The \'07-\'08 NBA Thread

[leith]

Most amazing comeback by the celtics.The 3rd quarter was the key again. They deserved to win that game.
I can only hope the Lakers can set history and come back from 3-1.

[lele]

Most amazing comeback by the celtics.The 3rd quarter was the key again. They deserved to win that game.
I can only hope the Lakers can set history and come back from 3-1.

I hope so too!!

[Wolfman]

Game 4: Celtics 97, Lakers 91.

What a comeback.

Despite what you might expect from me right now, I\'m not raising banner 17 to the rafters until the last buzzer.  After all, as any Red Sox or Yankees fan knows best, not even a 3-0 series lead is a sure thing.  Right Pec?

[Drew_Kingsley]

Despite having a supporting cast that most teams would kill for, the Lakers are proving themselves to be a one-man show. Apparently Kobe needs to drop 30 for them to get a win.

Interesting how ABC showed Phil Jackson at the half talking about how LA\'s big goal should be to "win the third quarter", and the team then proceeded to get outscored by 16 points in the frame.

[SlimPickens]

-have GTB jam out songs so he can jump off the stage to catch bits of the game?

At one point he actually did walk to the far side of the stage so he could catch a glimpse of the big screen.

[Vassillios]

I think the celts need to win this one in Boston. Game 6 baby!

Look out world, here come the Celtics!  

Championship #17, here we come!

lol yeah sorry na\' gonna happen.

[Yoda]

After all, as any Red Sox or Yankees fan knows best, not even a 3-0 series lead is a sure thing.QUOTE]

I get a kick out of the backlash that Yankee fans get when arguing that the Red Sox need to win 18 more WS to match the Yankees, but not one Yankee fan picked up on this blatant and constant dig from Red Sox fans.  What gives?

[SkyePrizm]

-have GTB jam out songs so he can jump off the stage to catch bits of the game?

At one point he actually did walk to the far side of the stage so he could catch a glimpse of the big screen.

Lauren and i totally flaked and left the wipey board on in the green room.... but you know, maybe its better that he didn\'t have constant updates....

[Wolfman]

After all, as any Red Sox or Yankees fan knows best, not even a 3-0 series lead is a sure thing.QUOTE]

I get a kick out of the backlash that Yankee fans get when arguing that the Red Sox need to win 18 more WS to match the Yankees, but not one Yankee fan picked up on this blatant and constant dig from Red Sox fans.  What gives?

I think most of the readers of this thread probably have me on ignore by now, which I can\'t blame them for.  I\'ve been doing nothing but hardcore ballbreaking without any game analysis or personal experiences since the Finals started.  If I were someone else then I would have stopped reading me in this thread too.  There was some good stuff after game 7 against the cavs and after the line for tickets to the finals, but it\'s obvious I\'ve been mailing in the posts during the Finals.  I don\'t know...I\'ve been fired up to go out and watch the games but not to write about them.  I think I might be reeling from the Super Bowl still, knowing that I don\'t feel like going back to that level of posting and that this championship definitely does not exist in a vaccuum, but rather is a vital part of a greater recovery process that Boston fans need to have go right.

[leith]

Finally figured out the 3rd Quarter.
Win the next one and anything can happen in a game 7.
GO LAKERS!!!!!!!!!!

[booztravlr]

I think I might be reeling from the Super Bowl still, knowing that I don\'t feel like going back to that level of posting and that this championship definitely does not exist in a vaccuum, but rather is a vital part of a greater recovery process that Boston fans need to have go right.

Give me a break! Boston is 5-1 in professional sports championships this decade. To say Boston needs the Celtics to win to help with the grieving Patriots fans is absurd. No one gave a shit about the Celtics until they were good again. Suck it up and take the Patriots loss like a man.

[Wolfman]

Hehehe...woe is the Boston sports fan!  The Celtics better pull this thing off because it\'s been a whole 8 months since we\'ve had a championship around here!  And since then, the Patriots and the Revolution have both lost gut-wrenching finals.  We need recovery!  And in all of the championships we\'ve had lately, not a single one has been clinched at home!  Oh the agony!  It\'s about time we clinch a championship IN Boston!

[Vassillios]

It\'s about time we clinch a championship IN Boston!

That\'s what I\'m talkin about wolfy... game 6 tomorrow night.... gonna be intense

[skalnbyc]

Wall St Journal Article for the Lakers fans:

Why the Lakers Are NBA Stars

By ALLEN BARRA
June 17, 2008; Page D9

History says the Los Angeles Lakers can\'t win the 2007-2008 NBA championship. The Lakers, down three games to two in the best of seven series, must win tonight and Thursday to become the first team in league history to come back from a 3-1 deficit in the finals. But no matter who wins, the Boston Celtics -- though they have won eight of 10 championship series with Los Angeles -- will still be chasing the Lakers in the eyes of most basketball fans.

That may seem unfair to Boston followers; after all, the Celtics met the Lakers in eight finals between 1959 and 1984 -- and won all of them. Lakers fans, though, regard that as ancient history. Since 1987, the Lakers have appeared in the playoffs in every season but two, winning five titles to the Celtics\' zero.

Many Laker-haters are quick to write off the team\'s success to the city they play in. The Lakers have the town to themselves, some argue. There\'s no professional sports competition -- the Dodgers haven\'t won a World Series in two decades and Los Angeles doesn\'t even have an NFL franchise. How could a team with all that glamour and money, they ask rhetorically, not be a winner?

So the argument goes. It presupposes that having movie stars sitting courtside guarantees a playoff spot, and that a huge revenue base guarantees a winner. But the latter notion is quickly dispelled if you compare the Lakers to their crosstown rivals, the Clippers, who have been battling the Lakers for home-crowd support since 1984-85, their first season in Los Angeles. Actually, "battling" is not quite the word; in their 24 seasons in the City of Angels, the Clippers, with the same potential resources as the Lakers, have a winning percentage of just .352 and have made the NBA playoffs only four times. The Lakers over that period have had the highest won-lost percentage in the league, .650, and have been in the playoffs 22 times.

The contrast between the two teams couldn\'t be greater. The Lakers have been the premiere franchise in the NBA over that time span, while the Clippers have been the worst. In fact, the Lakers can claim to be a great deal more than that. They have been the NBA\'s flagship franchise during the league\'s boom years. The NBA\'s fortunes began to skyrocket when Earvin "Magic" Johnson came to Los Angeles from Michigan State in 1979 -- or, as some historians think, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came to the Lakers from the Milwaukee Bucks in 1975.

In any event, the Lakers, paced by those two future Hall of Famers, redefined sports glamour in the television age with a celebrity fan list that includes Jack Nicholson, Dyan Cannon, Denzel Washington and Leonardo DiCaprio; a knockout cheerleading squad, the Laker Girls ("American Idol" judge Paula Abdul used to be one); and a legendary announcer, the late Chick Hearn, who broadcast 3,338 consecutive Lakers games from 1965 through December 2001 and in the process contributed such phrases to the American lexicon as "Putting up a brick" (for a bad shot) and "Slam dunk!" (no definition needed).

Of course, the Lakers did not win because Jack and Dyan were rooting them on: The celebs came because they won. Since their first NBA championship in 1950, when they were the Minneapolis Lakers -- in case you were wondering where the team\'s name came from -- they\'ve been the winningest team in American professional sports, the New York Yankees and the Boston Celtics not excepted.

Since 1960, the Lakers have finished under .500 only seven times. In comparison, the Yankees, the most famous winner in American sports, have gone under .500 10 times since 1960 and the Boston Celtics, though they won an amazing 11 championships in the 13 seasons from 1956-1969, have dipped below the mediocrity line 14 times since 1970.

Perhaps half of the professional basketball players best known to the American public over the past five decades have been Lakers: Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Gail Goodrich, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O\'Neal, and this year\'s MVP, Kobe Bryant, to skim just the cream from the top. The kinetic Pat Riley and Zen-like Phil Jackson, winners of a combined seven titles with the Lakers, exemplify the two polar opposites of basketball coaching.

There\'s no secret as to why this season\'s NBA finals are getting a substantial boost over last year\'s: The Lakers are playing. Yes, it has much to do with the storied rivalry between Boston and Los Angeles, but the Celtics, good as they are, have not won a championship since 1986 and are not the attraction to viewers in the South, the Midwest or even New York that the Lakers are. Except for the glorious aberration of the Michael Jordan years in Chicago, no NBA team has even approached the Lakers\' appeal.

The simple truth is that regardless of the outcome of tonight\'s game, as the Lakers go, so goes the NBA.

Mr. Barra writes about sports for the Journal.

[davepeck]

congratulations, celtics fans. the ride was fun while it lasted, but the lakers were completely shut down in this series, and the better team won. enormous disappointment.