Twenty-four has seldom looked that bad.
Be it 24 points scored in an NBA game, normally a respectable total, or No. 24 himself.
Kobe Bryant scored just 24 in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, heaving 26 shots to get it. The Lakers, of course, lost.
Yes, the Celtics played some pretty good defense on Bryant, as they did in the regular season. And, yes, there are murmurs that Bryant’s struggles mirror his last performance on the Finals stage, in 2004.
OK, did you get all that out of your system? Good.
Kobe’s gonna erupt tonight.
“He’s been an unstoppable force in this game — he usually doesn’t have two games in a row that are bad,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson told reporters Saturday.
With the way Bryant has played overall this postseason, and with the way he has bounced back from cold nights, he is due for a Kobe night.
More specifically, if one breaks down Bryant’s Game 1 shot selection, it wasn’t as bad as 9-for-26 looks. Ray Allen played admirable defense, but for the most part Bryant was able to get his body square. There were a lot of in-and-outs.
“I just missed some really, really good looks,” the MVP said. “Just had to tweak a couple things here.”
As for his playoff bounce-backs, Denver fans can dig up buried memories from the first round. In Game 1 of the first round, just like in Game 1 of the Finals, Bryant shot 9-for-26. And in Game 2 against the Nuggets, Bryant scored 49 points.
Now, on this grand parquet stage, it would make sense for Bryant to try to attack the basket early, if anything, to try to have a Celtic starter pick up an unnecessary foul.
“I wanted to try to make sure that I just tried to stay in front of him,” Allen said after Game 1. “He’s going to take shots, he’s going to make shots, so we just want to keep a swarm around him. Just giving him the easy buckets was something we didn’t want to do.”
Indeed, he didn’t get his easy buckets. But he got his looks, and that should make Bostonians uneasy.
Nene resting.
Nuggets forward Nene will not play for his native Brazil in Olympic qualifying because Denver wants him to recover from injuries, the team confirmed Saturday.
Nene overcame testicular cancer last spring, and he also dealt with numerous injuries during the season, notably his thumb and groin, which bothered him during the playoffs.
Brazil has not qualified for the Olympics in basketball since 1996.
Denver promotion.
Nuggets assistant coach of player development John Welch has been offered a promotion to be one of the Nuggets coaches on the bench next season, replacing Mike Dunlap, now the top assistant at the University of Arizona.
“John Welch is tremendous — he deserves to be on the bench and will be on the bench next season,” said Nuggets coach George Karl, who also said Welch’s new contract hadn’t been signed, but “that’s the desire.”
As for Welch, he is well-respected in the basketball community. In Sports Illustrated last spring, University of Memphis coach John Calipari made numerous compliments about Welch, notably that he’s “a basketball Benny.”
Though Welch had absolutely no idea what that meant, this Benny thought it was a pretty cool nickname.
