatever.

The true story of the week here is that Kobe is our MVP. No really, he is.

Let's hear it for campaign manager Dr. Buss himself. In case you didn't know, the splash screen with all of the campaign buttons on Lakers.com is representative of the real stuff Dr. Buss packaged up with a letter signed by him and with his self appointed title of Campaign Manager, urging the media to vote for Kobe. This from the guy who went through all of that nonsense before training camp last year. Goes to show just how much things get blown out of proportion by the media, AND just how much the whole thing has been squashed and we don't ever want to hear about it again after this post.

Daddy 4 MVP
Kobe's our MVP

and the sub campaigns
We Gusta Pau
Bench Mob Owned You

That pretty much completes our season, only one thing left to do now... take it all home.

So let's recap:

Pacific Division Champions
Western Conference 1-seed
1st round sweep
MVP of the League
...

Bring.it.on.

Game 3 (ish) & 4, round 1, Lakers-Nuggets

You may have noticed there was no blog for game 3. That's because it was boring and we fell asleep. Okay, we weren't sleeping but, it was boring, so no comment.

The Nuggets completely laid down on this series. No team play, no defense, no heart. All of those things are readily evident and discussed at length around teh internets, so we won't bother. Some key observations however:
Watching the Nuggets come unglued in each game was a treat.
Coby and Daddy reunions at home in dENVER must have been fun.
Kobe buys steak dinners. That's what Lamar said.

As a side note, of course we are enjoying and hardly expect anything less than a championship from this team, but, we have to be honest and say that we were holding our breath for a first round passing grade at the beginning of the season. It's quite nice to be able to just sit back relax and enjoy it all.

The other great debate around the world is how much rest is too much rest? Where do you draw the line between wanting your opposing team to go 7 games so they are tired and wanting them to get it over with already so you can hit the floor running before you get to permanent vacation mode?

Internet voting? Who will win the Jazz/Rockets series?

Quote from this series that makes us giggle:
I told Kobe that his Shaquille O'Neal's Free Throw Instructional Video was a bad investment.

Get some rest, boys!

Comment by j. d. hastings at Forum Blue & Gold dot com


Last, but absolutely not least...
Regular season results - Boston 66/16 Atlanta 37/45
- Los Angeles Lakers 57/25 Denver 50/32

Look at those numbers for a minute or two. Compare them all 4 ways. How is it even possible that the Eastern Conference where the is taking it's first round series between the 1 and 8 seeds to 7 games and the Western Conference series between the 1 and 8 seeds got shut down in 4? Those fortunes seem reversed. If you can't do math that says that the east has a 29 game separation and the west has a 7 game separation. Un.be.lievable.

The sad thing about this is that we may not get to see the Lakers and the Celtics in the finals. If Atlanta brings it home in game 7 though, we may not even care who we see in the finals.

Let's go get some!