really? that’s the response I get hear? SPELL HIS NAME RIGHT?!?! Who the phuq cares? You obviously knew who I was talking about….

It’s good to know that I can go to just about every other teams blog and get decent conversation, engaging ideas, but if I need a spelling refresher with a condescending tone, I can come hear.

Yes, you’re right, the Lakers do seem to have trouble focusing on their games or bringing the right attitude every night. Without Yao, Houston is clearly the inferior team, and the fact that the Lakers lost twice to them by large margins implies that they might not have the right attitude. I’m not saying that attitude and focus don’t mean anything, because players are human and those variables are involved, but I think the media makes way too big a deal about those characteristics when judging the outcome of a game.

With the Celtics/Magic series, though, i see those as two pretty evenly matched teams and the series could go either way. To say that neither team has “desire” is silly; both teams are trying to win and the games are going back and fourth. The fact that Orlando had bad fourth quarters two games in a row doesn’t tell me anything about their attitudes and focus. Boston just played well those quarters while Orlando played poorly, just like the reverse happend earlier in those games.

I’m not saying that emotion and attitude isn’t involved in these games, because it obviously is, I’m just saying that we should be careful judging a player’s desire based on the results of a few games, and we shouldn’t try to guess what goes on inside a person’s head.

Right, but if he missed that one shot, nobody would be talking about the Magic almost blowing the lead in the fourth quarter. They would have won the series and everybody would be talking about how they had the “heart” to beat the defending champions.

And you’re right, I know some teams overachieve and other underachieve. Sometimes it may be lack of focus or whatever you want to call it, but most of the time it’s because the players played poorly for a few games. There is a lot of luck involved in these games, especially games that are close in the fourth quarter, but nobody ever writes or talks about that. If a team wins, it’s always because they have a “winning mentality” or they “wanted it more”, and if a team loses it’s because they lacked desire or focus or whatever. As I said, sportswriters and fans try to judge a player’s character and desire by their team’s wins and losses, and I think that’s a dangerous assumption to make.