Lakers - Rockets Series

My prediction: whoever wins game 2 will win the series. The Lakers cannot shoot worse as a team than they did last night. They make a couple of those open threes and that game is a toss up. Lakers can play pick and roll Odom and Gasol and the Rockets will not be able to stop it. Will Kobe allow this? Will Odom be up for this task for 4 games?

On the other hand, Fisher cannot guard Brooks and Kobe will not dominate this series because Battier and Artest make him work hard for his points. Plus, Kobe is scared to shoot over Yao when he gets in the lane.

Yao will get tired in games or in the series. He might also get in foul trouble. This spells trouble for the Rockets on both ends of the floor. At the same time, we might see the emergence of a new superstar - a ginormous center who can play both ends of the floor - shoot - clog the middle - and who will be taking clutch shots down the stretch. I can't think of the last big man that a team used as their "closer." Hakeem?

But the Lakers are both a team of headcases and a headcase of a team. That is to say, collectively, they are dysfunctional. Artest may be a headcase, but the Rockets as a team, are not. Somehow it works. Same with old Rasheed and the Pistons a couple years ago. In fact, the old school, Bad Boys Pistons were full of headcases, but as a team were not. In contrast, the Lakers are just weak willed. You saw it in the finals last year and in the Utah series in different ways. Collapsing against a tougher, but arguably less talented Celtics team and then allowing a much less talented team to come back from huge deficits in the first round. A headcase team falls down 2-0 against a pretty tough Rockets team and I think they lose the series.

Individually - Odom is a headcase. He only plays when he wants to play. Vujicic is a war criminal and probably murdered his neighbors during the Bosnian conflict as a young lad. Fisher is not a headcase, but is too old to guard the fast point guards in the league. And Kobe. Someone told me today Kobe is not a narcissist, he is actually a Solipsist - "a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own odifications and that the self is the only existent thing." Basically, as far as Kobe is concerned, he is one big brain in a vat and the rest of the world merely neurological stimuli (as opposed to something that exists). I think this explains him and his attempt to destroy Yao's knee in the 4th quarter and when he tackled Battier after he stole the ball (which reminded me of a middle school play).

UPDATE: Dirk is a big man closer for Dallas. Just thought of that watching Den-Dallas.