• Isn’t it funny how all the people who said Orlando couldn’t win four straight against the Celtics — or even, when the Magic trailed 2-0 in the series, said they couldn’t win four out of five — are now saying that the Magic will win Game 6 in Boston and there’s no way Boston could win a Game 7 in Orlando? Don’t count on anything in that series.
• And people are talking about Phoenix “not boxing out” on Ron Artest late on the last play of Thursday night’s Laker win over the Suns. Thing is, when a guy throws an airball, boxing out isn’t always the answer. Boxing a guy out means being between him and the basket. On an airball, the guy with inside position doesn’t always get the ball. In this case, Artest had the advantage of coming from the weakside, so he had a line of vision to the ball and the rim, which helped him. The man “boxing him out,” Jason Richardson, didn’t watch the ball — which normally is OK. But it’s funny how often an airball is beneficial in that situation. A whole lot of big plays have come off offensive players plucking an airball and throwing it in the basket — just ask Houston against North Carolina State, the most heart-breaking loss I’ve ever seen in a big game.
• All of a sudden, people are making Orlando the favorite to win that series. I think you still have to think Boston will win Game 6. But in a city where the NHL Bruins famously blew a 3-0 series lead — even a 3-0 lead in Game 7 at home — there will be incredible depression in Boston if the Celts don’t win that series.
• Do the Blazers look good after seeing how well Phoenix has played in these playoffs? After all, Portland is so far the only team to defeat the Suns on their homecourt during the postseason. Yeah, I think it makes Portland look good. But I’ve also thought about what a great opportunity this season would have been for the Blazers if they’d stayed healthy. There was a definite path there to a long playoff run.
• If Orlando emerges from the East to a berth in the Finals, well, my love for Stan Van Gundy will continue to increase. Love the guy. One of the most straight-talking guys in sports. And he still COACHES. He never stops coaching. He doesn’t defer to these guys or shy away from confrontation — in fact, he gets right in their face. I’m not saying he’s going to last for a long time doing that, but I love it as long as he gets away with it. It’s refreshing.

Tweet This Post

Man, that was something. I loved the defensive effort. The “bigs” did a great job, for the most part, of rooting Dwight Howard out of the lane all night and everyone else contributed to hounding Howard when he attempted to operate at the post with the ball.

Martell Webster continues to show what he can do with regular minutes and a consistent role. I mean, this guy is showing signs of either becoming a very, very good player or becoming an outstanding trade piece. He’s already a player other teams are talking about as someone, depending on Nic Batum’s development, who could be available.

Andre Miller and Steve Blake were terrific . . . oh, what’s the point of trying to single out individuals? This one was a great team win from start to finish.

One thing I must say, though, about the Orlando Magic: I’ve been around the league for a long time now and what I saw from them Friday night was downright shameful. And I haven’t seen it too often from what is a high-level team that was in the NBA Finals last season.

The Magic just sort of quit. Rolled over. And it appeared to me that the reason is simple — those guys want to get their coach fired. They aren’t listening to him and they’re actually embarrassing him with their on-court actions. Their effort level and attention span were just not there.

Stan Van Gundy has the reputation of a guy who grinds on his players and I’m afraid he’s gotten to this group. They appear, at least for the time being, to have tuned him out.

And once that happens, it’s usually only a matter of time before the coach finds himself on the street.

Tweet This Post

Once in a while, when you are an emerging power, as the Trail Blazers and their fans believe they are, you get an opportunity to sign a free agent because that guy is tired of losing and wants to go someplace where he can win a ring. Someplace where he can be a part of building something special.

But this Hedo Turkoglu situation is different. This is a player who was a critical piece on a team that won the Eastern Conference championship. He was wanted back. He would have been paid well to come back. He was valued by his coaches and employed perfectly within the team’s system to maximize his own talents. He was appreciated by fans and teammates alike and, in fact, had just gone through a long, long playoff march with those teammates. That team still has a lot of upside — and, in fact, he was part of building something special in Orlando.

But he has chosen to leave. For what? Really, I don’t think you can say it’s anything but money — and not even a lot of that compared to what he’d have made in Orlando. It seems just a tad mercenary to me. Which is fine, I guess — it’s what made this country great. And there could be more about this that we don’t know. Maybe the guy just didn’t like playing for Stan Van Gundy.

But I’m surprised that there hasn’t been some concern about his loyalty. His motivation. He’s always been known as a good guy to have on a team but why would a player so quickly seem to want out of a situation like that one? Is this a team-first guy? What, exactly, are his values?

Really, it all makes you wonder just what makes him tick.

Tweet This Post

Several things to say about this NBA Finals before moving on to other things:

– Phil Jackson will be appearing this week on the Home Shopping Network, wearing a championship ring on each finger, hawking yellow hats with the roman numeral “X” on them. And for $49.95 he will autograph them, with an “X” of course.

– OK, just kidding the guy a little bit. Love him or hate him, and I figure most people choose one or the other, the guy is in a class by himself. Nobody else coaches the way he does and I feel sometimes that nobody gets the results he does. His mere presence — which allows him to give his players more freedom on the floor than probably any other good team around — is incredible.

– And I give Phil a lot of credit for this championship. When I look at those Lakers, I definitely don’t see one of the better NBA championship teams in history. Man, not even close. He did a great job of melding a group together that wasn’t supremely talented. Just one Hall of Fame player in this group. Often, title teams have had at least two.

– Size still matters. For all the talk about Orlando’s outside shooting, the Magic weren’t long enough — at either end of the court. The Laker defense in particular was just too big for the Magic in the basket area.

– So many regrets on the Magic side. I’m telling you, the impact in Game 2 if Courtney Lee could have converted that lob pass inside the final second — I’m still not convinced the Lakers would have recovered from it. It changed everything about the series. As did Dwight Howard’s free-throw misses in Game 4. Way too many missed opportunities for Orlando.

– Stan Van Gundy — America’s newest coaching hero.

– Kobe Bryant handled himself very well in the wake of winning another championship. Said all the right things. Good for him. Now let’s put away the Grrrrr Face for a while, OK?

– Dr. Jerry Buss didn’t show so his two boys were on the floor accepting the championship trophy. Huge mistake. Horrible acceptance speech. There is a serious joke here about the kid being nervous about his father at home dating his girlfriend while he’s out accepting the hardware but I am not going to make it because not everyone knows that the good doctor tends to date very young women.

– All in all, such a flat ending of a Finals. I really expected the Magic to bring a little more to Game 5 than that. I guess their hearts, and spirit finally broke.

– OOPS … forgot to add this. — The Lakers had the most trouble in these playoffs with Houston and Denver. Really, it’s not at all hard to make the case that the second-best team in the playoffs was the Rockets because they gave the champs the toughest fight. The power is still in the Western Conference, folks.

Tweet This Post

I would expect the Magic to win this game in fairly convincing fashion. If they don’t, then they didn’t belong in the Finals. Motivation is all on the Orlando side for this one.

As much as the Lakers will tell you they’d like to finish it up tonight, they know they’re headed home and will wrap it up in Game 6. At least that’s the way these things usually go.

Tweet This Post

Yeah, Derek Fisher was the hero. He made two monumental three-point field goals.

But come on, the whole NBA Finals went right down the drain when Dwight Howard couldn’t get just one of two free throws to go down with 11.1 seconds to play in regulation. Or, you could even say when Hedo Turkoglu couldn’t make more than one of four free throws during a stretch late in the fourth quarter.

I have never been able to understand this stuff. I mean, none of those guys “choked” the free throws. They weren’t short or way off — they just flat missed them. Professional players. GREAT professional players. Superstars. And a guy can’t get one out of two free throws to go in.

But this is nothing new in basketball. Folks, Wilt Chamberlain couldn’t make free throws, either. Shaq obviously never could. A lot of players — particularly big players — have trouble with free throws.

It’s all hard for average people like us to understand, though. Free throws. You can teach non-athletes to make free throws. It’s just practice. Repetition. Concentration. Focus. Whatever.

Dwight Howard – just make one of them and you have the NBA Finals tied at two games apiece and anything can happen. You have the Lakers doubting themselves. You have a real shot at this thing.

But you missed them both and the whole thing is pretty much finished. Oh, you’ll win Game 5, but the Lakers won’t waste any time wrapping it up in six, as predicted. But it all could have been different.

Just a free throw. Man, just make one out of two, Dwight.

(AND A SIDEBAR: What irks me, too, is that now we’ll have to forever hear that the Magic didn’t win this series because they didn’t have the go-to player who can get his own shot on offense . . . the guy who can run that clear-out, 1-4 thing at the end of games… yeah — that’s why they didn’t win. Uh, no — don’t overthink this thing. They missed 15 FREAKING FREE THROWS to lose Game 4 and they missed a layup at the buzzer to lose Game 2.)

Tweet This Post

He’s worn out. At least that’s what this column in the Los Angeles Times talks about, using a veritable festival of one-sentence paragraphs. Maybe he is. He has every right to be. But he’s also just as entitled as anyone else to have an off-night once in a great while.

Besides, it’s not as if he’s out there playing alongside a Laker team for the ages.

After reading about Tuesday night’s game in all sorts of places, I still have to marvel at how experienced media people still, after all these years, have such a tendency to jump on the bandwagon of whatever team won the most recent game in these series.

And by the way, if Courtney Lee had made that shot at the end of Game 2, would the media have been heavy on Bryant’s ass by now or what?

Tweet This Post

At least that’s what it seems when you watch him. I think the reason people love him is more for what he isn’t than what he is . . . he’s NOT Phil Jackson or Pat Riley or anyone else of that ilk. He’s not a hotshot. He’s not a suave, arrogant, icy character who reminds you of a deposed, wealthy CEO.

He’s us. Stan is us. Just a regular guy. Here’s Allen Barra’s take in the Wall Street Journal, which is fun if you can get past the paper’s annoying and archiac need to use “Mr.” in front of every last name used in the story.

Here’s my favorite part:

In refreshing contrast to those of the league’s superstar coaches, Mr. Van Gundy’s postgame press conferences seem unscripted. He spends less time expounding on his coaching philosophy and more time praising his players (even those who were knocking him in the press only days before) and sending messages to family members. Earlier this year, he opened a press conference by wishing his wife, Kim, a happy birthday and apologizing for “taking her for granted.” After beating the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, he urged anyone listening from Seminole High School (in Florida) “to vote for my daughter Shannon for the Student Council.” After a game against the Cavaliers in the conference finals, he sent an emotional greeting to an uncle who had just undergone heart surgery.

This guy is real piece of work.

Tweet This Post

Some day someone is going to say or write just that about the 2009 NBA Finals. You know, ol’ Kobe Bryant just willed them to the title.

Yeah, except ol’ Kobe is the luckiest stiff on the planet this morning.

Courtney Lee blew a chance to make one of the biggest shots in NBA Finals history Sunday night — and a layup at that — and it saved a turnover-prone Kobe from being the fool in that game.

With wide-open teammates all over the floor in the waning seconds of the fourth quarter, Kobe tried to win the game himself — only to have his jumper totally capped by Hedo Turkoglu. With sixth-tenths of a second to go, the Magic had the ball at midcourt.

Stan Van Gundy can really coach. I’m just guessing here but I think he used a fake out-of-bounds play, something he didn’t intend to run, just to set up a possible game winner. The Magic called timeout after the first one, when Turkoglu didn’t at all seem to be ever intending to inbound the ball.

Then, after a 20-second timeout, Turk lofted a high-arching pass intended for Lee, who had used Rashard Lewis’ high pick to totally free himself. I believe Lee may have gone up in the air just a shade too soon, catching the pass on his way down instead of on the way up, when he could have possibly even dunked it.

It was a still a dead-cold layup on the left side, though, and Lee barely missed curling it in with his right hand. It was a shame Orlando squandered such a brilliant play – and the guy who missed the shot had previously missed a layup just seconds earlier.

But what was an even bigger shame is that Bryant emerged with his strut intact, even though the man he was guarding on the play was Lee. But a storyline is a storyline in the NBA. And all those same people who have been predicting Orlando’s quick demise for the last three days will stick to their version of history.

Yeah, it will be remembered as Kobe’s vindication, most likely. HIS title.

But I’ll always remember Lee’s missed opportunity.

Tweet This Post

That deal Thursday night was just a little too easy. It isn’t going to stay that way. In fact, odds are it will turn around significantly. But a whole lot of “experts” and Laker fans are getting carried away with the Game 1 win.

Let me say just a couple of things: First, Kobe Bryant took a lot of shots and went off on his own a lot. That’s not usually a good thing and I wouldn’t expect it to continue. If it does, the Lakers are going to be trailing in the game. Second, the Magic missed a lot of shots they’ll make on normal nights.

It’s customary in all seven games series for the media to jump firmly on the bandwagon of whichever team has won the last game. In this case, it was a real big crowd because of how convincing the win was on Thursday.

But Orlando will not be deterred by that game. The Magic have bounced back from whippings in these playoffs before and will again. And the Lakers are going to make it much easier for them if they expect Sunday’s game to be as easy as Thursday’s.

Tweet This Post