Showing posts with label pau gasol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pau gasol. Show all posts

Lakers: Trade Andrew Bynum for Dwight Howard?

0 comments Sunday, 8 May 2011

The Lakers have just been swept by the Dallas Mavericks.
And after the sweep, there is now some major house cleaning to be done.
The Lakers might be on their way to adding Orlando Magic star Dwight Howard after the Lakers' improbable loss to the Mavericks, by trading still young and promising center Andrew Bynum.
It would have very little to do with Bynum's comments about the Lakers having trust issues, the sweep to Dallas, and the flagrant foul on Jose Juan Barea that resulted in Bynum's ejection, though none of those things helped.
No, it has more to do with Dwight Howard. The Magic center was rumored to be traded to Los Angeles during the regular season because there is the possibililty that the Magic won't be able to retain him.
Receiving Bynum in exchange might actually be a coup for the Magic. Bynum's upside is huge. The Lakers' center was taken as the team's first lottery pick since 1994 in 2005, and was groomed by legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Orlando would be adding a quality offensive player, who is younger than Howard. It also helps that he was pushed hard by the most competitive player in the NBA in Kobe Bryant, and the most demanding coach in the league in Phil Jackson.
Indeed, the Lakers have invested a great deal of time and effort in Bynum, but this could be his last hurrah. The addition of Howard might be too good to be true, and general manager Mitch Kupchak won't be able to pass it up.
The benefit of having Howard is limitless. Perhaps the best defensive center in the league, Howard is desperate to win a ring, and has no injury history, unlike Bynum.
Howard has a career-scoring average of more than 18 points, and has averaged nearly 13 rebounds per game. At 25, he still has great years ahead of him.

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Dirk Nowitzki Leads Mavericks To 98-92 Victory Over Lakers

0 comments Saturday, 7 May 2011

DALLAS — Kobe Bryant knows the deal. His Los Angeles Lakers are down 0-3 to the Dallas Mavericks and none of the 98 NBA teams facing that deficit have ever come back to win a series.
Yet Bryant also knows his team has won the last two championships, and reached the finals three straight years. And that his soon-to-be-retired coach has won a record 11 championships and has never been swept in his 20 years on the sideline.
Bryant also realizes how close his team is to leading this series 2-1. They blew a 16-point lead in the opener, losing only in the final seconds, and on Friday night they fell apart down the stretch again on the way to a 98-92 loss.
So, with all that in mind, he made this declaration following the Game 3 defeat: "I think we're still going to win the series."
Confidence, eh? Well, he also prefaced that line by laughing and saying, "I might be sick in the head or crazy."
The Lakers have mostly themselves to blame for being in this predicament. Leading by seven with 5:05 left, and having controlled the game throughout the second half, they got sloppy on defense. They gave Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Peja Stojakovic wide open shots, and that turned things around in a hurry.
A 20-7 closing run jump-started by 3s from Nowitzki and Stojakovic put the Mavericks on the verge of not only winning this series, but pulling off a sweep. Dallas can move to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2006 with a victory at home on Sunday.
"We're not good enough to relax or take the pedal off the metal," Nowitzki said. "You don't want to ever give a champion life, so hopefully we can have the same effort and the same crowd and a great game on Sunday."

The Mavericks scored 32 points in the fourth quarter, the most by either team in any period this series. Bryant said the Lakers helped by making "some of the dumbest defensive mistakes I've seen us make all year."
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