Lakers vs Suns 139:137
Los Angeles. Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers dug down deep when it mattered on Tuesday night to remain the hottest team in the NBA.
Bryant scored 42 points, including a floater with 14 seconds left in the third overtime, as the two-time defending NBA Champions outlasted the pesky Phoenix Suns for a thrilling 139-137 home-court victory.
“We’re the champs. We’ve got a lot of mental toughness and we just keep on fighting” – said Bryant. “It’s not anything new.”
Bryant added 12 rebounds and nine assists in the Lakers’ fifth straight win and 13th in the last 14 games.
Lamar Odom had a season-best 29 points with 16 rebounds, Spaniard Pau Gasol collected 24 and 13 boards for the Lakers (51-20), who won again as centre Andrew Bynum served a two-game suspension for his flagrant foul Friday night on Minnesota’s Michael Beasley.
“We haven’t played many overtime games this year, and this one was a tough one” – Gasol said. “But I’m proud of our team, the way we battled, the way we fight through each and every OT. We reacted well and handled it well.”
Channing Frye scored a career-high 32 points with 14 rebounds, Poland’s Marcin Gortat added 24 and 16 boards off the bench, while Steve Nash finished with 19 points and 20 assists for the Suns (35- 34), who dropped three games behind idle Memphis for the final Western Conference playoff berth.
“This is a big loss” – Nash said. “There is no other way to put it.”
- Lakers vs Suns.
Monday afternoon, Phil Jackson commented on Lamar Odom’s value to the Lakers.
“We made a decision as an organization two years ago to sign Lamar, which put us into a difficult cap situation” – he said. “Yet we were convinced that without him, we wouldn’t win a championship again. That was a good decision by the organization.”
Lamar Odom has won a pair of titles with the Lakers, but had he not stuck around after the ’09 season, the entire NBA landscape might look different today.
But what if they’d gone the other way?
What if Doctor Buss, presented contract figures by Mitch Kupchak, looked to his bank account then L.A.’s projected payroll and screamed, “No mas,” or Odom decided to change addresses? While Odom last season wasn’t the adjusted plus-minus monster of the ’08-’09 title run, he was nonetheless invaluable. Particularly when considering how difficult it would have been to replace him (and by ‘difficult,’ I mean ‘impossible’), as Jackson infers, I’m comfortable saying the Lakers wouldn’t have won without him (and, unfortunately for Lakers fans, that the Celtics would).
Without a shot at a threepeat, Jackson might have retired, obviously changing the context of this year’s title charge.
Lamar Odom was arguably the player of the game for the Lakers, but as Brian noted in the postgame analysis, the foul he committed against Channing Frye with 1,1 seconds left in the first overtime was a doozy. Despite the victorious outcome and the ‘instant classic’ vibe, when asked what he’ll remember about this game in 5-10 years, LO immediately cited that personal:
“I will remember the foul call. I always tell you guys basketball is a humbling experience. Because I can think about throughout the game, ‘Yeah, I’m playing good. I’m having a good one.’ And then, right before you know it, I’m the dope. You know what I’m saying?”
Odom then talked about the difficulty of shaking off such a mistake and keeping his head in the game:
“We always talk about being humbled as a player. It’s something I always tell my wife. It’s a little difficult to understand the whole mentality of a sportsman. We get humbled in front, not just the people in the arena [but] the people at home [watching on TV]. I’m talking about millions of people. Sometimes it can be hard to shake off, but you have to. That’s what makes us tough. We love to compete. We love the odds against us as sportsmen.”