Even Labron concedes that Kobe is the League's Best. Paul is great, Labron is a beast. Kobe is probably the 2nd best player of all time. As much as it pains me to say that, it's true.
it was a VERY VERY nice win, but they were without Paul and Chandler. you could see that they had ZERO playmakers on the court with CP3, and West and Peja couldn't create their own shot if their lives depended on it. as it is they should take it and run, don't look back. clear this win from their minds and take care of business.
Okay Okay point taken. However I'm sorry but there is just no such thing as a "Bad" win during the first game of a road trip especially against a conference rival. The confidence we gained from this win is un-deniable and HUGE. We'll meet again, and more importantly we'll know that our first priority will be to take out Chris Paul. While not easy to do its what were gonna have to do to be a contender in this league. Important lesson, very good win.
By all rights we should have lost this. Paul is their leader and seeing him go down made their entire team waver. Our defense wasn't making them toss brick after brick. The first 3 quarters should be addressed next practice. Otherwise, good win. Go Blazers!
If you're a playoff team, up 20 at home with one quarter left, and all but buried another team, and you still have an All-Star on the floor... you should be able to close it out. It was a great win IMO. We could've easily have given up.
That doesn't mean he's any less effective as a player. When you have a 20 point lead going into the fourth, I don't care what you have on the floor, they are all NBA players and you shouldn't fold and end up losing by 8.
If Tyson Chandler made it last year or this year, I'd say that. But David West is a stud in this league and still an underrated player IMO. I'm guessing if the coaches voted him in twice in a row, it's legit.
Paul is a great offensive player (and an okay defender) but he doesn't mean that much to their defense. Portland ripped them apart offensively in the fourth quarter, and I'm not sure that had much to do with Paul's injury. Had Paul played the fourth quarter, New Orleans may have scored enough to hang onto the win, but Portland was a whirling dervish in the fourth quarter. A big reason Portland was trailing by so much in the third quarter was because they had underperformed on offense pretty significantly up to that point. Paul getting hurt was the turning point for New Orleans' offensive night, but they could have survived that. What killed them was that that coincided with Portland finally waking up on offense. They couldn't survive both things.
He still has to make his shots, of course, but you have to agree, that Paul gets him many open looks. Without Paul, I doubt West is a 20 ppg player or all-star.
I think he could score 20 ppg, but All-Star, who knows. He's still an elite PF in the league, and should've been enough for New Orleans to hold onto a 20-point lead in a quarter.
