NBA FINALS, GAME 3
Venue: Amway Arena, Orlando Date: 10 June Tip-off: 0200 BST Coverage: Live on Setanta Sports 2, Five television and highlights on the BBC Sport website LA Lakers triumph in Game Two Kobe Bryant posed in a full Barcelona football kit for the cover of a United States sports magazine earlier this season, talking about his love of the beautiful game. On Sunday night in Los Angeles, Thierry Henry - fresh from leading the Catalan giants to the Champions League title - returned the compliment by cheering on Bryant and his LA Lakers as they took a commanding 2-0 lead over the Orlando Magic in the best-of-seven NBA Finals. No sports league in America - possibly the world - attracts the celebrities quite like the NBA. Tiger Woods, for example, has both camps covered in these Finals, having grown up supporting the Lakers and now holding Magic season tickets close to his Florida home. On Sunday, however, from super fan Jack Nicholson - such a fixture courtside at LA's Staples Center that the super-expensive front row seats are known as "Nicholson seats" - to Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Rihanna, P Diddy and Leo DiCaprio - a ticket to game two was the hottest ticket in Tinseltown.  | 606: DEBATE |
Indeed, watching Nicholson has become a sport in itself, so entertaining are the Oscar-winning actor's antics. Early in LA's 101-96 overtime win, he jumped so high and screamed so loudly to protest against a refereeing decision that the TV producers replayed his reaction in slow motion so their commentators could analyse the 72-year-old's behaviour. Nicholson was not in camera at the business end of game two as Courtney Lee missed a shot with 0.6 seconds left in regulation time, which would have given Orlando an upset victory. But, that one moment aside, there was little to concern Jack, or the other glitzy Los Angelinos, as the underdog Magic continued to underperform on the big stage and LA coasted to victory in overtime. Bryant has been effective in the Finals and LA have played adequately but, as ESPN's JA Adande neatly put it, the Lakers are not winning these Finals - they are just not losing them. Orlando's tactics so far throughout the play-offs have been simple - either pound the ball inside to superb big man Dwight Howard or one of the five sharp-shooting guards in their squad hit shots from the outside. Sadly, in the two games Howard has hit only six of his 16 shots, for a total of 29 points, and the five guards - who hit 14 of their 43 shots in game one - made only six of 26 on Sunday. NBA highlights - Plays of the day Orlando, who lost 4-0 to the Houston Rockets in their only other Finals appearance 14 years ago, are heading for a similar embarrassment if those shooters cannot improve on that combined 29% success rate. "I think for the most part, LA's defence was good but we just couldn't knock anything down," said Magic coach Stan van Gundy. "We were just trying to see if we could get somebody out there who would make shots. I thought our guys fought hard but we couldn't make enough plays." In contrast, LA have the best playmaker in the game in Bryant, although even he seemed to be effected by the generally scrappy basketball that has been such a feature of this series. Bryant finished game two with 29 points and eight assists but in the nervy fourth quarter he missed three of his five shots and committed three turnovers. It is a sign of how badly Orlando are playing that they could not capitalise on a rare off-quarter from Bryant. As the series switches to Orlando for the next two games, the Magic need vast improvements - and hope Bryant remains off-key - if it is to last as long as Sunday's game five.
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