NBA Finals: Los Angeles Lakers are 2010 Champs
- Author: Min-Q Kim
- Posted on: Friday June 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM
- Filed under: sports, basketball, los angeles lakers, kobe bryant, phil jackson, ron artest, pau gasol, boston celtics, nba championships, game 7, exclusive
Tip off. The game that followed was Homeric.
Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals was a knock-down drag out fight -- a real battle that felt like it should have been played in a back alley than under the bright lights of the Staples Center. Celtics vs. Lakers, in one game for all the marbles? What more do you want?
Old time basketball. Players left years off their lives on the floor on this night.
Kobe Bryant went up against Boston's Big Three, and while he was named the Finals MVP, this championship was won in the trenches, in the paint, with the Lakers crashing the boards for 23 offensive rebounds, despite only 32 percent shooting. Kobe played possibly his worst game in these playoffs -- hey, maybe the best get nervous too -- but his teammates, namely Pau Gasol and Ron Artest, picked him up big time, and pulled out a victory to give the Lakers a 16th NBA Championship.
The hard-earned victories are always the sweetest. "I wanted this one so bad," he'd say after the game. "I fell victim to it."
This was basketball at its best -- say what you will about the referees, they let the teams play. They probably could have called fouls on every possession; it was just a physical game. The Celtics didn't go quietly. They drove the Lakers to the brink, and made them lay their very souls on the court to earn this one. This game brought grown men to tears, and amazingly, the best player on the planet Kobe Bryant was on the bench at the end of the 3rd quarter and the beginning of the 4th -- his coach's way of saying, "tonight, your teammates will bring you home." And let's give credit to Phil Jackson, who won his 11th championship, further cementing his case for Best Coach Ever.
Phil Jackson is the most decorated coach in NBA history, with 11 championships.
And we'd be remiss if we didn't bring up Ron Artest's post-game interview, which is taking the internet by storm today. He answered a question about the importance of rebounding in supporting his struggling teammate Kobe Bryant by thanking "everyone in [his] hood]," his shrink, and then plugging his new single (called Champion! He did a song called Champion! Lasssstttttt June! Ungh!).
Here's an amazing statistic: of the 64 championships in NBA history, the Lakers or the Celtics have accounted for 33 of them. That's more than half. If you throw in the 6 that Michael Jordan won with the Bulls... The NBA has been dominated by just a handful of dominant players. Three of them are pictured here.
Celtics great Bill Russell (11 championships) hands the Bill Russell Finals MVP Trophy to Lakers great Kobe Bryant (5 championships), with fellow Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (6 championships) looking on. That's a lot of hardware in that picture right there.
(Photos: Getty Images)
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“ Champion! ”
“ Lakers!!!! ”
