We are just days away from the 2009 Finals, and perhaps only a couple of weeks away from Kobe Bryant sticking a flag in the top of the basketball mountain. A flag that signals the end of the “without Shaq” tag, the doubts of “never being able to lead his own team”. I spoke about [...]

Kobe Bryant has now done something that Tim Duncan never did: lead his team to back-to-back Finals appearances. That thought startled me a little when it first entered my brain, but it’s true. Since MJ and the Bulls faced off against Karl Malone and the Jazz in ‘97 and ‘98, it’s been exceedingly difficult for [...]

My lingering memory from Game 3 of this series will not be Kobe’s clutch three or Ariza’s steal. It will be Pau Gasol’s fourth quarter performance and the Lakers persistence in running their offense through him. That Gasol needed more touches was painstakingly obvious through the first two games of this series, because as was [...]

This series is one Ariza steal away from being 2-0 in the Nuggets favor, and one Kobe fumble from being 2-0 in the Lakers favor. It’s almost impossible to split these teams over the first two games, but here’s two things we’ve learnt:

The Lakers are incapable of stopping Melo, not because they don’t have suitable [...]

AP Photo/David Richard
Could you have asked for a better start to the Conference Finals? The two games so far were decided by a total of three points, we saw 40 point games from Kobe and Lebron (and a just as impressive effort from Melo), a broken shot-clock by Dwight Howard, a 70-foot hail Mary from [...]

Day 24 – The Day the Cavs Swept… Again
3 votes – Dirk Nowitzki. This was an absolutely epic game, one of the best so far these playoffs. Dirk scores 19 in the fourth on his way to 44 points (his fifth career 40-point game in the playoffs), Melo scores 41 and a last second three [...]

There is something special about returning to Australia that goes beyond the inevitable sense of home-coming and familiar territory. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the fact its so far away from everything else and so isolated – you can’t exactly wander into Australia from another country. Maybe it’s the fact that it [...]

3 votes – The entire Denver Nuggets team. Such a lop-sided contest like this defies conventional anaylsis. The idea that a team can lose in the playoffs by 58 points is completely foreign to me. So I will let Denver coach George Karl explain it: “Every coach talks about playing a playoff game, every possession [...]

Kobe really looked locked-in before tonight’s game
I didn’t think it would ever be possible, but today, I watched four live NBA games in a row. For an Aussie who is regularly starved of NBA on TV, I was in heaven.
Before I get onto the votes there is one thing I want to say that’s been [...]

3 votes – Brandon Roy. 42 points on 15/27 shooting, including 12 in the fourth, most of which came against one of the league’s best defenders in Artest. That can of whoop-ass is officially open. The most alarming thing for the Blazers, is despite Roy’s massive game and Aldridge’s 27-12 and Yao’s measly 11 points, [...]