Game 31 | Cleveland @ Los Angeles | December 25, 2009 | 5:00 EST

[rabman_gold]

December 25th, 2009 (the big one):

Note: Some things need to be re-viewed so you can see the full movie and game thread accordingly.

Cleveland Cavaliers @ Los Angeles Lakers

@

Christmas Day; 5:00 PM (ET); National Television: ABC (Home of the 2010 NBA Finals, as usual); Staples Center, Downtown Los Angeles, CA

Matchup:

Head Coaches:
Mike Brown VS. Phil Jackson

VS.

Centers:
Shaquille O'Neal VS. Andrew Bynum

Shaq: "I served you up at 33. I can serve you up at 37!"

Power Forwards:
J.J. Hickson VS. Pau Gasol

Pau: "Damn. My brother got rejected by Hickson?! How embarrassing..."

Small Forwards:
LeBron James VS. Ron Artest

Ron: "Ready for an encore, Queen James." LeBron: "I'm gonna f#ck you up, b!tch."

Shooting Guards:
Anthony Parker VS. Kobe Bryant

Kobe: "Scuse me while I illegally shove you to get the ball." Anthony: "Shove while you can, 'cause the King's gonna be helping me step on the mamba."

Point Guards:
Mo Williams VS. Derek Fisher

Derek: "I'm just passing by." Mo: "Oh, cool."

Reserves:

• Big Z
• Wild Thing
• Globetrotter
• Go West, young man!
• Boobie
• D-Block (or my nickname: DJ3)
• Danny Green
• Jawad Williams (D-League Star)
• Leon Powe (Injury Reserve)
• The White Mamba

VS.

• Candy Boy Odom
• Josh Pow, right in the kisser!
• Bill's son
• The Other Sasha
• Mr. I-Can't-Listen-Worth-A-Damn-Until-My-Job's-on-the-line Brown
• Jordan Farmar
• DJ Hong Kong Fooey (or Mr. Karate Chop on LeBron)
• Mr. Summer League Star Morrison

Key Battles:

• Frontcourt Dominance
• Superstar Struggles
• Coaches out-coaching each other

Both teams are at full health (with exception to Leon Powe). This game is for keeps. If Shaq is in foul trouble, it could be a tough game with both Pau and Bynum out there, but Z is fortunately in reserve. We could see the twin towers for the first time in a long time. Andy will get big burn as well. If Odom makes an impact, expect LeBron, Anthony, or Jamario to guard him.

While the frontcourt battle will be gigantic, the perimeter battle will be painful. Ron Artest and Kobe are monstrous. LeBron will match them move for move, but it will be tough. Anthony, Jamario, and Delonte are going to have to bring their A game if this team wants to win.

The last battle will be seeing who will out-wit who. Phil Jackson is the master, but is age getting up there for him. Will Mike Brown be able to bring HIS A game? The adjustments will be critical going into the game, and once it rolls, it's up to Mike to bring the pressure.

What will this possibly mean on Christmas Day at 5 PM?

• The Cavs and Lakers, 2 of the best teams in the league, will square off with reputations on the line.
• Christmas Turkey is a dish best served cold, with a good helping of revenge, especially since the Cavs have lost 2 straight to the Lakers last season.
• LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, the past two Regular Season MVPs of 2008 and 2009, will prove who is currently the best in the league.
• The Lakers proved to be the superior team, against the Cavs and in the NBA in 2009. The Cavs will want to make a statement early on, even if they would rather make the statement in the playoffs.
• The Lakers posters on Real Cavs Fans will also make a statement against the main board. If the Lakers win, we'll be hearing it til next Christmas :chuckles:... no, not really. But they'll have the bragging rights. If we win, it's only a step towards the main goal, taking the crown away from the team that has it... in June.

If you want your good shit, you better watch this to the end...

Prediction for game: 105-104 (CAVS BABY!)

Sincere apologies to the Laker fans on this site. You guys and your team are cool. I'm just being festive.

Let the flame wars commence!

One more thing:

Splitz i hope you Randolphkeys, Cratylus or Typhoon get to do the CAvs vs Lakers game day just love you guys game preview...

Was that good enough for you? It better be...

 

[wuck]

Sincere apologies to the Laker fans on this site.

Let's save the apologies for after the Cavs crush their team.

 

[InBoobieWeTrust]

Very nice.

 

[Randolphkeys]

Glorious Game Preview!

 

[Andrew]

This gave me wood.

 

[Randolphkeys]

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^ I know it was already posted elsewhere... but here is the article out of LA that accompanied it.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-heisler-kobe-lebron20-2009dec20,0,380735,full.column

Nike is trying to create a competition between Kobe and LeBron James, but the Lakers' star has a 4-0 edge in titles and he's not slowing down.
By Mark Heisler

December 20, 2009
E-mail Print Share Text Size Now to see just whose age this is . . .

As Little Kobe and Little LeBron, the muppets Nike calls its "MVP Puppets," announced in their latest commercial, in which they play "SportsCenter" anchors, the rivalry is back on!

And just in time for Christmas!

With ESPN and Nike as core NBA sponsors, what are the chances Little Kobe and Little LeBron become the first muppets to anchor a real "SportsCenter" between now and the Lakers' Christmas game against the Cavaliers?

Nike debuted the muppets last spring, alongside its "Dream Season 23 & 24" documentary, in which narrator Justin Timberlake mused:

"As these friends grow closer to a showdown, you have to wonder, what are they thinking?"

By the Finals, where Orlando represented the East after stunning the Cavaliers, James was thinking, "What happened to my showdown?"

Nike doesn't retrench or rebuild, it just reloads. The muppets are back in more cute spots, like the one in which Little LeBron notes his King James namesake lion "could step on the Black Mamba and eat it and use his skin for his boots."

Talk about brilliant. Not only was Nike spared months of talks trying to get the real Kobe and LeBron together, it didn't even need a real rivalry!

In the real world (assuming there still is one) there's no rivalry at this point, and barely a competition.

LeBron may be younger, hotter commercially and perhaps even the better player, but that doesn't count.



In the one and only thing that does, Kobe leads in titles, 4-0, and he's on a Lakers team that looks stronger than it did winning last spring's title.

LeBron's Cavaliers are No. 3 in the East and live in fear of losing him as a free agent this summer.

In today lemmings' rush to celebrate and/or condemn, winning can rescue anyone from anything, as it has with Bryant.

And losing can curse anyone for anything . . . as it has with Bryant. It's not fair, or smart, but it definitely is.

Being one of the Final Four means that within 25 days, you can go from accepting the MVP trophy from David Stern to being torched nationwide for not congratulating the team that beats you, like James last spring.

No one suffered as many slings and arrows as Bryant, who was this good for a long time, while being vilified, as his own 2005 Nike ad noted, mockingly:

"Ball hog . . . You're garbage . . . Prima donna . . . Mental."

:stick:

By their last season together, Shaquille O'Neal had become Bryant's sidekick, as Kobe went to a new level while commuting back and forth to Colorado.

That one ended with the Lakers' loss to Detroit in the Finals, the trade of O'Neal . . . and the ostracism of Bryant for supposedly running off Shaq.

Two seasons later, Kobe awed his peers who had viewed him so skeptically, scoring 81 points in one game, 62 in another with two 50s and six 40s in a six-week, game-was-never-played-at-this-level burst.

That season ended with Bryant accused of "tanking" Game 7 of a first-round loss to Phoenix.

By the spring of 2007, seemingly cemented in mediocrity, Bryant turned on Lakers owner Jerry Buss, demanding to be traded.

Now, with a championship team having magically arisen around him, Kobe is Zeus.
After his running, banked three-pointer beat Miami, the New York Times' Larry Coon wrote, "It was luck in much the same way that Picasso lucked into 'Guernica,' or Beethoven lucked into his Fifth Symphony."

There's a school of thought that anything an artist does is art, held, at least, by some artists.

This wasn't "Guernica," just blind luck, noted Bryant, who's anything but bashful.

No NBA career ever had Bryant's highs and lows, and he didn't escape unscathed. Even in his bulletproof days, he was wary of outsiders, cocooned within his family that moved here with him.

Years later he found out how bulletproof he really was in a firestorm of a scandal that burned him to the consistency of charcoal.

Young Kobe was serene, took offense at little and gave visiting writers rides to their hotels. Grownup Kobe is polite but edgy, as sensitive to perceived invasions of his privacy as the princess who felt the pea under 20 mattresses.

If you dreamed his dreams, won three NBA titles by 22 and saw it all go wrong; if you were torched in a sensational scandal; if you then emerged to find yourself chained to a team going nowhere; and if you had the incredible drive it took to get that far in the first place . . . then you'd know how Kobe Bryant feels.

As it is, there was never anyone like Bryant and only he knows what it feels like.

The child who rushed headlong into manhood and stardom with all its pitfalls learned a lot of things the hardest possible way, but these are the good times.

Everything he dreamed of is waiting for him to claim it. It's not a child's vision, like the destiny he says he realized at 6. It's his life.

As he, himself, has said of his four title runs, it's the quest that counts. No NBA player, star or scrub on a 10-day contract, ever had his sense of mission, but he doesn't get to keep going on crusades forever, or even for long.

"That's hard for me to address," said Jerry West, mentor to Young Kobe and icon in his own right, asked what he wants for Bryant.

"Even to this day, I'm scarred from losses. And I was nuts, OK?

"With him, I think he's like a great artist of some sort. No one can define what makes him great. You think you can but you can't. He's a genius. He's a genius in a pair of basketball shoes . . .

"I'm not sure he realizes how much people in this city and the young kids love him. I wish that he would some day find that out. And if he would, he probably would have a greater appreciation for who he really is.

"But I think he enjoys playing the game, but it's war to him, and he wants to win every war."

It's certainly not war, even if you can get hurt -- your feelings mostly -- and everyone around you has so much fun being consumed in a pretend war.

It's not even bigger than life. It's life and life only, just on the most spectacular level you can imagine.

mark.heisler@latimes.com

 

[blank964]

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^ I know it was already posted elsewhere... but here is the article out of LA that accompanied it.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-heisler-kobe-lebron20-2009dec20,0,380735,full.column

Ok my head is spinning after trying to read that, first I thought it was about Nike continuing this "rivalry" between Kobe and Bron despite Kobe having four rings and Bron having zero (too many factors to even try to debate this and these are players from different generations) and then this turned in a biography about Kobe

 

[Earl]

Fantastic game preview. Love the use of the GIF's, guessing you made them yourself? Brilliant.

 

[Imadogg]

Sincere apologies to the Laker fans on this site. You guys and your team are cool. I'm just being festive.

AWW HELLLL NAHHHHHHHHHH.

No damn apologies, the post was very well done. And I'm sorry to the Cavaliers for having to face the best team in the NBA on Xmas.

Let's save the apologies for after the Cavs crush their team.

Hehe. We won't lose... but losing would be embarrassing...


This game better be good. Shaq will even show up to play. Kobe lets see how sick you can be

 

[BlueSeats626]

I've been wondering lately what the Laker girls order at Carls Jr.

Thanks rabman!

 

[Cratylus]

Great preview, Rabman.

 

[Rick Astley]

One of the best I've ever seen. Never knew this rabman kid is this talented. Keep up the good work!

 

[Backstage]

Props for making me choke on these delicious Frosted Flakes for the Fisher/Mo dialogue.

 

[Green Lantern]

Cavs..don't downplay this game..they beat us twice last year..make a statement and hit them hard!

 

[AMC]

Wierd cheerleaders, how is sign language a hooby/interest?