The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

The Boston Revenge Party: Lakers v. Celts

I was really hoping to get to write this article specifically because I didn't think that I would get the chance to do so. 

Why? Because experience has taught me that a tiger doesn't change its stripes.  Bad habits once set, simply run amok at the worst possible times. 

But, you know what?  Every rule has an exception, and this year has been the exception. 

Consider the NBA elite of Cleveland, LA, Boston and Orlando. The two that remain standing (i.e., the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers) went through the most stretches of games where they couldn't seem to "bring it" every night.

Given that they are both decidedly veteran teams, it was never clear how much of this affect was a function of injuries, lack of discipline or saving it for the stretch run. Regardless, as a fan it was a major buzz kill. 

Yet, here we are; Lakers-Celts, meaning that the moral of the story this season is that a tiger WILL change its stripes. Thus, you should enjoy watching professional basketball's equivalent of Haley's Comet for it's a rare occurrence indeed.  

Basketball as Boxing Match

This one is just too juicy. One season removed from a mental collapse against Boston, the Lakers are the world champions. 

Last year, they grew big time, winning the big games home and on the road, not to mention making the key plays and finding the resolve to execute with the outcome on the line.  I felt very confident last year that the Lakers would be champs, irrespective of the competition. 

Unfortunately, Boston wasn't up to the task of meeting for a repeat last year, but make no doubt about it; these are two teams that want to face each other.

A gimpy Bynum is what it is, but I actually think that he has found a slot where he can positively impact the game. 

A key question, though, revolves around Pau Gasol executing in the post on offense and being a factor on defense. At the end of the Phoenix series, his rebounding numbers, scoring and defensive positioning wilted (he got manhandled too often by Amare Stoudemire). 

By contrast, Kobe appears to be in a zone, nailing corner jumpers, making beautiful, insanely difficult plays, and deftly measuring the situation, then responding. The Mamba moniker no longer seems like hubris. We are bearing witness to true "not on my watch" brilliance.  

Ron Artest seems to have found his place in the offense, and his defense has been excellent in the post season. Boston is exactly the type of team the Lakers acquired him for. If he can neutralize Paul Pierce's effectiveness, that would be huge. 

Derek Fisher has played surprisingly well against elite, speedy guards this post-season, and Lamar Odom has been mostly good as well, but has the potential to disappear or dominate from one game to the next.

Similarly, the Lakers as a team are now very experienced in the post season of dealing with different styles of play, and seem comfortable changing up the floor and flow accordingly. 

Boston is tough, and proud, and Rondo adds a major dimension (thank god for the Russell Westbrook experience against the Thunder). Ray Allen is playing ageless, is clutch and has history with Kobe. Kevin Garnett is mostly healthy and good for 17 and 10. Kendrick Perkins enables Boston to literally clog the lane. Rasheed Wallace has the potential of winning a game by himself, or laying an egg, depending on the night.

This is going to come down to stretches of play and match-ups, and I would be lying if I suggested that I know who is going to win. But I am picking the Lakers in seven anyway, mostly because I think that the Lakers have the personnel, the experience and Kobe Bryant is back in his element. 

An aside, don't you think that Phil Jackson desperately wants to stick it to Boston?  Or that Paul Pierce wants to prove to his dominion playing nearby his old neighborhood in Inglewood?  

There is so much history to this rivalry. I personally grew up on Bird versus Magic, but a little Revenge Party is more than fine by me.  Go Lakers!

Related Posts

1. The Tiger’s Stripes: Why the Lakers Will Not Repeat as NBA Champions
2. Magic & Bird - A Courtship of Rivals (awesome documentary on HBO)
3. Lakers-Celts and the Sporting Metaphor

The Wisdom of Kobe

If you didn't watch last night's thrilling ending of Game 5 between the Lakers and Suns, you missed a good one. 

The game was not quite a classic, but was, instead, more akin to a good boxing match, where both boxers had different skills, and each time the champ (Lakers) looked ready to deliver the knockout blow, the challenger (Suns) fought back, showing tremendous poise.

Trying to make sense of it all, knowing the Lakers history of these kinds of finishes (Horry, Fisher, Pau, Artest), I was particularly struck by a comment by Kobe Bryant in the post-game interviews:

"All of this preparation, and in the end, it comes down to fundamentals. They got the three because we didn't box out. We got the win because they didn't box out."

Sometimes, it's as simple as that.

WATCH Video of Game Highlights:

Unicorn Shots Deluxe is a Featured App in the iPhone App Store

 

(We're featured in both 'In the Spotlight' and 'What's Hot') 

Related Post:

1. Unicorn Labs launches; Unicorn Shots is live in App Store (#23 in Photography)

The Lamar Game - Lakers take Suns in Game 1

Kobe had 40. Pau scored 21, and has been playing phenomenal on both sides of the ball for a good month or so; but it's almost a foregone conclusion. 

When Lamar Odom is on, the Lakers are pretty much unbeatable. 

Tonight Lamar was on, and the Lakers stream-rolled 128-107.

Phil Jackson-coached teams are 46-0 in Series that begin with the Lakers winning Game 1.  

In other words, this was a statement game about imposing will. Once, again, the Lakers size was a factor. 

They present a lot of matchup problems, devastatingly for teams that play the skill game, as opposed to the physical game.  

Lamar Odom is tailor-made for this type of Series, which leads me to believe that the Suns are in trouble.

Its almost like the Lakers ignored their "unfair advantages" all season. 

Then, finally in the playoffs, they woke up.  Can a tiger change its stripes?

Related Posts

1. The Tiger’s Stripes: Why the Lakers Will Not Repeat as NBA Champions
2. The Anaconda Squeeze: Why the Lakers Will Beat the Magic
3. Lakers-Celts and the Sporting Metaphor

Adobe Crumbling: Is Winning Mobile Flash Fight Critical to Company’s Success?

  

"Pretty sure Adobe didn't care about 'open markets' until they got locked out of one." – Dave Winer

In ramping up its on-going PR blitz to try and sway public opinion in favor of forcing Apple to support its Flash Runtime model, Adobe is facing three fundamental challenges.

One, at this point it lacks great, un-bloated products that make their user base want to step up and defend them. Contrast this with Apple, where the term 'fanboy' speaks volumes about the dedication of its users.

Two, Adobe now lacks an execution culture that would have otherwise rendered the mobile flash topic moot by virtue of simply winning mobile market share before and/or during Apple's ascent with iPhone, iPod Touch and (now) iPad, a blockade that is now 85M devices strong.  

After all, how long has Adobe been promising Mobile Flash, and how many devices is it actually running on out in the wild after all these years?  In absence of a winning offense, all that Adobe has to roll out is a feeble defense? C'mon.

Three, Apple's embrace of native, governed platforms is paralleled by their embrace of HTML 5, WebKit and other best of breed open Web technologies, which renders huge chunks of Adobe's campaign murky at best. 

Simply put, proprietary Flash hardly passes the open 'sniff test' that Adobe's leadership is trying to wordsmith around at a time when Apple is clearly playing a leadership position in pushing the open mobile web forward. 

Adobe Co-Founder: Flash Fight Isn't Critical To Company Success

There is an axiom that it is hard to PREVENT something that you are simultaneously PREPARING for. Thus, it seems that in Adobe Co-Chairman and Co-Founder, Chuck Geschke, asserting that the "Flash Fight Isn’t Critical to Company Success" that he is effectively preparing his company for failure.

But this begs the question. Is this assertion even true?  After all, Adobe has three core lines of business: Print Design Solutions (Photoshop), Web Design Solutions (Flash) and Document Management Solutions (Acrobat).

The print products are getting long in the tooth, and Adobe is widely perceived to have created bloatware and kept the price of products like Photoshop and Illustrator artificially high. This segment was once the core bedrock of the company's stellar reputation and strong relationship with its user base. These days, it is unquestionably less so.

By contrast, the company's position with respect to Acrobat, appears rock solid and highly profitable, with no real competition in the immediate horizon.

Hence, the pivot feels like Flash - exactly the reason a Co-Founder would dismiss its importance. 

Why do I say it feels like the pivot? Desktop is slowly giving rise to Mobile, and in mobile, Flash is exceptionally weak (read: non-existent). If Adobe fails to secure a beachhead in Mobile via Flash (thanks to a combo of Apple's blockage, emergence of HTML 5 and Adobe's poor execution), it could easily see its Web design tools become less relevant, weakening synergy with its Print Design Solutions.

In such a scenario, Adobe starts to look like a one-trick pony, which isn't tantamount to death – just irrelevance.