There isn’t a more unoriginal message to deliver to your critics than “kiss my a**.” Heck, Tom Coughlin said it to his Giants after they failed to qualify for the playoffs less than a month ago. Considering some of the notable Laker critics have been names like Magic Johnson and Jerry West, it may be a little more surprising to hear Kobe Bryant saying it. Still, who can blame him?
The Lakers have played stretches of very bad basketball this season. They’ve gone through losing streaks of three and four games and have lost four out of their last eight. Is it time to panic? When we’re talking about a team that has won two straight NBA championships and appeared in three straight NBA Finals, I’d have to lean toward absolutely not. Kobe concurs.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Bryant said regarding his critics according to Pro Basketball Talk. “People that criticize can kiss my a**. I don’t give a s***. I really don’t. I keep the train moving, we’re going to keep on moving, and in June, they’ll say nothing. But now, it’s good talk.”
David Stern certainly doesn’t want to hear it, but the bottom line is the regular season in the NBA is as meaningless as it gets. Seeding plays a minimal factor in the NBA playoffs. Home court advantage really boils down to how much time off you have between games, as we showed you earlier this season. In a seven-game series with both teams receiving equal rest, none of that matters.
The Celtics coasted through the regular season a year ago and looked as though they didn’t have a care in the world how many games they won. Their goal was to make the playoffs and be healthy when they did. They achieved that goal and rode the wave all the way to Game 7 of the NBA Finals, which they could have won had Kendrick Perkins played. The media can blow the Lakers’ funk out of proportion as much as they please, but at the end of the day the road to a Western Conference championship will more than likely go through Los Angeles.
