game 4

down by 20 with 5:00 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, starting center injures shoulder, starting point guard has a sprained ankle, captain has a sprained knee, the opposing bench features the second winningest coach in NBA history & the league MVP, you're in L.A., the crowd is deafening, the momentum is unsurmountable. that's a lot of odds against you.

but defense still wins ball games. so does determination and fight. doc and tom thibodeaux are yelling and sweating harder than the players...meanwhile "shoulders jackson" sits & defiantly makes no adjusments to the suffocating & tenacious defense. phil has always believed in letting his players play out their struggles instead of implementing coaching schemes, but this time it bit him sqaure in the butt.

one more to go.

here are some really great photos of the backs of my favorite people on the planet right now. sorry heidi, it's true.

before

after

i also thought that this was interesting. it's a quote from Curt Shilling's blog following Game 2 in Boston. he was courtside at the game and had this observation:

"Who doesn’t know Kobe Bryant right? I only know what I have heard, starting awhile back with the entire Shaq debacle. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other on or about him other than to know that people feel he might be one of the 4-5 greatest players to ever lace it up. What I do know is what I got to see up close and hear, was unexpected. From the first tip until about 4 minutes left in the game I saw and heard this guy bitch at his teammates. Every TO he came to the bench pissed, and a few of them he went to other guys and yelled about something they weren’t doing, or something they did wrong. No dialog about “hey let’s go, let’s get after it” or whatever. He spent the better part of 3.5 quarters pissed off and ranting at the non-execution or lack of, of his team. Then when they made what almost was a historic run in the 4th, during a TO, he got down on the floor and basically said ‘Let’s f’ing go, right now, right here” or something to that affect. I am not making this observation in a good or bad way, I have no idea how the guys in the NBA play or do things like this, but I thought it was a fascinating bit of insight for me to watch someone in another sport who is in the position of a team leader and how he interacted with his team and teammates. Watching the other 11 guys, every time out it was high fives and “Hey nice work, let’s get after it” or something to that affect. He walked off the floor, obligatory skin contact on the high five, and sat on the bench stone faced or pissed off, the whole game. Just weird to see another sport and how it all works. I would assume that’s his style and how he plays and what works for him because when I saw the leader board for scoring in the post season his name sat up top at 31+ a game, can’t argue with that. But as a fan I was watching the whole thing, Kobe, his teammates and then the after effects of conversations. He’d yell at someone, make a point, or send a message, turn and walk away, and more than once the person on the other end would roll eyes or give a ‘whatever dude’ look."