Some thoughts on the first two games of the NBA Finals, while chewing on the latest political wisdom from the great Rez Cortez.

- Kobe Bryant played a masterful game 1, and bailed the Lakers out in the biggest moments of game 2, but I can't get over Kobe's stupid scowl. Hey, look at me, I'm the best player in the world, I want to win the championship more than anyone in the world, I'm such a badass, look at me. Grrrr. What a phony. I feel dirty just watching him behave like that. And the media just won't get off the guy's nuts. As Simmons noted, this might be hell.

- By the way, ESPN's Tim Keown totally nailed this last month, during the Houston series:

Hey, Kobe, we know you're great. You know you're great. Shane Battier knows you're great. How about letting someone else say it first every once in a while? The way it works now, you're telling us so often that we're getting tired of it. Let us be the judge of whether someone can or cannot guard you. It's pretty self-explanatory, to Doug Collins and everybody else.

You see, I want to be able to enjoy Kobe's talent. I want to see it the way I see LeBron's: transcendent, mostly pure and emanating outward. It probably will never happen, though. Kobe won't let it.

For a guy with such a constant flow of creativity running through his game, it's amazing to see how calculated he is about his image. He comes across as though he's reading a script, and he's all wrong for the part (maybe Alan Alda reading a part meant for Harvey Keitel). There are just too many false notes, and the worst part is, he actually seems to believe this is what people want from him. This is the persona he has cultivated, and he's going with it no matter what. It's really kind of sad.

- I was surfing between the game and the live broadcast of WWE's Extreme Rules PPV, where Jeff Hardy beat Edge in an epic ladder match before losing the title a few minutes later to CM Punk, who cashed in his Money in the Bank contract. I wish the NBA were more like the WWE, so that Lamar Odom could turn on Kobe and hit him with a steel chair after another scowl.

- Then again, all the BS bailout calls that Kobe got at the end of regulation? That was totally WWE.

- It's hard to describe Pau Gasol's (and to a certain extent, Andrew Bynum's and Lamar Odom's) defense on Dwight Howard without getting homoerotic, but the length of the Lakers' big guys are really giving Dwight Howard a lot of problems. I know Stan Van Gundy's going to get killed for this, but I liked the adjustment where he had Hedo Turkoglu playing point. The Magic's point guards were killing them all game.

- Then again, JJ Redick wasn't much of an upgrade, was he? About a month ago in a PBA broadcast, Alex Compton mentioned that outgoing Ginebra import Rod Nealy thought so highly of James Yap, saying that he could play in the NBA and that he ought to try out. Of course, this left insecure Ginebra fans with their panties in a bunch. But watching Reddick tonight, I mean, there's no way Yap or even Dondon Hontiveros could be any worse than he was, right?

- The Rashard Lewis turn-and-fire three-pointer in overtime was the exact same play that produced Lewis' game-winner against Cleveland. Also the lob at the ring, with Turkoglu inbounding? It looked an awful lot like this one, except for the finish: