Hornets at Lakers

The two best teams in the West squared off tonight in a great game from start to finish. Chris Paul showed why he should be named MVP if his team continues to play as well as they did last night for the rest of this season. The stat line of 32 points and 15 assists is absolutely amazing considering the fact that he was playing against the best team in the West. On the subject of the West, how bout that David west putting up 40 points against a front line of Bynum and Gasol, what a player he is. West played amazing in the playoffs last year and despite his lack of height(6′9 which isn’t that short) he still is able to get his shots off over 7 footers because of his amazing footwork. Footwork goes under appreciated in the NBA but if you can move your feet you will be able to get your shots off with relatively ease(eg tonight’s game).

As well as hornets played they still had to deal with Kobe who had an amazing 3rd quarter where he we had 20 points on8 of 9 shooting. Then the fourth quarter came a long and Kobe went 1 for 5 and the Lakers were pretty much looking at each other wondering what went wrong.  Before the game started Gary Payton was saying that the Hornets needed to keep Kobe below 40 points to get a win and they did barely(Kobe had 39). I think Gary watched Sundays game where the Lakers played against the Jazz and Kobe got 40, but the Jazz are not the Hornets. Speaking of the Jazz, since New Orleans has a team again can the Jazz and Hornets switch team names because there is no Jazz in Salt Lake City. David Stern seriously look into this because I really doubt that the citizens of Salt Lake City would care and I know the people of Nawlins would love that name back.

On the subject of Kobe, I have never really liked Kobe as a person or as basketball player, mainly because his team knocked out the Blazers and Kings in early 2000’s to eventually win titles in both of those years. However he is one hell of a basketball player who can turn on his scoring with a flick of a switch. I still think that he has trouble being able to score big numbers and get wins. There have always been comparisons of Kobe to MJ and they are valid do to the fact that they both can score a lot of points in variety of ways, however there is one thing separating the two. MJ had his highest scoring averages before he won his 6 titles and Kobe had them after the won his 3 titles. Kobe is  starting to score less and pass more, but you can tell he wants to have another 81 point night. He is one if you remember who ran Shaq out of town and left himself on team where nobody is anywhere near his skill on his team. Pau is good but he has always been just a boderline All Star and Bynum is all hype. Tonight showed me why the Hornets are the team of the future and the Lakers will atleast have fun watching Kobe put up big numbers. Magic even said that the Lakers are not yet at the same level of the Celtics and Hornets definetely exposed that tonight.  The Celtics are starting to go on a slump recently as well and it looks like New Orleans and Cleveland are looking to get their number one spots come playoff time.