I've been a huge Gasol fan, since about '04. The dude is a force, comparable to Patrick Ewing, though not as dominant in the paint or as good of a jump shooter. Still, he has a lot of the same skills set, plays with the same heart and energy, and, most of all, does something very rare, in that, like Ewing, he can change the game for a team. He does this by scoring the ball in the paint and delivering the best passes of any big man in the league, very consistently and at a high percentage. On the other end, he closes out on penetrators and blocks shots. Combined, this helps his team control the pace of games and allows a team that was a 42 win team to become a 67 win team.
Your soft statements boggle the mind. How on Earth could a player that's soft average 10 rebounds, per game, sixth in the league, and 3.2 offensive rebounds per game, 4th in the league? Logic would dictate that a soft player would not be taking opponents' boards away from them, at a rate that is the fourth best in the NBA. Pau Gasol also averages 1.7 blocks per game, for his career, on top of all of those rebounds. His help D is also as good as any other player in the league, he always picks up an offensive player that has beat one of his teammates off the dribble.
Gasol has also proven himself a true franchise player, leading Spain to world championships and a silver medal, in last year's Olympics. He also led Memphis, a bottom feeder in this league, to 50 win seasons, on three consecutive seasons, in the tough Western Conference, while given bums like Battier, who has shown how much he sucks in these playoffs, and Mike Miller as his 2nd and 3rd options. Give Gasol a team to lead that has a couple of decent shooters on it and that team would be for real. Had the Knicks gotten him, so as to use him to play with Marbury and Crawford, we would have had a contender, in my opinion.
All you lames heard soft on TV, so now you repeat it, exposing yourselves, rather than Gasol. Why aren't you saying something original about him, or anyone else? Because your basketball knowledge is weak and based exclusively on what you hear from the so-called experts. It's sad to see this, when what a sports forum is supposed to be about is turning our backs on lazy, unoriginal journalism, produced by people who aren't even fans of the game, and producing our own, informed analyses. Most of the people on this site defeat that purpose, save a few posters, who are at least original and go against the grain, i.e. metro and abcd, amongst a few others. Instead, you bring the garbage we all hear on TV into what's supposed to be a forum for people who really know basketball. You're the same type of people as those who had heard about Ewing missing a finger-roll and then tried to use that to negate everything else he had done, because they knew nothing else about him. You're the same as those the-Knicks-are-better-with-Camby-instead-of-Ewing people.
My goal, with this post, was to educate you fools on the truth of Gasol. The soft stuff is BS, as stated by Van Gundy, Kobe, Phil Jackson, Hubie Brown, Mark Jackson and numerous other announcers and experts. As someone who actually watches basketball, and who doesn't have faith that many of you do, I concur with what they have to say. Boston won, in '08, in my opinion as a true follower of the sport, because Kobe shot 40% from the field and the laker point guards, 3 in total: Vujacic, Farmar and Fisher, combined for 3 APG, for the entire series, focusing on jacking up bad shots, instead of passing. Gasol averaged a meager 9 touches per game, in that series, which basically took away his ability to impact the series, something he has stated in response to the soft label. Today, he got 19 touches and converted 10, for 21 points, to go with 18 rebounds and 3 blocks. Please, before you speak, watch some ball, don't just repeat the BS spread by the lazy sports media.
And Datruth, you're right, Gasol isn't going anywhere... by himself: his team is going with him, to win it all, largely because of him, as Kobe has said himself. Kobe wanted out of LA, until Gasol arrived and, with Gasol, formed the NBA's best duo, one that brought a perrenial 8th seed back to championship contention. the facts speak for themselves, they don't need you or the BS sports media to translate them into BS.
Finally, this thread is a joke. Gasol is a two time all star, leading scorer in the Olympics, last year. He's also top 10 in almost every category. There's no way the Lakers would trade a guy that turned them from a perennial playoff pushover back into a contender. LMAO @ Quiggles with 0 defensive skills and at starkys whole post.