Kobe

I am currently in the land of the Penguins, and while I cheer for any Pittsburgh team, I know very little about hockey and can't get interested in watching it. So tonight I watched the first game of the NBA finals, and it's clear already that whatever some idiots have suggested (just don't look back too many posts in the past), the LeBron era isn't ready yet. This is still the Age of Kobe.

The Lakers used their height and a strategy based on it, that was successful in the last two games against Denver, to dominate the Orlando Magic, especially defensively. But it was the one superstar wrecking crew named Kobe Bryant who destroyed Orlando, leading the Lakers to a 25 point victory.

He played as if it was game 7, and strategically it was almost as important-- when Phil Jackson coached teams win the first game, they win the series. The Lakers took the Orlando energy and the surprise insertion of a great player who has been injured nearly all season, and absorbed all those punches. They maintained their own energy, getting defensive stops to match their offensive output in the second quarter, and then Kobe just took over the third quarter, scoring from everywhere and in every way. It was a classic performance.
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The Terminator vs. the Helpless:With this photo of a demonstration against health care cuts in Los Angeles by health care workers and patients, the New York Times story about the California budget cuts: "The cuts Mr. Schwarzenegger has proposed to make up the difference, if enacted by the Legislature, would turn California into a place that in some ways would be unrecognizable in modern America: poor children would have no health insurance, prisoners would be released by the thousands and state parks would be closed. Nearly all of the billions of dollars in cuts the administration has proposed would affect programs for poor Californians, although prisons and schools would take hits, as well."