no he's been doing that his whole career, but its pretty easy to see he was just answering a question honestly. Phil is just so in your head that you even think that when he takes a , it's to mess with another teams head.
Not knowing the exact question or the exact quote makes it difficult, since he was just being paraphrased, but no ing re starts a team with Howard instead of James, so it seems clear to me that Phil was performing a combination tweak/Kobe ass-kiss maneuver.
However, if we really wanted to get into Phil's head, we could extrapolate his answer out to find that he's actually implying that he'd rather have Shaq than Kobe on his team.
Phil's right.
LeBron is still one great Big player away from a championship ring. Having a perimeter Center in Big Z and undersized backups will hurt the Cavs this year in the Playoffs.
This is why huge interior teams like the Magic (DHo/Gortat), Celtics (with KG/Perkins) and Lakers (Bynum/Pau/Odom) have been pounding away at the Cavs this year.
The Cavs are a jumpshooting team, and this will be exposed in the Playoffs.
When Wade won his le, Shaq was not a great big player. Lebron is better than Wade, so Cavs are very capable of winning le. And if the arguement is based on overall size of the big player, neither Pau or Odom are big.
Shaq was still the best Center in the NBA in that year.
Bynum's a very talented and legit 7 foot, 280 pound big Center. Pau's a legit 7 footer that plays Euro Center. Odom's average for a power forward in size but he's quick as .
The Lakers have plenty of quality Bigs, no problem there.
The Lakers main weakness is point guard. But with Delonte West and Boobie Gibson, the Cavs aren't really a threat from the point guard position.
LeBron James is covered by Ariza/Odom, all very capable defenders. Kobe guards Mo Williams. The Lakers have the two best Cav players covered, while the Cavs have no answer for Pau/Bynum/Odom.
Like I said before, the Cavs have a very bad matchup with the Lakers.
i still take lebron by a close margin.
dwight will never have the offensive skillset that timmy, shaq, and dream had. hes a beast defensively and still a load down on the post but you can't go to him during crunch time. hedo and jameer still take all the big shots for the magic this season.
though i do remember dwight having a game winning alley oop over a certain Hall of Famer...hmm...
The great players in the league are unguardable. Ariza and Odom arent going to stop lebron. If thats the case, Lebron can shut down Kobe. Big Z would pull Bynum out of the paint, opening it for Lebron. Regular season games are overrated when analyzing a playoff series.
Gasol would guard Z, Bynum will be able to camp out in the paint all day. LBJ can't shut down Kobe and the Cavs have nobody to stop Bynum, Gasol, and Odom. Even without Bynum the Lakers destroyed Cleveland down low when they had Z, Ben and Anderson all healthy. The series will be over in five, and the Lakers will be the champs, book it.
Gasol is on Big Z and can do a great job on him. Bynum stays in the paint with Verajao which should allow Bynum to dominate.
The Lakers can't stop LeBron but can guard him 1 on 1 with Odom/Ariza and help defense in the paint. The Lakers already did this, as did the Magic. LeBron ended up frustrated and shot up 3 pointers and jumpshots, neither one is his strength. He ended up going something like ~30% against the Lakers.
The Lakers don't need to double LeBron....one of LeBron's greatest assets is his court vision, but without open teammates, he's not nearly as effective.
Shaq was the rightful MVP the year before; he was still a great player at that time. Even though he had a down year, maybe three teams in the entire NBA currently have a center that's as good as Shaq was in '06.
I'm like a physic lol.
Anyways....I wonder if Phil Jackson still feels the same way?
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