Thursday May 20 2010 – 10:04pm Eastern – Toronto, ON

I was supposed to check in with this earlier … but my prep for the “100 Holes of Golf” Charity Challenge has been taking a ton of my free time.  That, and just watching hoops!  But I’m back with a look at the Western Conference playoff picture.  Here we go:

1.  At this point in his career, my gut says that Kobe Bryant is completely cool with LeBron James or Kevin Durant winning as many MVPs as they want to; he wants rings, period.  That’s not to imply that LBJ or Durant don’t want to win championships as well, but Bryant is driven by more than personal glory at this stage of his career.  He is staring down Jordan’s rings and Magic’s titles with LA … not the regular season’s MVP award.

2.  Speaking of Kobe and LeBron … how is it / why is it that Kobe waits for the spotlight to come to him yet LeBron goes after it?  Perhaps it’s just a personality thing … but have you ever seen Bryant mugging for his teammates while they pretend to take his picture with an invisible camera?  Or does Kobe throw the rosin in the air and make a theatrical cloud of smoke every time he starts a game?  It’s just an observation.  To me, Kobe is more like MJ; the silent assassin kind of personality on the floor … but off the floor … a guy that can be engaging in interviews and comfortable in front of Hollywood cameras too.

3.  I was going to leave the “Kobe” topic alone and move on to something else, but speaking of Bryant’s Hollywood talents … did you happen to see ABC’s “Modern Family” last night?  If you haven’t see this show yet, it’s one of the best written and acted (and FUNNY) shows on television right now.  Bryant made a cameo on the season finale … check it out:

4.  If the story is true that Sasha Vujacic and Goran Dragic have some sort of rivalry going on, I’ll put my money on Dragic.  And, yes, I would have said that BEFORE his monster game (well, 4th quarter) against the Spurs as well.  Vujacic is coming off a career-worst 2.8 PPG … and he averaged less than 10 minutes of action over 67 games.  Whether he’s on a down-turn in his career or just having ‘one of those years’ it would appear that Vujacic’s struggles are coming at a time when Dragic is on the RISE!

5.  Look for Mark Cuban to be reaching into his wallet again.  Not only is he tugging at his purse strings for a potential pursuit of LeBron James this summer, Cuban can probably expect to be paying the head office before any other monetary exchange goes down!  Cuban’s comments about James could easily be construed as tampering by the league office and based on how the powers-that-be have handled the maverick Mavericks owner in the past, I can’t imagine the NBA won’t issue some sort of fine.  Oh, and for what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s any way in hell that LBJ is going to Big D.

Have a good one folks.  I’ll check back again soon!

E. Smith

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