Brawl at Dodger Stadium, And Celtics-Lakers Game One Thoughts
No quick-hitters today.
- So thanks to SlickDeals, I scored a pair of cheap field level tixs for Tuesday’s Rockies-Dodgers game. I expected to see two struggling offenses (check), solid pitching (nope), and the typical rude, obnoxious Dodger fans (check, naturally).
What I didn’t expect was a scrum, which is exactly what we got in the bottom of the eighth inning.
I remember seeing Matt Kemp strike out on that wild pitch, and as I went to sit back down in my seat, I saw the Rockies bullpen all of a sudden pour out. I stood back up immediately, and that’s when I saw Kemp fall to the ground.
Nothing like a brawl to energize an otherwise moribund crowd! For the rest of the game, the fans chanted “Rockies suck!” I wanted to remind the fans that the scoreboard said otherwise, but I had no intention of spending the night in a hospital room.
When the hell is Rafael Furcal coming back?
(After seeing the replay of the events that led up to the brawl, Kemp clearly overreacted. Torrealba didn’t even shove him, and Kemp acted like he got sucker punched. Yeah, Torrealba shouldn’t have shoved Kemp in the throat, but Kemp was clearly the instigator. I thought Kemp deserved a five game suspension—one more than he got—and Torrealba should only have gotten two—one less than he got.)
- Once Paul Pierce returned from the locker room after his injury, you could just feel the game slipping away from the Lakers right into the laps of the Celtics. Add some great lockdown defense on the Lakers down the stretch, and it wasn’t hard to see how the Celtics surged ahead of the Lakers in the second half.
(Damn PJ Brown! That guy was EVERYWHERE in the fourth quarter! Someone give me some of the magical potion someone obviously gave him :P)
Everything that could have gone wrong in this game probably did for the Lakers. And even as I typed that, I knew that Boston didn’t play their best game either. It might only be one game out of a possible seven, but the Celtics are clearly the better team right now.
KG got off (Gasol’s got no chance against him), Allen got off to a great start, and then there was Pierce. And it seemed like, every time Boston needed a play, one of their role players happened to be there to do so.
(Freaking PJ Brown.)
At our lunch last weekend, I was told that the key to the series was stopping Paul Pierce. Personally, I thought the key was figuring out which Kobe Bryant was going to show up. We can both be right, no?
And what was with the Lakers committing so many stupid, away-from-the-basket, in-the-penalty fouls?
(Mark Jackson just said that the Lakers need Kobe to make the right play, and then Kobe goes ahead and takes a terrible three-point shot.)
The Lakers better plan on stealing Game Two if they want any chance of winning this series. Otherwise, this series could be over in as soon as five games.
If there’s anything to be positive about, the Lakers got trounced pretty well in the first road game of their series against Utah and San Antonio.
And the Lakers can’t possibly miss that many open shots in Game Two, right?
Right?