Write On Sports

The Los Angeles Lakers, behind another momentous performance from Kobe Bryant (37 points), put an end to the Phoenix Suns’ season with a hard-fought 111-103 victory and have advanced, for the third straight year, to the NBA Finals. The Lakers led the game by 17 points going into the 4th quarter, only to have a basket, a flagrant foul with two foul shots, and two more baskets reduce their lead down to 9 in a very short span of time. The Suns would proceed to get that 17 point lead down to as low as 3 points before the Lakers’ resiliency took over and kept the Suns at bay until the end.

It was, indeed, a veteran performance by Bryant and the Lakers, with a major boost by Game Five hero Ron Artest who scored 25 points to help propel the Lakers into their 31st Finals appearance (the best in NBA history). They will face the Boston Celtics, who advanced to the Finals on Friday night with their victory over the Orlando Magic. The Celtics will be making their 21st Finals appearance, 2nd most in NBA history behind their Laker opponents.

The Celtics, however, have won the most NBA titles with 17, while the Lakers are second with 15.  So these two storied franchises will face off against each other on Thursday night in Game One of the NBA Finals from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The first two games will be in L. A., while games 3, 4, and 5 (if necessary) will be in Boston. Should the series go further than that, Games 6 and 7 will be in Los Angeles, since the Lakers have home-court-advantage in the series, having had a better regular season record than the Boston Celtics.

Congratulations to both the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, Champions of the East and the West, on their upcoming NBA Finals series.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

The Boston Celtics, the most storied franchise in NBA history, if not American sports history, avoided becoming the first team to ever relinquish a 3-0 series lead by knocking off the reigning Eastern Conference Champion Orlando Magic, 96-84, in Game Six of their best-of-seven series. After having a 3-0 lead in the series, the Celtics were beaten, first in Boston, then in Orlando in Games 4 and 5, and seemed to be flirting with NBA history. No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in the NBA and the Magic were pushing things their way to become the first team to do so. But the Celtics had too much pride and stopped the Magic and are now returning to the Finals against either the Phoenix Suns or the Los Angeles Lakers. Another Lakers-Celtics Finals matchup would be ideal (though the Suns and their fans would TOTALLY disagree).

The Celtics have the most titles in NBA history with 17 Championships. The Lakers are a close second, with 15 Championships. So if the Lakers can knock off the feisty Phoenix Suns on Saturday night, we will get to see another historic showdown between the NBA’s two all-time greatest teams. The Suns, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about any of that.

We shall see what happens.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

Ron Artest, who had only 2 points as the game approached its end, caught a Kobe Bryant last-second airball and banked it in to win the game and give the Lakers a critical 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference Finals. With 6 seconds left and the Lakers winning by 3, Jason Richardson threw up a desperation 3-point shot that banked in after two straight 3-point misses by Phoenix on the same possession. The Suns celebrated the fact that they had tied the game, one in which they had trailed at one point by 18. There were 3.5 seconds left, and everyone felt that the Lakers would go to Kobe Bryant for the win. They did. And the defense on Kobe was tight. So tight that Kobe’s desperation shot was an airball. But Ron Artest, who had rushed a shot 50 seconds earlier instead of holding the ball to wear down the clock, and was on track to be the game’s goat, ran in and grabbed the airball and put it back onto the backboard for a game-winning basket as the buzzer sounded.

The Lakers came away with a close 103-101 victory after having being up by 18 and 15 points at different points in the game. While the Lakers now lead 3 games to 2 and are one victory away from the NBA Finals, they have to return to Phoenix where they’ve lost both games and play an extremely resilient Suns team, who will be desperate to stay alive. It should be a difficult challenge for the Lakers, whose defense has been questionable in this series. This Game Six will be played on Saturday night in Phoenix.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

The Phoenix Suns have evened the series against the Los Angeles Lakers at 2 games apiece by defeating L.A., 115-106. The Suns lit up the basket with a barrage of 3-pointers, helping to keep the battling Lakers at bay for the second straight game at home in Phoenix. Channing Frye, who could not buy a basket in the previous 3 games, suddenly came to life and did not seem to miss from 3-point range as the Suns seemed to fire at will, at one point scoring 6 straight baskets of 3-pointers.

This Suns’ victory came about despite a 38-point performance by Kobe Bryant who kept the Lakers close with a 3-point barrage of his own.  In a post-game interview, however, an understandably intense Bryant continuously commented that it was the Lakers’ lack of proficient defense that caused them to lose this game.  If the Lakers are to get past the Suns and into the Finals, they will have to step it up on the defensive end and be quicker on the boards and not let the Suns’ bench score 54 points as they did in this contest.

Game 5, which is a must-win game for both teams (but more so for the Lakers as Game 6 is in Phoenix, where the Lakers seem unable to win anymore), will be played on Thursday evening at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. It should be a war, as both the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers will be battling for control of the Series, which is now at 2-2.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

The Phoenix Suns, behind a 42-point performance by Amare Stoudemire, drubbed the Los Angeles Lakers 118-109 to pull within 2 games to 1 in their best-of-7 series.

The Suns, playing in front of their home crowd, had a much better game than their two previous playoff losses to the Lakers. Using a zone defense, the Suns created problems for the Lakers’ offense, managing to outscore them in the 2nd and 4th quarters. Defensively, the Lakers ran into foul trouble, with Lamar Odom, a key figure in the first two games, fouling out in this one.

Game 4 will be played on Tuesday night, again in Phoenix, and is a pivotal game in this series. Game 5 is Thursday evening in Los Angeles, so the Lakers would love to go back home with a 3-1 lead in the series, rather than tied at 2 games apiece.

This has become quite an interesting series, as was expected.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

The Los Angeles Lakers are now two games away from their 3rd straight trip to the NBA finals, defeating the Phoenix Suns 128-107 in Game 1, and 124-112 in Game 2, both in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Kobe Bryant led all scorers in Game 1 with 40 points while Pau Gasol led all Game 2 scorers with 29 points. Bryant, however, dished out a personal playoff high 13 assists in the second game to go along with his contribution of 21 points in leading the Lakers towards their 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series.

Games 3 and 4 will be in Phoenix, on Sunday night and Tuesday nights, respectively. Should the Lakers win those two games, they will head to the NBA Finals and will probably be going head-to-head, once again, with the Boston Celtics who, at this point, appear to heading to the Finals, leading the Orlando Magic 3 games to 0 in their Eastern Conference Finals.

Will it be another Celtics - Lakers showdown? In a few days, we may know. Stay tuned.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

After having swept the Utah Jazz 4 games to 0 with a convincing 111-96 victory on Monday night, the Los Angeles Lakers are now set to take on the #3 seed Phoenix Suns for the Western Conference Championship and a potential 3rd straight trip to the NBA Finals. The task will not be an easy one, however, as the Phoenix Suns’ resurgence as a Western Conference powerhouse has been nothing short of remarkable. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudimire have done a tremendous job of propelling Phoenix back to the top of the West, along with the Lakers, who are still the slight favorites to repeat, at least as the Western Champions.

To repeat as World Champions, they would have to get past the Suns, then take on either the Orlando Magic, the team they played last year, or the Boston Celtics, the team they played the year before. Either way, the road to the Larry O’Brien Trophy is going to be a rough and bumpy one for whichever two of the four teams make it to the NBA Finals.

Within the next two weeks, we shall know.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

The Lakers are continuing to push themselves towards another Western Conference Finals and a third straight shot at the NBA Finals by slowly putting away the Utah Jazz. They defeated (but barely) the Jazz in Game Three by a narrow 111-110 margin to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the Western Conference semi-finals.

The Jazz took the last shot in the game, missed by Deron Williams, and the following tip-in attempt by Wesley Matthews which would have won the game for Jazz as time ran out.

Game Four, which the Lakers would like to be the final game of the series while the Jazz do not, will be played on Monday night in Utah. Should the Lakers win, they will be going to their third straight Western Conference Finals, to await the winner of the Phoenix Suns-San Antonio Spurs series, currently led by Phoenix, 3 games to 0.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

There was 6:16 left in the 4th quarter and the Utah Jazz had scored 14 points in the quarter. The Los Angeles Lakers had scored 1 point. Yes. . . just 1 point. It looked as though history would be made as the Lakers appeared to be headed toward the lowest scoring quarter in playoff history, if not NBA history. By the end of the game, Utah had scored 26 points in the quarter, and the Lakers had scored 23. Game One to the Lakers, 104-99, in a great comeback during a terrible L.A. fourth quarter.

As usual, it was Kobe Bryant who sparked that Laker rally and he led all scorers in the game with 31 points. Pau Gasol added 25 for the Lakers. Deron Williams led Utah with 24 points while Carlos Boozer had 18.

The Lakers are winning these close games, but their luck may run out if they keep stretching all the games down to the wire. If they want to repeat as champions, they will have to step up their game to another level.

Game Two will be on Tuesday in Los Angeles.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life

It seemed at times as if they were two evenly matched teams, #1 and #2 in the league, instead of #1 and #8 seeds in their conferences. In another down-to-the-wire, hard-fought battle in the trenches, the Los Angeles Lakers finally put down the scratching and clawing Oklahoma City Thunder 95-94 to win the best-of-seven series 4 games to 2. And the Lakers needed 47 minutes and 59:05 seconds to accomplish this feat as Pau Gasol tipped in a missed Kobe Bryant jumper with just 0:05 on the game clock to go up by one.

The Thunder gave it everything they had but came up just short of sending the series to a 7th and deciding game. The Lakers will now have to play the surprising Utah Jazz who shocked the potentially strong Denver Nuggets 4 games to 2. Game One of their second-round series will begin on Sunday.

Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 32 points while Kevin Durant led the Thunder with 26. Pau Gasol only scored 9 points, but it was his final 2 points that made all the difference in the game for the Lakers and in the season for the Thunder.

Congratulations to the Lakers for their first-round playoff victory.

M. Dean
Muhammad Ali Life