Here's a new strategy to guarding Kobe: put Shawn Marion and Raja Bell on him and let him shoot away. I was over at some friends' house watching the game and the mantra whenever Kobe got the ball was, "You Know He's Going To Shoot It". And shoot it he did!
Kobe shot 7-26 and only scored 17 points. How in the WORLD does he expect to win against any team when he keeps shooting like that? The night before he scored 50 points and the Lakers still lost. He took 26 shots against the Suns and 33 against the Clippers. He made 17 of the 33 against the Clippers but he also took 3 times more shots than anyone else on the team.
Well, enough about a guy not even on our team. The Suns played pretty well, I think. Steve Nash, Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire all had double-doubles. Steve had another MVP performance with 26 points and 14 rebounds. Raja Bell was way off last night but he did his job by stopping Kobe. Leandro Barbosa also had a really off night scoring only 8 points on 3-10 shooting.
James Jones was a disappointment again. He shot 0-6 (0-5 from the three-point line). He was missing early and just kept going after that. But I was glad to see Steve encouraging him even as he was missing the shots.
My favorite part of the night? When Amare banked in two shots in a row. The first one definitely looked like an accident and afterward we saw several of his teammates speaking to him as he was laughing. I would imagine they were telling him it doesn't count if he doesn't call it.
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention, with how Amare was talking about the Lakers the other day, I would have thought he might show up a little more than he did. Sure, he had a double-double. But he shot 4-16. Amare HAS to do better than that if the Suns want to beat the Lakers in a 7 game series.
What did you think of the game?