NBA Championship: Lakers Vs. Magic

[dalakhani]

It will be interesting to see who wins the front line battle here. Although Orlando is a tough match up for any team, the lakers won't have nearly as much difficulty as the cavs just did. I pointed out in another thread that Cleveland had serious interior defense issues and that bore out. The lakers have viable big men that are in their respective primes that can actually defend the pick and roll.

If the lakers go small, odom matches up with lewis and ariza matches up with turk and bryant is allowed to rest by covering Lee or Pietrus. Gasol obviously won't be able to handle howard, but he will be a much better defender than Illgauskus was.

On the other end, things will be more difficult. Howard will take away a lot of the post offense the lakers used late in the denver series. I would bring Gasol to the high post and send odom to the low block against turk or lewis where he would have an advantage.

Unless bynum plays better than he did throughout the rest of the playoffs, he will be completely useless here. Perhaps he will see this as a challenge and try to step up his game against the best post player around. If that happens and we get the bynum that has flashed talent, the lakers will be impossible to beat. If not, he will be merely 6 fouls and 20 minutes and will be a massive liability on the defensive end.

I think the Lakers learned a lot from last year. Lakers in a 7 game epic.