Gameday Dish: Thunder vs. Lakers
March 29 by Leave a Comment
The Oklahoma City Thunder (38-12) sit atop the Western Conference with 16 games to go in the regular season and lead the entire NBA in scoring per game at 103.7. Tonight they venture to SoCal to take on the Los Angeles Lakers, leaders of the Pacific Division at 31-19 and a rugged 20-4 at Staples.
NBA scoring leader Kobe Bean Bryant (28.3) will be welcoming back longtime backcourt mate Derek Fisher. D-Fish, who was traded two weeks ago to the Houston Rockets and then bought out and signed by the ring-hungry Thunder, played 13 years for the Lake Show and helped them win five championships over that span. Look for the Hollywood crowd and ex-mates to give Fisher lots of audible love.
This evening’s 48 will be the second time these two sides have squared off this compacted season. On February 23rd in OKC, the Thunder brought some lightning in the form of MVP candidate Kevin Durant. KD had 33 points on 12 of 22 shooting, and OKC won 100-85. Durant, the 2X NBA scoring champion, currently sits just below the Mamba at 27.8 ppg.
Coach Mike Brown’s crew played on Tuesday night at Golden State and prevailed 104-101. Kobe had 30, Pau Gasol pulled down 17 boards and C Andrew Bynum had a seat on the bench after jacking up an ill-advised,
bizarre 3-bomb. A few Laker players, including Bryant, 
have clashed with Brown in his first year at the helm of the team. Brown is in a tough spot taking over one of the league’s most scrutinized teams for the 11 X champ Phil Jackson.
The Thunder have the second best road team in the NBA with a 16-8 record away from the Sooner State. On Tuesday in Portland, PG Russell Westbrook brought the sizzle. The one-time UCLA Bruin and LA native went 16-26 for 32 points and dished out 8 dimes in OKC’s 109-95 victory. KD went 10-14 for 25 points in the game.
A ‘W’ tonight would mean a lot to both sides. The Lakers sit just 2 games above their intra-arena rivals the Clips for the division. And though the Thunder lead the West, they have the surging, deep, veteran Spurs on their heels, trailing the 1-seed by only 2.5 games.
As the usual entertainment stars from stage and screen align in their primo seats, the historical, milestone variety will cosmically line up too. Fifty years ago today, Laker HOF teammates Elgin Baylor and Jerry West became the first and only teammates to both score 40 or more points in a playoff game. Interestingly, the tandem of Durant and Westbrook has accomplished this feat twice just this season.
Tune in to TNT, Marv and me at 10:30 PM ET to watch these Western Conference stalwarts do battle.
Gameday Dish: Lakers vs. Celtics
February 9 by Leave a Comment
The Los Angeles Lakers and their 16 NBA Championships come to Boston only once during the regular season every year. Due to more than 50 years of history and rivalry with their West Coast counterparts, Boston Celtic fans look especially forward to the annual arrival of the purple and gold in the state where basketball was birthed. And since the Celts hang 17 Championship banners in the rafters of the TD Garden, tonight’s contest and the one hosted by the Angelino hoopsters later this year could be previews of the June championship round for the big enchilada.
At 14-10, Boston’s veteran squad suffered through a season-opening three-game losing streak as well as a separate 5-game slide, signaling to some the end of an era. But now Coach Doc Rivers’ team is on a season-high 5-game winning streak and, impressively, has been victorious in 9 of their last 10 games. The Celtics last played and won on Tuesday at home against the Charlotte Bobcats. In that 48 minutes, 14th-year forward Paul Pierce scored 15 points to move into second place on Boston’s all-time scoring list, passing 3-time NBA MVP Larry Joe Bird. In Boston buckets, ‘The Truth’ now trails only HOF’er John Havlicek.
Coach Mike Brown’s squad last competed on Monday night in Philly where they were beaten 95-90 by the Atlantic division leading 76ers. At 14-11, the Lake Show sits two games behind their Staples Center cotenants, the Clippers, in the Pacific Division. The problem for Kobe Bryant and company has been their collective road performance. LA is 11-2 at home, but only 3-9 on the road. Tonight’s matchup is the fourth in a current six-game road trip for the Lakers (so far they’re 1-2).
In Monday’s loss, Kobe passed his former teammate Shaquille O’Neal for fifth place on the NBA’s career scoring list with 28,601. Amazingly, in his 16th season in the league, 5X champ Bryant leads the NBA in scoring at 29.3 ppg despite a torn ligament in his right wrist.
These two storied teams met in both the 2008 NBA Finals and again in the 2010 Finals. In ’08, the first year of Boston’s new Big 3 of Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, the Celtics prevailed. In ’10, former coach Phil Jackson and Kobe beat the Green&White in a tough, physical seven-game series that came down to the last minute. And while most league followers and commentators don’t believe that either of these teams will represent their respective conferences and meet in the 2012 title series, both sides in tonight’s contest have the veteran talent, leadership and coaching to be in the mix and make a run to the ring come the postseason
I’ll be back in the TNT booth with Marv Albert and my upcoming Rising Stars Challenge rival Steve Kerr for LAL @ BOS tonight at 8:00 PM ET.
Czar Trivia
January 22 by Leave a Comment
On January 22, 2006 Kobe Bryant lit up the Staples Center scoreboard like a supernova when he racked up a career-high 81 points in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 122-104 win over the Toronto Raptors. The future Hall-of-Famer’s record-making performance goes down as the second-highest number of points scored by an individual player in NBA history. Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain set the NBA’s single game scoring record with his 100-point bonanza against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962.
Czar’s End of Year Awards: Most Valuable Player
April 14 by 2 Comments
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