Golden State Warriors

Golden State Warriors

Kobe Bryant Blamed for Los Angeles Laker’s Game 2 Loss: Fan Reaction (Yahoo! Contributor Network)

Once the Los Angeles Lakers had been officially defeated by the Oklahoma City Thunder, Facebook and the forums on ProSportsDaily.com began to light up like a Christmas tree with words that blamed Kobe Bryant for the loss in Game 2. While I’m not sure if I wholly agree with everything other fans had to say about Bryant, let’s take a look at the plays down the stretch that would allow people to have formed such a strong opinion.

SF mayor seeks to woo Golden State Warriors (The Associated Press)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) City leaders in San Francisco are courting the Golden State Warriors, trying to woo the NBA team back to the City by the Bay within five years

AP Sources: Bobcats to interview Ewing next week (The Associated Press)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) Patrick Ewing is one of several candidates the Charlotte Bobcats will interview for their head coaching vacancy and the Hall of Fame center will meet with team officials next week, said people familiar with the situation.

Jazz reach goal yet not satisfied with playoff run (The Associated Press)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) As the seconds ticked down Monday in Game 4 of what would be a first-round playoff sweep, Utah Jazz forward Derrick Favors cursed all the way off the court.

The Utah Jazz? Gone till November (Ball Don’t Lie)

The Utah Jazz couldn’t even take a game in the team’s opening-round series with the San Antonio Spurs. It took a furious rally in the fourth quarter of Game 4 for the Jazz to even lose a game by single digits ; they lost the four games by an average of 16 points. The shooters weren’t shooting well, nobody could stay in front of Tony Parker, and one-time All-Star guard Devin Harris managed a shockingly low single-digit PER over the first three games of a four-game postseason.
And it doesn’t matter. Would we have liked to see the Jazz give the NBA’s hottest team a few more close games, or even a win? Sure. But this wasn’t ever supposed to be the year for Utah to attempt this. The Jazz went into 2011-12 fully ready to use each of the season’s 66 games to develop rotations, give Tyrone Corbin his first full year — if you can call it that with a shortened season and training camp, and so few practices — as head coach and see how well the team’s bigs played off each other.
The answers, some 5 1/2 months later? There still aren’t any. This group is still developing, and the playoff trip was a fantastic bit of gravy not so much for the extra gate revenue or needed work on an advanced stage against a championship-level team, but because it allowed Corbin and the Jazz more of what they needed the most — reps. What comes next? That depends on quite a bit.