ThreeStrikesandOut

Curt Schilling had some bad things to say about Kobe Bryant’s leadership skills here, questioning how Kobe’s teammates seemed to roll their eyes at Kobe’s attempts to fire them up through yelling and cursing. Kobe’s response?

Shit on Curt.

Well, okay that wasn’t it. It was really more like this:

“You’re asking for my response to it?” Bryant said. “Go Yankees. I mean, look, I know my team. We almost pulled it off — after the timeout with all those bleeps, we almost pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in history. So it seemed to motivate them pretty well.”

As much as I would love to give a hearty “YEAH!” to that comment, unless Kobe is willing to suit up in pinstripes after the Finals and pitch a few innings, we can shout Go Yankees until the cows come home and it’s not going to do any good. Nice try though. How about you go kick Lamar Odom in the nuts and try to wake him up for Game Four. That way you can really stick it to Curt by maybe going back to Boston up 3-2.

NOLA.com

Tim Donaghy says that there was a fix in for the 2002 NBA playoffs.

David Stern says that Tim Donaghy is an “admitted felon” who is just trying to get a lighter sentence.

I say that I like the color red. It makes my ass look incredible.

Since Curt Schilling is unable to play baseball right now due to injury, he’s got more time to let us in on his opinions of other topics.  Like the NBA.  Or more accurately, his opinion on the NBA Finals and one Kobe Bryant.  On his blog, Schilling had the following to say:

From the first tip until about 4 minutes left in the game I saw and heard this guy bitch at his teammates. Every TO he came to the bench pissed, and a few of them he went to other guys and yelled about something they weren’t doing, or something they did wrong. No dialog about “hey let’s go, let’s get after it” or whatever. He spent the better part of 3.5 quarters pissed off and ranting at the non-execution or lack of, of his team. Then when they made what almost was a historic run in the 4th, during a TO, he got down on the floor and basically said ‘Let’s f’ing go, right now, right here” or something to that affect. I am not making this observation in a good or bad way, I have no idea how the guys in the NBA play or do things like this, but I thought it was a fascinating bit of insight for me to watch someone in another sport who is in the position of a team leader and how he interacted with his team and teammates. Watching the other 11 guys, every time out it was high fives and “Hey nice work, let’s get after it” or something to that affect. He walked off the floor, obligatory skin contact on the high five, and sat on the bench stone faced or pissed off, the whole game. Just weird to see another sport and how it all works.

You know something else Kobe does Curt?  He plays during the regular season, whether he’s hurt or not.  But that’s not the topic.  Schilling had some more comments about another Laker, and this time it was Laker big man Pau Gasol that got critiqued:

I don’t know much about the NBA beyond some of the star players and the famous teams. I heard that the Lakers got Gasol in a horrible steal of a deal and that the league should have investigated the trade for some sort of punishable crime (disclaimer: smiley was Schilling’s) I saw a 7 footer last night who grabbed like 4 rebounds and spent the entire game whining about getting fouled.

People think it was a horrible deal, because without Gasol the Lakers would probably have been out in the first round.  But hey, Schilling may know why Gasol isn’t as good as everyone else; after all, he shares the same disability that Schilling has, he’s white:

One thing I did learn was that in addition to not having one ounce of athletic ability, being white, and having no vertical, and only being able to dribble right handed, I couldn’t play in the NBA because about 43 times last night I heard things being said that would have made me swing at someone. These guys talk MAJOR trash on the floor, and the great part is that most of the times I’ve seen it the guy on the receiving end usually doesn’t respond much, if at all, and just plays the game, schooling the guy who feels like he needs to talk to make his game better.

Well, it was nice to hear Schilling admit that he has as much athletic ability as I have writing ability (although I can usually get my point across with about 3300 less words than Schilling uses).  Nice to see that Schilling is trying to stay in good with the Boston fans by jock-riding the red hot Celtics, and making sure that he’s visible while the NBA Finals are going on.  The guy is one hell of a politician.  If he were in LA he would be blogging about the foul shot disparity and Kobe’s killer instinct.

38 Pitches (just not very often)

I can’t be the only person who thinks that Paul Pierce faked a knee injury so that he could play Superman, and get the crowd all hyped up by his return, and give the Celtics some made-up momentum. Yeah, I probably am. The Lakers had a good chance to steal this game, but really failed to show up in the fourth quarter, and dropped this game 98-88. The three stars of the show were PP, KG, and RA (who picked a great time to remember how to shoot); who scored whenever they wanted to, and who made up for the 1,789,003 bad shots/decisions that ET…Sam Cassel made during his minutes in the game.

Kobe Bryant had a good game, not a great one and he’s going to need more sustained offense from his teammates if L.A. is going to win game 2.  I’m not worried about it when the series goes to L.A., but the Lakers are going to have to win at least one game in Boston.

What did I take away from the first game of the Finals? This is going to be a very good series, but it’s probably not going to be able to live up to the hype. I’m also taking away from it, that I would really rather not see this commercial of Bird and Magic ever again. They look old and in turn that really, really makes me feel old.

Because I never thought that I would see the day when Rajon Rondo would get his own commercial; much less have his last name turned into a verb, your Site of the Night is Hip2DaGame, for their compilation of the latest in Reebok commercials staring Rondo.

That’s it for me, but I think that TSAO’s prodigal son, Dead Mike will drop a post or two on your head later, so check back. As for me, I’ll be hanging with Tiger on the yacht, banging the babysitter, and generally engaging in a life of carnal bliss.

Our lives are just much better than yours.