A few thoughts while waiting for Kobe’s MRI results:
• I’m not as optimistic as Kobe about the severity of his injury after his post-game quotes:
“Crunching, instant throbbing. A lot of pain right now. I can’t hop on one leg. My foot, when it’s not weight-bearing, kind of jiggles a little bit, and that hurts like crazy.
“This one might be weeks, bro. It doesn’t feel like a day-to-day thing.”
• Whatever the result, Kobe’s going on the IR. The Lakers have two options of who to activate — Tony Bobbitt keeps enough guards on the roster, Deavon George brings more skills to the table (if he is ready). My guess (and that’s all it is) is that Bobbit is added to the roster.
• I really hate TNT. And not just because I’m sick of Law and Order. Also not so much because of the Marv Albert/Steve Kerr announcing team, as national teams go their good. It was sitting there having to watch the tedious end of an overtime in Houston — “oh, good, Bob Sura’s shooting free throws again†— while missing my team’s biggest moment of the year. The NFL switches over local markets, cable companies need to find a way to do the same thing.
• Referring back to my note of yesterday — they Lakers beat the Cavs because they won the turnover margin by five (18-13) and had six more offensive rebounds. They out-hustled Cleveland. They gave themselves more possessions and shots, so even though they shot worse (Lakers’ eFG% was a sad 41.2%, compared to the Cavs’ 51.2%) they got more opportunities.
• Why again has Sasha been burried on Rudy T.’s bench? He had energy and he was fearless — he shot just 1 for 7 but he reminded me of a first-year Kobe in how he was not intimidated by the game. He knows his shots will fall. The knock on him was that he wasn’t ready defensivly for the NBA, but the Lakers played a lot of zone with him in the game and he looked fine. He also had that great one-on-three steal. He’s got rough spots in his game, but more time on the court could smooth those out.
• Another Sasha point — I know it was in garbage time against Denver, but it was a lot of fun to watch when he and Luke Walton were in the game at the same time. I’d like to see more of that.
• By the way, Rudy T. apparently lost his cool with the team after the Denver game. Good. They deserved it.
• The Laker offense had a lot more movement with Kobe out and everything running through Lamar. The team knew it needed to step up and did, but if we did that with Kobe in the game imagine how good we could look.
• The energy was up on defense too, which is more important.
• I feel better looking ahead at the schedule and seeing two games in 10 days against Golden State. Without Kobe, we need some help from the scheduling gods.