If this were any game other than a NBA Finals game, my television would have been turned to another station (or off) for sure. I was so pleased with how the Lakers were playing as a team in the first half. Every yellow jersey was touching the ball, Odom was confident to the hole, Kobe was sharing the ball beautifully, and they were in a stone, cold groove. They even started that way in the third quarter; and that's when I almost turned off my T.V. - but I left it on and surfed on my laptop instead.
And then it happened. The Celtics defense put the clamps on L.A.'s end of the floor and the Lakers had no answer in terms of defense on the other end. Kobe couldn't even draw a foul on his last shot; he tried to with the leg kick after the release - it didn't nothing but air! What an amazing comeback!
My pick for the defining moment - Ray Allen making Sasha Vujacic look like a stature when he just blow by him on the isolation, with no help from his teammates. There wasn't much they could do. After Allen called off the screen to go one-on-one, the Celtics spread the floor so no one was in the paint. And since the Lakers had to respect the 3 point shooting, Allen just had his way with Vujacic. It was especially sweet because Vujacic was pestering Allen the entire game like a gnat; trust me, Ray Allen was on a mission on that play to let him know who the future Hall of Famer was and who wasn't! In case you missed it, here's how Sasha felt about it!
A friend of mine (a Utah Jazz fan and a Laker hater!) e-mailed me this morning with the words "1 more game to go". This was my reply: "This is the point where Laker fans have to choose to either be optimistic or realistic. Asking Kobe to win 3 straight games (2 in Boston) by himself is too tall of an order. So I gotta keep it real ... it's over."
