nice save midnight i mean 21_ ings.
I'm a big Odom fan.
Always have been. The guy has been nothing but great for the Lakers in his role. Inconsistent at times, but so much of what he does is underappreciated. Believe me, I get frustrated with many Laker fans, too, who just don't get what he brings to this team.
No Odom and this team doesn't even make the Finals these last three years.
Rebounds, efficient scoring, unselfish play, and defense -- all from a guy who has been a model citizen and who can get along with one of the moodier and more difficult superstars in the league? Yeah, I'll take that.
nice save midnight i mean 21_ ings.
Cool, then you shouldn't have quoted my post.
Only relevant in the context of doing a "where are they now" for other playoff teams that year.
But with that caveat I do agree with your point and it would be interesting to make that comparison with the Lakers, Suns, Spurs, Mavs, Clips, etc.
I do think it's fair to say that that season was the high water mark for some bad NBA players in Kwame, Smush, and Luke Walton.
Sir, you have my most heartfelt apology.
Odom consistenly bringing would qualify as "help," would it not?
I remember when the Lakers smoked the Spurs in 01 and 02. Duncan got ZERO help. Didn't even have a legitimate second option. But I don't excuse him for not winning that series and proceed to underrate his teammates to an absurd level so I can prop him up. I understand you're not one of these types of fans, but Kobe homers, to this day, attempt to rewrite history so Kobe looks more favorable.
They still won't recognize Nash's MVP as legit, always caterwauling about the disparity between Nash and Kobe's respective supporting casts.
Truth is, Nash's cast wasn't that much better than Kobe's.
boris diaw, nash, marion, raja bell, amare stoudemire, tim thomas, barbosa, kurt thomas all still have jobs in the nba and their starting 5 are still starters today.
Amare was injured for the entire 2006 season, did you even watch the NBA back then?
he was still on the team. chris mihm was supposed to be the starter for the lakers but he was injured too.
I like when we all loosen up a little bit.
Nice save attempt. Don't worry, no one here thought you were a pre-Gasol trade fan anyway.
Kobe did have some help in the form of Lamar Odom in 2006. But that's pretty much it. After Lamar, the next three best players on the Lakers against the Suns were Luke Walton, Kwame Brown, and Smush Parker. Those three as the third, fourth, and fifth best players on a playoff team. Think about that. Now, it's interesting that Matt Bonner and Keith Bogans were used as examples to compare to Smush and Kwame. In the 2006 Lakers series against the Suns, Kwame put up 13/7 and Smush put up 9/3. Last year for the Spurs in the playoffs, Bonner put up 5/3 and Bogans put up 0.6/0.8. A naive person might say well Kwame and Smush actually played well against the Suns. Ummm no. When you're relying on Kwame Brown and Smush Parker to be two of your five most productive players on the team, that's a problem. Kwame and Smush are like Bonner and Bogans in a very major way, they're all scrubs. Except with the Lakers, Kwame and Smush were asked to be better than scrubs as productive starters and key impact players, while with the Spurs, Bonner and Bogans were appropriately placed as scrub role players.
Kobe got help from Lamar, but it was pretty bad after those two. And let's not forget that now on a championship level Lakers team, Lamar is a 30 minute per game spark off the bench while in 2006, the Lakers needed him to average 45 MPG against the Suns and be the second best player for the Lakers. That's speaks volumes.
Now, while the original post talks about the contributions from a guy like Lamar Odom with his scoring and rebounding, it neglects what was truly pathetic about that 2006 Lakers team. They were playing the Suns so of course some of the Lakers were going to have decent offensive games, decent rebounding games. Just like now, back then the Suns played no defense and had no quality bigs. It's a big reason why Kwame actually had a good series. But from top to bottom on the Lakers squad in that series, no one could defend the Suns. That's where Kobe had the least amount of help. Not that Kobe was Bruce Bowen out there, but as a team, they had a defensive rating of 115. As a team. Kobe could have averaged 50 PPG in that series and the Suns could have still won because the Lakers couldn't stop the Suns.
Now that doesn't absolve Kobe from quitting in game 7. He's a made punk for that. And Lamar did help him quite a bit. And the Kobe and Lamar were playing well enough to carry the Lakers past that Suns team. They should have won that series. But the original premise of this thread is really reaching just to spew more Kobe hate and antagonize these weakass Laker fans. And it's another example of Kobe brain matter on an obsessive poster who should let it go already.
Odom was great help. He and Kobe played like champs.
I think it's pretty hard to win a lot of games though with championship-level talent at two positions and below-average talent at the rest, not to mention the bench.
The Lakers got back to the Finals by getting top level talent in Gasol and Bynum's development, not to mention top role players in guys like Ariza and Artest. This year's team is like the anti-2006 Lakers... tons of depth with Kobe, Odom, Gasol, Bynum, and Barnes all above-average NBA players (mostly WAY above average) and then guys like Fisher, Blake, and Artest perfectly fitting role as players even if they are "flawed" players.
Not sure what to say about the 01 and 02 Spurs, the 01 Spurs were a great team, the Lakers were just on another level that postseason and just steamrolled SA. No shame in that, they destroyed everybody.
Nash probably wasn't the best MVP candidate in either season but he wasn't even close to the worst MVP pick of the 2000s and in any event you have to acknowledge that he was (is?) a phenomenal player.
Nash did have a better supporting cast than Kobe, mostly because of depth. Marion and Odom were about as close comps as you could find in the league - both great players - and then from 3-7 the Suns easily had better players:
Suns:
Diaw
Barbosa
Thomas
Bell
Jones
Lakers:
Kwame
Smush
George
Sasha
Walton
Drafting on talent shown in that series, I'd go
1) Diaw
2) Thomas
3) Walton
4) Bell/Kwame
6) George
7) Smush
8) Jones/Sasha
It's impossible for me to take issue with anything you wrote here.
Well played, sir.
I wonder if Quit Hatin' actually laughs at himself for being so re ed
bump bringing the uglys to this thread. wonder if he ever keeps things within the subject. 2005-2006 that's when bump was labeled 0 and forever.
Quit Hatin'
When you're in a hole... best to stop digging.
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Funny stuff, bro. BUMP has no idea what he's talking about. Ultimately Amare was too much for us that series. Him cheering from the bench in street clothes was just too much firepower for us to match up with.
Kobe quit on the Lakers![]()
ay Mid that Kobe s Duncan's Legacy Post still got your steaming aye...
Now Your Ass Is Laid Bare...I submit to ST the battle of the century...
Kool vs the whiny mutha ers Mid, Vulva, and Ace...you'll see quite a bit in the vid below.
Notice Mid crying about Kool killing his brother (Timmy) and forcing him to shoot his boy (ICEMAN Gervin) in the back of the head, Vulva whining bout Kool breakin his nose and Ace just being the dumb mute that he is.
This pretty much sums it all up folks... that's it and that's all:
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