Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Last night's Game 4 of the Lakers-Suns NBA Western Conference Finals, won by Phoenix to tie the series at two games apiece, featured a couple of outside-shooting bursts. In the second quarter, L.A.'s Kobe Bryant made six straight shots from beyond 20 feet, sandwiched between a miss at the beginning and end of the quarter(I've excerpted the following narrative from ESPN.com's play-by-play sheet).

11:30 Kobe Bryant misses 25-foot three point jumper
8:19 Kobe Bryant makes 21-foot jumper
7:52 Kobe Bryant makes 22-foot jumper
5:50 Kobe Bryant makes 25-foot three point jumper
5:24 Kobe Bryant makes 23-foot three point jumper
3:10 Kobe Bryant makes 22-foot jumper
2:03 Kobe Bryant makes 26-foot three point jumper
0:01 Kobe Bryant misses 27-foot three point jumper

Bryant also went 6-of-9 from the floor in the third quarter. He's had a lot of hot-shooting stretches over the years. It's somewhat hard, however, to classify him as a true streak-shooter, as he rarely exhibits prolonged coldness. Thus, his hot streaks might just be relatively small variations off of his generally high shooting percentage.

At the other end, Phoenix made three treys in a little over a minute (by Channing Frye at the 8:07 mark; Leandro Barbosa at 7:20; and Jared Dudley at 6:47) to key a 9-2 fourth-quarter spurt that boosted the Suns' lead from 89-87 to 98-89. The Lakers never got closer than within six thereafter.

As noted in the above-linked game article, "Frye had made 1-of-21 shots in the series and missed 18 in a row when his second shot of the night [in the second quarter], a 3-pointer, finally fell to the roar of the home crowd."

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