Post Game 3 Blog Smack: Lakers Of Fire vs. Fanball Orlando Magic Blog

Don VanDemark of the Fanball Blog Network is back for some more Blog Smack and he is full of passion now that the Magic are on the board.

Don takes the offensive:

So much aggression from the L.A. blog. Is the traffic on the 5 getting to you? I can handle the puffing up of the Lakers; lots of history there. the 2-0 lead, the weather, yada, yada, yada. None of your questions of the night dealt with basketball. You implore your team not to be overconfident yet you’re already shining the trophy. No insults from this side – only basketball here.

Can’t get too high about the shooting as it comes and goes but breaking the record for the best shooting game in NBA history is a nice aside. Like Van Gundy implied in the post game presser, the Magic are trying to set records at both end. Garrett, if we’re supposed to bow down to the Lakers’ defense for the low shooting percentage, what do we do today? Don’t even go to “well, if the Magic only shot 50% in Game Four, Lakers win by 10″ logic. If the Magic can shoot 41% in Game Two and take it to OT and then turn around and win Game Three by four with 62.5%, then obviously actual shooting percentage has less to do with wins and losses despite my “shoot better” mantra. It just makes me feel better when they shoot better.

Oh, and let’s talk about how much Kobe wants it. Really? Game One, sure, he put on a good show and made faces and all that crap. 5-10 from the foul line? Dwight Howard is outshooting Kobe at the foul line? Hell, Shaq on a bad day outshooting Kobe? He lets Dwight Howard and Mickael Pietrus strip him twice on the same play in the closing minutes? Kobe must really want…this to go back to L.A. You guys should thank him for that. Don’t get me wrong – Kobe’s great but he’s not perfect. I don’t like to talk about the psychology of games ’cause I haven’t been on that stage but he looked like Lee was getting to him with some of the physical defense Lee was using. I anticipate a ticked off Kobe on Thursday – we’ll see how that turns out. The officials were generous with him in the first half when he charged one official after a call. If he’s ticked off in Game Four, will Kobe take the lead in the race to seven technicals between him and Dwight?

Rafer was the good Rafer tonight – we won’t get that side of him for the next four games. As long as he isn’t too far on the bad Rafer side, we’ll deal with it. The biggest problem with Rafer is that when he starts hitting the shots, his shot selection gets worse. As long as he stays within himself and doesn’t go wild, we’ll take all the Good Rafer we can have.

Ok, Garrett, your turn. Want some help with your insults? Let’s see how cliche you can be: use humidity, swamps, hurricanes and/or tourists next time.

Garrett goes on the defense (hopefully better than the Lakers did last night):

There we go Don, finally a little passion.  I like it!  Too bad the Lakers didn’t play with that same kind of intesity last night.  Wow, what a disaster.

Yes, I definitely got a bit out in front of myself last night.  It isn’t so much that I thought Orlando couldn’t win a game, I just didn’t believe that they had a legitimate shot at winning the series.  I now realize just how egregious that assumption was.

The problem for me isn’t that the Lakers lost, it is how they lost. Like you said, the Magic needed to start shooting better, which they definitely did.  But it wasn’t just blind luck or a few guys catching fire last night, it was the Magic completely eviscerating the Laker defense.  Part of the reason Orlando shot so poorly the first two games is because they were being forced into taking low-percentage jumpers, but in Game 3 they found a way to penetrate the Laker perimeter over and over and over and over again.  Shooting better is much easier to do when you are shooting from inside of five-feet most of the night.  It really is like the Lakers completely forgot how to defend sometime during that cross-country flight.

As bad as the defense was, I’m not going to cry over it.  Admit it, you have to be a little concerned that the Magic shot so well and still almost lost.  That was as well as Orlando can play (at least on offense) and they only snuck away with a win thanks to a very uncharacteristic late-game miscue from the Mamba.  Much like the Magic fans say that if you re-played the Courtney Lee alley-oop over again, odds are he cashes it in, if you replay the Kobe turnover again, he more than likely sticks a dagger in the Magic’s heart.  As far as I’m concerned, we’re just even now.

Game 4 should be very interesting because there is literally no way the Lakers can be as bad defensively as they were in Game 3.  Maybe you’ll think I am just still being cocky, but I like the Lakers chances to get back in the winner’s column this Thursday.

Tags: bad defense, Blog Smack, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Mickael Pietrus, NBA Finals, Orlando Magic, Rafer Alston