As most of you know I feel that stats are generally misleading. Play one team get tons of stats and lose. Play another team and suck up the stat line and win. I'm just not a stat guy. I feel far too often stats are used inappropriately to "annoit Lebron the next MJ" or to make your case against someone you don't like.  So I'm going to try and not do much of that. Just some general observations:

HEAT VS BULLS:

No suprise here that the Heat came out flat on ring night. This is exactly what I exxpected out of the Heat. Riley has been saying all along "this team is a veteran team and they will rise to the occasion when necessary". Sounds a little like Shaq saying "I'll make my FT's when they count" don't it?  This is a trademark of a Shaqille O'Neal team. He's not gonna be going for any 70 win seasons. He "paces" himself and always has and it infects everyone around him. Except it didn't infect Kobe. It drove Kobe nuts. And it will drive Dwade nuts in time. This is why Kobe and Dwade are arguebly the two best in the NBA today. They have the killer instinct in EVERY game that MJ had and they don't pace anything. They try to KILL EVERYTHING. It ate at Kobe bad and It will eat BAD at Dwade if things continue very long like we saw last night. Memo to Shaq: Wallace ate your lunch again last night. Have you no pride to get up against Ben whether it's the first game or the 7th game of the Finals?

The Bulls are ready to make a tItle push. They're two deep at every position. Hinrich played Wade to a standstill then Duhon added insult to injury. Nocioni and Deng (despite Deng's quick start) were a bit disappointing to me and Ben Gordon did his on again off again inconsistent act but overall the Bulls are just so deep they can tolerate on again off again personalities and still hammer you. I predicted the Bulls in the east finals and saw nothing on opening night to even give me a second's worth of doubt as to my prediction. Very good team.

SUNS VS LAKERS:

I've already heard that "the Suns scored 41 in the first quarter and then fell apart". Nonsense. The Lakers fell apart to start the game. 41 points for the Suns in the first quarter? NO run and gun team, not even the Suns, not even the old Spurs or Nuggets averaged 164 points a game. What happened was the Lakers came out flat and the Suns did what the Suns do. They ran against ZERO defense by the Lakers.

Then Phil settled the Laker kids down and they went to work.The Suns went over 100 points, But it was the Lakers who went over 110. This Laker team is suprisingly good scoring compared to last years and to erase a 15 point one quarter deficit and win by 10 shows character already that the Lakers didn't have last season.

The Lakers played without Kobe, without Kwame (their best interior defender), without Mihm, with a barely 19 year old Bynum making his first NBA start.

Odom was the key. He has looked all  preseason and then last night as tho he finally understands his role as point forward in the "chicago type triangle". He was decisive, he didn't stand and hold the ball like last year, he didn't have attention span problems like in the past and he RAN the offense. And that resulted in Bynum with 18 points,9 boards and 5 assists. (remember when everyone ohhhed and ahhhed about Shaq getting 5 assists "for a center"? Heh)  The Lakers got some firepower. Maurice Evans looked like he's the next Steve Kerr off the bench. This guy can light it up and went for  17 off the bench. And Farmar in his pro debut looked good. The kid is a wind walker and may well be the Lakers PG of the future very quickly.  All this bodes well for Kobe's return. He will now have spacing without other teams doubling him off the ball and tripling him on the ball.

Phil Jackson is trying to recreate the 'Chicago triangle" with Kobe in the MJ role and Odom in the Pippen role. I like what I'm seeing so far. Only thing is, if Bynum continues to improve? MJ and Pippen never had a dominant center. Whew. If Bynum is for real the Lakers could be a force to deal with come playoffs.

The Suns didn't play bad. They didn't play great. In my view the Suns need to sit down on their role players and define who are the Suns premier players. Barbosa got 30 last night but at the expense, in my view, of the rhythm of Marion and the entire team overall. Bell looked disinterested without Kobe to jawjack with (to parapharase Sun fan quickdrummer)or maybe the new contract has done to him what it's done to so many others, we'll see. It's hard to expect any credibility saying the Suns just looked like a team out of sync when they scored 105 points but it seems to me that they had too many role players jacking too many shots and Nash and Marion never got into their normal flow. Amare only took two shots and two fouls shots in 11-12 minutes. How you could ever know how his knees are doing when he doesn't touch the rock is beyond me. I just don't think Barbosa scoring 30 no matter how great a stat line it may appear, is the Suns game.  But again it's only one game. We'll see.

But as a Laker fan it sure is nice being 1-0 for a second. See you tomorrow.

If you are  sick of Charley Rosen's vicous attacks on players, his inability to be objective, his never ending negative columns please write to me MARK HOLLY at VelvetProductions@msn.com and join me in the CHARLEY ROSEN MUST GO campaign.

You can also help by copying this message and pasting it to the bottom of every blog entry you make on your own blog or post on others. This is gonna take some time but we the fans have a right to demand that Fox listen to us and get this travesty out of our lives.