Wednesday Afternoon NBA Time Waster: LeBron vs Kobe In 2008

Congratulations to everyone on officially making it to the home stretch of being half way through your work week. It couldn’t have been easy, I’m sure you wanted to give up along the way, but you powered through and the weekend is just a little closer. Allow me to help you get over the finish line with one of the best one on one duels in recent NBA history. The date was January 27, 2008 and the 27-15 Lakers faced off against the 24-19 Cavs. While the Lakers may have had more talent on paper, none of that really mattered. This matchup was all about soon to be MVP Kobe (28 ppg a year after leading the NBA at 31.6) vs young prime Lebron who ended up leading the NBA in scoring that season (30.0, his only scoring title). They certainly did not disappoint, with Kobe going for 33/12/6 on just 21 FGA (seriously!) and LeBron punching back with 41/9/4. Ultimately the Cavs won the game 98-95, but it wasn’t without drama. From the Lakers only scoring 14 points in the second quarter, to the Cavs sneaky pooping their pants in the third letting LAL back in it, to ultimately having their highest scoring quarter of the game in the fourth (29-24) to pull out the narrow victory.

It really is a shame we never got a Kobe/LeBron NBA Finals matchup, their timelines just didn’t quite line up. When LeBron was his monster young self, he still couldn’t get over his Celtics demons, and then once he got to MIA and started making the Finals every year, the Lakers had already begun their decline from a 57 win team in 2010-11 to a 17 win team when Kobe retired after the 2015-16 season. Of all the matchups we’ve had in NBA Finals history, I feel like we deserved to see these two go head to head on the biggest stage. Very sad!

Anyway, enjoy this nice little 14 minute video to get yourself to quittin’ time

Good work today guys, see you all again tomorrow afternoon.