April 26th: "Kobe no longer a great 8, changing to No. 24" "Game Preview, Lakers vs Suns" "Kwame: GROWTH SPURT"

 
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Phil
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:03 am    Post subject: April 26th: "Kobe no longer a great 8, changing to No. 24" "Game Preview, Lakers vs Suns" "Kwame: GROWTH SPURT"

Kobe no longer a great 8, changing to No. 24
Ross Siler, Staff writer

After 10 years in the NBA, three championships and one unforgettable 81-point game, Kobe Bryant's days wearing No. 8 will come to an end as soon as the playoffs do for the Lakers.

Bryant has submitted a request to the NBA, which the league in turn approved, to change his jersey number to 24 next season. The story was first reported by ESPN.com Tuesday night.

"He came to us to make the request and asked us to file the appropriate paperwork with the league office," Lakers spokesman John Black said.


Last edited by Phil on Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:13 am; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:07 am    Post subject:

Heckmann's Diary: Game 2 preview

Dick Heckmann
Special for the Republic
Apr. 26, 2006 12:36 AM

I thought the bench would tell the story in the first game and it did. Phil Jackson is a great coach and his scheme took us out of our rhythm and slowed us down, making for a very different game. But, we still won.

The Lakers have no answer for Leandro Barbosa and Eddie House, who could be the difference again tonight. And watch Kobe Bryant tonight. If he comes out shooting, the game will be fast and furious, and that is our game.

In Game 1 we did not run, did not shoot well, and two of our key starters, Boris Diaw and Raja Bell, got in early foul trouble, but the Suns still found a way to win.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:08 am    Post subject:

Bryant Already Has Suns Guessing
By Mike Bresnahan, Times Staff Writer
April 26, 2006

PHOENIX — On the other hand, the Phoenix Suns aren't sure what to expect either.

Will they get the aggressive Kobe Bryant who set an arena record earlier this month in Phoenix with a 51-point effort? Or will they see the pass-first, stick-with-the-plan man who had 22 points on seven-for-21 shooting in Game 1?

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Sun guard Raja Bell, who has had his share of tussles with Bryant over the years, got first crack at what would happen tonight in Game 2.

"I think everybody knows who's going to show up," he said Tuesday. "I think he's going to come out and be more aggressive. There's no guesswork involved with that."

Or maybe there is.

"We'll probably see something in between," Sun guard Steve Nash said. "He's going to try to get the ball to his teammates, but at the same time, he's going to be much more aggressive when his opportunities arise.

"They played one way pretty much the whole season, so it's a very fine line they're trying to walk here and we just got to be ready to adjust."
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:09 am    Post subject:


Strategizing, from one Jackson to another

Ex-Suns guard Jim Jackson goes over Phoenix's tendencies with Lakers' coach
BY ROSS SILER, Staff Writer

EL SEGUNDO - The Phoenix Suns might score 140 points some nights, connect on 203-pointers others and threaten to short-circuit the scoreboard every time they take the court. But Jim Jackson thinks most people have it wrong in watching the Suns play.

"They think it's just run-and-gun," Jackson said. "But it's kind of methodical what they do. It may look fast, but they don't run it quick. They pick you apart slowly. Steve (Nash) is a maestro, so that's why it looks easy."

Jackson should know after spending parts of the past two seasons playing for coach Mike D'Antoni in Phoenix. The veteran guard was released by the Suns on March 1 and signed with the Lakers five days later.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson and assistant Kurt Rambis talked to Jackson before drawing up their gameplan for this first-round playoff series against the Suns. The teams will play Game 2 of the best-of-seven series tonight in Phoenix.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:11 am    Post subject:

Suns expect to see aggressive Bryant

Paul Coro
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 26, 2006 12:00 AM

Lakers coach Phil Jackson told Kobe Bryant to be more aggressive on offense during the fourth quarter of Los Angeles' Game 1 loss at Phoenix.

Jackson told Bryant on Monday to be more aggressive.

Bryant does not need to be told twice to shoot more. The Lakers still want to expose the Suns on the interior, but the notion that Bryant will be looking to score and initiate the offense more is obvious.
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"I think everybody knows who's going to show up," said Suns guard Raja Bell, who covers Bryant. "I think he's going to come out and be more aggressive. There's no guesswork involved with that. We've seen that four times this year and every other game he's played. So we game-planned it. We'll do what we need to do to get another win at home."
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:13 am    Post subject:

GROWTH SPURT
Brown has improved so much that Jackson wants him heavily involved in the Laker offense.
By Mike Bresnahan, Times Staff Writer
April 26, 2006

PHOENIX — A year ago seems like forever ago, an entire career slipping away and returning to Kwame Brown in that time, a Washington Wizard reject now becoming Plan A for the Lakers in their first-round series with the Phoenix Suns.

Phil Jackson keeps emphasizing the necessity to pound the ball low to Brown, an unthinkable proposition only six weeks ago when the Laker center-forward was mired in a season-long tizzy, unable to catch the ball cleanly and rushing his shots.


But Brown is on the rebound from his hasty departure from the Wizards, who in 2001 made him the first high school player drafted with the top overall pick and four years later dropped him off on the Lakers' doorstep, goodbye note barely attached.

The Wizards should have been celebrating their first playoff appearance in eight years last season, but then Brown skipped a practice during their first-round series with Chicago. He claimed he was ill but later admitted he stayed away because he thought he would physically harm teammate Gilbert Arenas, who told Wizard Coach Eddie Jordan not to play Brown in Game 3 of the series, according to Brown.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:15 am    Post subject:

'At Guard, No. 24 ...Kobe Bryant?
Mike Bresnahan
April 26, 2006

After 10 seasons as No. 8, Kobe Bryant will be No. 24 next season.

The Laker guard will return to the jersey number he wore early in high school at Lower Merion (Pa.). Bryant wore No. 33 as a senior in high school but will not do so with the Lakers because it was retired after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's career.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:16 am    Post subject:


Lakers are in must-win spot

Steve Dilbeck, Columnist

PHOENIX - They'd better strike now.

Better get Identity Crisis No. 126 on the season behind them, pronto. Had best figure this out before staring straight at their quickest playoff exit in 10 years.

The Lakers need to steal a game in the desert. Need it quickly, too, while something resembling stealth can still be applied, while the Suns still tiptoe around overconfidence.

Understand this: The Lakers cannot afford to lose tonight and fall behind 0-2 to Phoenix. They're just too young, and the odds too overwhelming, to expect the Lakers to rally from down 0-2.

The NBA has played 333 of these best-of-seven series in its history, and in that time only 14 teams have come back after trailing 0-2. That's a nifty 95.8 winning percentage for teams taking the first two games.

Phil Jackson coached two of those 14, including the Lakers over the Spurs in '04. Back then, he led veteran, confident playoff teams that knew who they were, that were hardened by years of accomplishment. Now he leads Kobe and the Kids. The foundation is a tad shakier. There is no well of previous success to draw courage from, no inner confidence borne of championships past.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:17 am    Post subject:

All the pressure on the Lakers

GAME 2: A loss today and LA's chance of winning the playoff series would be extremely slim.

12:37 AM PDT on Wednesday, April 26, 2006

By BRODERICK TURNER
The Press-Enterprise

EL SEGUNDO - A loss tonight and the odds against the Lakers grow exponentially.

Teams that have taken a 2-0 lead in an NBA playoff series have won it 94.6 percent of the time. The Suns lead the Lakers 1-0 in the best-of-seven first-round series, and they will try to put the Lakers in a hole that few teams have been able to climb out of tonight in Game 2 in Phoenix.

"It's a big game," Kobe Bryant said. "We look forward to this challenge. It's a great opportunity for Phoenix to go up in the series, and we don't want to let that happen. We're looking forward to tomorrow's game."

Since 1956, only 17 teams have come back to win a series after trailing 2-0. The Lakers are one of those teams, having done it against the San Antonio Spurs in the 2004 Western Conference semifinals.

But that was a different team, one that featured Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Karl Malone, Gary Payton -- a team full of veterans. The only common thread between that team and this one is Coach Phil Jackson.

"It's happened numbers of times where teams get down two-zip in a series and win a series," Jackson said. "But no, you want to get that home game that you have to get after as soon as possible."
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:19 am    Post subject:

Kobe Feels Pressure

10:00 PM PDT on Tuesday, April 25, 2006

EL SEGUNDO - Kobe Bryant knows it. The Lakers know it. The Phoenix Suns know it.

If the Lakers are to have any chance at beating the Suns and evening the best-of-seven Western Conference first-round playoff series, Bryant likely has to get hot.

He followed the Game 1 plan of beating up the Suns inside with Kwame Brown and Lamar Odom, and Bryant said he'll do the same tonight in Game 2 at US Airlines Center.

But he knows he probably has to be more assertive, sooner than later.

"The shots that I got in Game 1 were very makeable shots for me. I got some really good looks," Bryant said. "I've just got to put them down."

Bryant missed 14 of 21 shots and scored 22 points, 20.5 below what he averaged against the Suns in four regular-season games.

Since the plan is to go down low, Bryant plans to operate out of the low post at times tonight.

"We'll definitely do some of that," he said. "We'll just read the tempo of the game and (decide) when to start coming to me a little bit. We'll just mix it up. We'll read the defense."
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:22 am    Post subject:

Suns confident they can outscore Kobe
By Jerry Brown, Tribune
April 26, 2006
Want to know why the Suns went to such great lengths to hand-pick the Lakers as their first-round playoff opponent?
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Why, in the season's final week, they leaned on all of their available, exhausted weapons to rally from a 17-point halftime deficit in Sacramento to win — then rested the troops a few days later in Los Angeles, accepting a beating at the hands of the Lakers with a shrug?

It's simple. While it's true the Lakers have basketball's single scariest scoring force in Kobe Bryant, the Suns know they can tame the beast by beating him at his own game — scoring. It usually goes like this: Kobe gets 40, the Suns get a win. Everyone — but Phil Jackson and the rest of the Lakers — goes home happy.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:24 am    Post subject:

Suns don't share doubts
D'Antoni expects more consistent offensive showing

Paul Coro
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 26, 2006 12:00 AM

There is concern that Kobe Bryant could go off tonight.

There are worries about whether the Suns can handle Lamar Odom's combination of size and inside-outside skills.

There is trepidation because of the Suns' second- and third-quarter futility in Game 1.
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And everyone seems more concerned about these things than Phoenix, which sits in the catbird's seat tonight with a chance to take a 2-0 playoff series lead against the Lakers at home. In 59 NBA postseasons, only 4.2 percent of teams down 0-2 in a seven-game series have come back to advance.

The Suns will concede that Bryant is going to be more aggressive tonight, that Odom is a perplexing problem and that they can't expect to survive another long stretch of playing slower and tighter offensively. There is no need, however, for the level of doubt some critics have expressed.

Coach Mike D'Antoni felt compelled to remind the Suns that they did what they were supposed to do Sunday - win.

"We're pretty confident in what we're doing," D'Antoni said. "We think we can do it again and do it a lot better."
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:25 am    Post subject:

Lakers want game run in slow motion

By KEVIN DING
The Orange County Register

EL SEGUNDO – With sheer force impossible for opponents to duplicate in any pre-series practice, Shaquille O'Neal used to dominate playoff openers for the Lakers. It was the main reason that before Sunday, the Lakers hadn't suffered a postseason-opening loss since 1996, the season before O'Neal arrived.

While the Lakers try to build Kwame Brown's inside game into something at least slightly comparable to O'Neal's, they would like to believe that the Phoenix Suns' speed is similar to O'Neal's power in one sense: Perhaps the reason the Lakers fell behind Sunday was that the Lakers were unable to prepare for the Suns' great speed out of the gate.

After a head-spinning opening sequence - Phoenix shot 60.9 percent from the field in taking a 39-29 lead after one quarter - the Lakers slowed the game down and rallied.

"They were attacking hard (in the first quarter), but I thought we kind of controlled the rhythm of the game after that," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said Tuesday.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:26 am    Post subject:

Suns feeling the need for speed
By Mike Tulumello, Tribune
April 26, 2006
In every game they’ll ever play under coach Mike D’Antoni, the Suns will try to force the fastest possible tempo.
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If the NBA cut the shot clock in half, to 12 seconds, that would be fine with them.

What was a bit surprising in their playoff opener was that the Lakers were successful — at least in the game’s midsection — at slowing the game down. This was true even though the Lakers are relatively up-tempo themselves; they wouldn’t figure to have the kind of punishing inside game that can slow the pace.

In a few cases — highly unusual for the Suns — they had to rush to get a shot off in the clock’s final five seconds.

Phoenix suffered from playing “about an average game,” Suns coach Mike D’Antoni said.

He credited the Lakers for “playing as hard as they can. They did a good job.

“But if we move the ball, we’ll find shots. That’s all we can ask.” “We didn’t space the floor, we didn’t run, we didn’t make decisions quickly,” Steve Nash said.

“We just didn’t create the opportunities we normally create.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:27 am    Post subject:

Lakers could learn from Suns

By JEFF MILLER
The Orange County Register

PHOENIX – Strangers, that's who the Lakers are losing to right now.

Maybe not strangers to you. Maybe not strangers to the Lakers. But rather strangers to themselves.

The Phoenix lineup Sunday? That was only the sixth time those five Suns had started together all season.

The guy who had 22 points and 15 rebounds? Tim Thomas wasn't even a Sun eight weeks ago.

The guy whose jumper broke a 75-75 tie to start the fourth quarter? Eddie House has played for five teams in the past three seasons alone.

Why is it that the Lakers need months to solve the triangle offense, but the Suns need only seconds to figure out each other?

"I think it's a great compliment to, oh man, what's his name again, Bryan, our old GM, you know," backup center Brian Grant says. Ah, Colangelo? "Yeah, Bryan Colangelo. That's the guy. He brought in a lot of pieces that fit together well."
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:31 am    Post subject:

Coaching won’t decide series
By Scott Bordow, Tribune Columnist
April 26, 2006
The best compliment legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant ever received was from Bum Phillips.

Phillips, who coached under Bryant at Texas A&M then later became the Houston Oilers coach, said Bryant “can take his’n and beat your’n, and then he can turn around and take your’n and beat his’n.”

There are a few coaches, like Bryant, so good at their job they can win even when they’re dealt bad hands. Bill Belichick is one of those guys. So is Bill Parcells.

By and large, though, coaches are only as good as the talent around them. Which is why I chuckled when I saw the Phil Jackson-Mike D’Antoni matchup receive so much attention before the Suns-Lakers playoff series.

You know which coach has the advantage?
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:32 am    Post subject:

Lakers hope to knot series at Phoenix

The Los Angeles Lakers hope to even their first-round playoff series with the Phoenix Suns at 1-1, when the clubs battle tonight at the US Airways Center.
,This is a best-of-seven series. Game 3 is scheduled to be played on Friday at the Staples Center.

On Sunday, Tim Thomas scored 22 points and grabbed 15 rebounds as the second- seeded Phoenix Suns knocked off the No. 7 Los Angeles Lakers, 107-102, at the US Airways Center in Game 1 of the set.

Thomas shot an impressive 8-of-10 from the floor, including 4-of-5 from beyond the arc, while reigning MVP Steve Nash finished with 20 points and 10 assists in the win over the Lakers for the Suns.

Five Phoenix players finished in double-figures, as Shawn Marion scored 19 points, while Boris Diaw and Leandro Barbosa both netted 15 during Game 1s victory.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:34 am    Post subject:

Suns: Phoenix aims to 'do it again' vs. L.A. tonight

PAUL CORO

The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX - The Suns concede that Kobe Bryant is going to be more aggressive tonight.
And Phoenix knows it may have trouble handling Lamar Odom's inside-outside skills, and that it can't expect to survive another long stretch of playing slower and tighter offensively.
But critics seem more concerned about these things than the Suns, who have a chance tonight at 7:30 to take a 2-0 first-round playoff series lead against the Lakers at home.
In 59 NBA postseasons, only 4.2 percent of teams down 0-2 in a seven-game series have come back to advance.
"We're pretty confident in what we're doing," Suns coach Mike D'Antoni said. "We think we can do it again and do it a lot better."
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:37 am    Post subject:

Lakers put baskets into game plan
Team doesn't figure to alter its scheme much from Game 1, when they got easy shots only to miss many of them.
By Phil Collin
Daily Breeze

Right down to the minutiae of the detailed game plan, the Lakers worked like a smooth-running engine.

All five starters scored in double figures. They got the ball inside, just as they planned. They finished with more rebounds than the Phoenix Suns, held them to 36 points over a 24-minute stretch and limited their turnovers to 10.

Expect more of the same tonight in Game 2 of the Western Conference quarterfinals, where the Lakers will trot out many of the same formulas in an effort to tie the best-of-7 series.

And how about making some shots? Well, yeah, there's that, too.

"Easy shots,'' center Kwame Brown said as he recalled the number of layups that stayed out of the hoop. "It was frustrating, but we've got another game and we have to come out and make those easy layups.''
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