May 27, 2009: The Day Kobe Bryant Gambled and the Lakers Became Champions
If the Lakers win the championship this season, it will be because of the Denver Nuggets. Rather, the Nuggets and whatever happened at the Lakers facility on May 26.
By May 25, the Nuggets had fought the Lakers to a standstill, a 2-to-2 tie after four games, and had actually outscored the Lakers overall by 14 points.
That's incredible. A seven game series can be viewed as a single 336-minute affair, and the Lakers were losing after four games. Yet as we all know, they won 4-to-2 and finished +22 for the series.
The Lakers were struggling, looked disjointed, and nothing like the juggernaut that accumulated 65 wins in the regular season.
What happened was the playoffs raised the stakes and the intensity. And "Dominant Kobe" emerged aga...
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