Here is the great news Manu will definitely play better in game 2. I remember seeing him yesterday and he looked dead tired even at the opening tip …and finding out that he only slept 20 minutes will do that to anyone!

The Lakers don’t impress me at all..other than Kobe..and anyone thinks Sasha is going to keep Manu down, like he is great defender that Raja is they are smoking crack.

Watch Pop run plays for Manu really and often tomorrow to get him going and then he will let Tim and TOny take over.

It was hard to lose that game..but every time we played the Hornets I was scared..the lakers don’t scare..David West shooting the ball did..Paul doing whatever he wanted to our defense did..Spurs will beat the Lakers!

I don’t think anyone is guessing that the beginning of the game will prove to be the norm.

Thus, no stories about it.

Unless you mean, you think the Spurs should be favored by 15+ every first half against the Lakers.

But it felt like 15.

Laker’s defense definitely wasn’t anything special, there were points in the 4th quarter where Duncan would get the ball in the post and everybody would just stand around watching. I HATE when they do that. Guys have to MOVE….game two can’t start soon enough.

the better team will win in a 7 game series. The spurs basically had to “wing” it coming into this game. no preparation, no sleep, and coming off a completely grueling series with the hornets. the lakers had to beat the nuggets…big deal, then the jazz….again, big deal. whereas the spurs had to go through the suns, who dont suck. then the hornets, who really dont suck. that being said, they blew a 20 point lead and lost the 1rst game. i already had myself mentally prepared for a loss on the road for the first game. Pop even said in the pregame interview- you play the first game then make adjustments and develope a strategy. i trust pop and i trust the spurs. and i absolutely trust manu. it is very possible for them to win the series.

Is the disturbing thing that the Spurs are “too nice”...they don’t have that killer instinct to close someone out in 4. They will be happy to do it in 5. (Just watch Game 4 of the Suns/Spurs series, the Spurs mailed it in almost.)

That sad, neither team plays Defense, and that was the key. The Suns tried, but failed because they got “I’m all talk” Shaq instead of “I’m Dwayne Wade’s b(&#_” Shaq. And Amare still doesn’t know what the letter D in the alphabet means.

The Jazz are worse than the Hornets. The Hornets swept them I think, destroyed a Mavs team that would have probably given a bit more trouble to both the Lakers and the Spurs (Spurs mainly, because of Avery)....and if I can remember right DID come back from 30 down vs. the Lakers in LA….with Gasol in the lineup. The Jazz just know how to foul a ton, and Kobe is almost as automatic as Manu when it comes to FT shooting. Plus I will admit to some part of refereeing, that Jazz/Laker series was mindboggling. Something like Game 1 had + 25-30 FT bonus to LA, and Game 4 had like a +25-30 FT bonus to Utah. Just rediculous. The Spurs would have beaten the Jazz in 5-6 as well, not because of “last year” or anything like that…but because the Spurs would have had home-court advantage, and the Jazz haven’t won in SA since like 2000, or worse. (Something like 10 years or so)...and this year they played 2x in SA and didn’t show any improvement. So chalk up Games 1-2 to SA, SA takes 1 in Utah for 3-4, and wraps it in 5…or goes up 3-2 in Game 5 and takes it in 6 like LA did.

Oh, I’d be the first to admit that if the roles were reversed (Spurs 1st seed, Lakers 2nd—could have happened if SA gave a squat about that last LA game, or the 1st one when just Parker was hurt)....SA would have had a cakewalk with the Enver Nuggets and the Jazz, and the Lakers would have been the “battle tested team”. Given that sometimes Enver gives SA fits, I would have had SA in 5 (like last year) and SA in 5 or 6 to the Jazz….. Suns would have taken at least 1 game on thier home floor vs. LA, and man oh man, I’d give my left toe to watch LA vs. NO in a 7 game series, just as long as it didn’t eliminate my Spurs to make it happen :)

Biggest positive that came from things happening this way that I can see….. Pheonix fans can just flat out accept that the Spurs finally just beat them, without conspiracy help…. Finally.

In the heirarchy of things, the Suns were clearly the 4th-5th best team out West. They have the bloated Shaq and his contract, Nash finally started to look like he was slipping last year, Amare will never ever know the letter D in the alphabet, thier bench sucks beyond Diaw(and occasionally Barbosa) as he never ever plays them.

This year LA (post Gasol) was clearly better, the Spurs beat them fair and square in 5 games, even after they got “Spur ready” with Shaq…the Hornets beat the ever-living snot outta them, and the Mavs can retool a lot faster than they can. With the Rockets getting healthy(hopefully) and the Trailblazers and the NOOCH on the rise, with LA where it is now, there is no way the Suns will be competing for a championship with this current squad. They are done.

D’antoni figured this out, so he left. Now the sweet irony is he went “where the money is” plain and simple. To sugar coat it (for us Laker and Spurs fans), did anyone see his reaction when the Bulls got the first pick? Looked like he wanted to choke a b*^&@!.