The NBA season finally kicked in with some Christmas day action that included games with the league’s finest teams. Among the highlights of the opening game day was a rematch of last year finals between the Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks, won by LeBron James and Co.; a great match between the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics, on which Carmelo Anthony shined with 37 points for the Knicks win and a close and exciting match between the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers where none other than the reigning MVP was in charge of making the winning shot. Talk about clutch time brilliance: the LA Lakers were ahead of this one for the better part of the game. As a matter of fact the Lakers had an 11-point advantage over the Chicago Bulls in the fourth quarter before Derrick Rose brought up his game and got the Bulls rolling for a rally that cut the difference down in the last four minutes. He would eventually get pass Derek Fischer’s defense and drive into in the middle for a nice jumper over Pau Gasol to give the Lakers an 88-87 lead with 4.8 seconds left in the quarter. And this is the point in the story where we got to bring up one other talented player in the Bulls rooster: Luol Deng. It was Derrick himself who acknowledged how much teamwork this team put together. Deng scored 21 points, recorded 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 steals and one very important block for the night, but it was his work on the defensive end that made a huge difference. Just in the last 20 seconds of the match, he was responsible for stealing Bryant’s pass to Gasol to set up Rose’s winning shot. And as if that was not enough, it would be Deng himself who took on Kobe Bryant, mano a mano, and managed to block the would-be-a-winner shot from Kobe as the game expired. At the end, it was just not these two plays that made a difference. Deng was doing all sorts of dirty defensive work to keep Kobe from playing at his best. Still, the veteran all-star and the Lakers franchise player finished the game with 28 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 steals. Not that bad considering that he was playing with an injury on his wrists. Bryant wore a compression sleeve on his right arm while playing without a brace on his right wrist. It seemed that at moments he was having some trouble handling the ball, but his jump shot was smooth and his footwork was as good as it has always been. Then again, he had 8 turnovers for the night, but I guess we could blame most of that on his torn wrist ligament. Despite dropping an 11-point advantage at home against the Chicago Bulls in their opening game, many fans were happy with what they saw from the Lakers. Considering all the internal issues that were disjointing this team from it’s score last year, this team certainly looks much more bonded and synchronized. Now we’ll have to see how much ego-control can their new coach, Mike Brown, bring to the star-filled LA Lakers.
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