This One Is For You, Birdman...

This could all have been the Blazers’.

I have to give you some ribbin’ for your dual citizenship!

Go Snowball!

Go! Go! Go! Go!

I’m pretty sure that was a goaltend.

I will rationalize that call with the fact that Kenyon Martin goaltended Kobe’s shots multiple times with no call.

Nah, I’m not convincing myself. Bad call on that one.

LA Times (Mike Bresnahan) -

Once they were done with the brief ceremony, the Lakers removed the T-shirts and caps that proclaimed them conference champions. Andrew Bynum, who missed this part last season because of a knee injury, was the only one who wore his new merchandise out to the team bus.

1. Pau had a double double in every game in this series.

2. Kobe, Pau, Lamar, and Trevor scored 92 points. So did Denver.

NBA.com

“We want Orlando,” Andrew Bynum proclaimed, “because I think we owe them. They beat us 2-0 in the regular season, but we get homecourt against them and that’s huge in The Finals. Last year we learned that.”

He was talking about the Houston series, but he may as well been talking about every series:

“The Lakers will not win this series with one person shouldering the load. It’s got to be a team effort. If they can’t come up with the team effort, they will fail.”

As much as the media will start praising Kobe (he does deserve high praise – and where were they before? Probably bashing him), we should all remember that it takes a team to win a championship. And NO ONE player, NO ONE has ever won an NBA title by himself, as much as the mythmaking machine would have you believe.

LA Times (Broderick Turner)

“I think we’re better than them, actually, to be honest,” said Martin, still stubborn. "But we didn’t prove that. That’s obvious, cause they’re moving on and we’re not. But I think we have a better team than they do.

How do you rig that?

Man, the Lakers came out focused.

And Lamar Odom is shooting 14-27 from three-point land in the playoffs (52%)… what???

Spoke to Ron upon landing in HOU from CHI pre-draft camp. He thinks no one else will take the LAL to 7 gms and we were the #2 team this year

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/11800563

“I know there are some great players,” said Andrew Bynum, who will be one of them someday. “But I think everybody knows that he’s still the best.”

It was his time, and nobody was going to deprive him of it. Before he walked onto the floor, Trevor Ariza pulled him aside and said this: “So everybody always says that the fourth quarter’s your quarter. Now, I want to see it.”

And?

“He showed me what Kobe Bryant stands for,” Ariza said, “and what he means.”

“When they sort of stopped being so aggressive on the doubles, he was unstoppable and he put it on them,” said Luke Walton, who had 10 points off the bench. “Then they had to come back and he started passing again. He had them at his mercy the whole game.”

“He knows that nothing lasts forever,” Ariza said. “It’s your mark that you leave on the game, and he’s leaving a crazy mark on the game. I don’t think there’s anybody out there that’s better than him still. I don’t think he has anything to prove. He just has the killer instinct in him that nobody can take it from him, no matter what.”

“We made him feel young again,” Anthony said. “We rejuvenated him. I’m pretty sure he didn’t need it, but he felt comfortable with us, man. It’s been a long time since he’s been in an environment like we had last summer … Being around us, us being around him, enjoying the guys, getting to know him better as a person, a lot of people were looking forward to that.”

“He’s one of the greatest competitors I’ve ever seen,” Walton said. “He’s the most skilled player in the league, so he’s going to compete and he’s going to try to win every opportunity he can. And he’s going to keep doing that until he physically can’t do it anymore. And right now he can still do it, so he looks forward to those challenges. Most times, he rises to the occasion.”