Pau is a very nice player, but if you care about *this year*, not the future, there is no way on earth you can take Pau over Nowitzki. Dirk’s a better and more versatile scorer, as good at other phases of the game, and very tough mentally.

Pierce and Durant are 3s, not 4s, and their games are completely different than Pau’s. Maybe compare him to Bogut or Kamen?

Maybe the most interesting comparison, tho, is Garnett. No obvious edge, to me, just a different game. Pau is better with his back to the basket and he’s probably a better rebounder right now, too. But there’s nobody better than Garnett at helping to defend the pick and roll, and he absolutely directs the D.

Uh. That’s right. Injuries “added” to the Celtics’ problems. And if the Lakers lose Kobe to injury this year, that’ll “add” to their not being a title team.

Here’s hoping both teams are at full strength at the end of this year. No excuses, no questions, no doubts.

I always say the lakers are good because they play as a team…they cavs aren’t real contenders because its too much one on one basketball. Well the tables were turned and the cavs played laker type of basketball. Lebron didn’t personally try to show up kobe. And the cavs won. Props to them.

But the lakers were just atrocious. Way too much one on one basketball. Pau looked scared every time he got the ball. They missed like 5 freethrows when they were making their push before the half and at the beginning of the 3rd. They really let the terrible officiating take them out of their game. Yes that officiating was terrible. But lakers have to be able to play through that.

It was some bad coaching by phil as well. I thought phil went away from his normal rotation at the beginning of the second and put vujacic instead of brown in. The cavs actually pushed the lead when lebron was on the bench. Then I though in the 3rd Phil would put brown and odom in for bynum and fish to change the pace of the game as he did vs Utah…he didn’t do it until very late in the 3rd. Not only were the lakers a step slow, so was phil.

But lakers will bounce back.

I don’t know about style points (the beauty is in the eye of the beholder), but let’s check some metrics.

PER

Last season Gasol was 12th. There were 5 bigs with better PER – Howard, Duncan, Nowitzki, Yao, Shaq.

Win Shares

He was 4th last season, behind James, Paul and Wade.

Wins Produced

He was 8th last season. Better bigs – Howard, Murphy.

What does it tell us? That he’s a perfect “second bananas” for Kobe. Efficient, good defender, good rebounder, average usage guy.

Is he top 5? I doubt it – I’d take for sure James, Paul, Bryant, Howard before him. And there are several guys behind those four with similar productivity. But he’s easily top 15, and there aren’t many guys I’d take before him to play in Lakers at 4. At this moment of their careers I’d rather have Gasol than Duncan or Garnett. They might be a little better, but he’s younger and healthier.

And all this “Gasoft” stuff is just dumb. It’s very obvious what happened- Gasol was frustrated and disappointed, both in the officiating which allowed Shaq and Z and Varejao to engage in Boston style grabbing, pulling, shoving and hacking and in himself for bouncing so many close shots off the rim. Gasol played a bad game. Just remember- the Lakers are 101 and 22 or so since adding him. That should end any question of his value to the team.

Also, no disrespect, but anyone questioning Drew’s back to the basket game clearly has watched one Lakers game all season long, and it was yesterday. His back to the basket moves are the one thing about Drew’s game that you can’t question, it’s the boards and passing people harp on.

I have to say, though, the sky-is-falling reaction is more subdued than last year, which is better than I expected. I think Kurt was dead on – the next couple weeks will reveal a lot of things. Then we’ll see if we can learn from our mistakes and get back our proper offensive movement.