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seven in the morning

Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant (front) wipes his face after missing a free throw late in the fourth quarter against the New Orleans Hornets during Game 4 of their NBA Western Conference first round playoff basketball game in New Orleans, Louisiana April 24, 2011. REUTERS/Sean GardnerSean Gardner/Reuters

There are a few truths so ingrained that they rarely get questioned until reality slams into them and they shatter. The Liberals as Canada's natural governing party, for example, or Kobe Bryant as the NBA's best closer.

The bigger surprise might be that Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar, is not quite the late game sure thing his reputation makes him out to be.

Make a few high profile shots to win games and you can make a name for yourself in a highlight driven age. But the problem in an era when statistics lie less and less is that the discerning fan (or journalist) can make the distinction between shooting a lot late in games and being efficient late in games.

Bryant shoots a lot, but isn't always efficient. Last night down the stretch he had a hand in two late game Lakers turnovers and missed a potential game winner that his reputation suggests he always makes.

Fortunately it was only Game 1 and what looks like a pretty compelling Western Conference semi-final between the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers is just getting started, so we'll start with that.

1. Jason Kidd -- an old dog with old tricks -- puts the bite on Kobe:

The Dallas Mavericks point guard has been outstanding so long that it's easy to overlook him sometimes when talking about the game's great players. At 38 he's still bringing it and last night he was everywhere for the Mavericks with seven points, three steals, five rebounds and 11 assists for Dallas. And then down the stretch he hounded Bryant into mistakes and misses and helped Dallas to a huge win and threw a wrench into David Stern's visions of a Lakers-Heat Final: In a series opener that was beyond crucial, the Mavericks had to dodge a bullet from the NBA's best gunslinger. Kobe Bryant with the ball in his hands and the clock ticking down is as scary a situation as there is. "To be honest with you, you don't want to see that,'' Tyson Chandler said. This time, the Mavericks stared down the barrel and survived, in part because the Mavericks had a rusty, old silencer named Jason Kidd that they could put on Bryant. Kidd in essence asked for the opportunity to guard Bryant at the end of the game and responded with a steal and forcing tough shots as the Mavericks overcame a 16-point third-quarter deficit for a 96-94 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinals series.How important was stealing home-court advantage away in the opener?The Lakers have a fabulous history in the playoffs when winning Game 1 (49-2). But coach Phil Jackson's even better. Going back to his Chicago days, his teams are 48-0 when they go up 1-0 in a playoff series. Those are steep odds to buck. And the Mavericks won't have to after winning a playoff game in LA for the first time in franchise history (0-10).

2. If not for the Canucks, Nashville would be a great underdog story:

I am not ashamed to say I'm open to the idea of getting excited by the Canucks' run to the Stanley Cup. Hockey is great; but it's hard for me to get excited about watching Tampa Bay and San Jose duke it out for hockey supremacy in June. Having a Canadian team in it keeps me in it and it's hard not to respect the excellence the Canucks exhibited over the regular season and be fascinated as they struggle to find themselves in the post-season (again). But for all that the Nashville Predators are an easy team to like for several reasons, not the least of which is that they've had the same head coach and general manager since the franchise was founded: When Barry Trotz first arrived in the middle of Tennessee, he had no office, no staff and no team to coach. This was a dream job? He and David Poile, the general manager foolish enough to hire him, did everything from scratch with the Nashville Predators. Right down to choosing the dressing-room carpeting. "We were picking out carpet and David said: 'Trust me, it's not that big a deal,' " Trotz recalled Monday, "because you're going to be gone before the carpet is worn out.'" Fourteen years and 13 National Hockey League seasons later, Trotz and Poile not only outlasted the floor coverings but survived some trap-doors to turn the Predators into a money-making team good enough to advance beyond the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

3. Nashville finally gets some playoff lore to call their own:

As a team that had never won a playoff series until they pushed past Anaheim in six games the Predators were a bit short on the kind of stories that fans can pass down to the next generation and so build a tradition. The save that goalie Pekka Rinni made in overtime against Vancouver in overtime the other night set the stage for Nashville's dramatic win and may become a key brick in the franchise's playoff foundation,as Roy MacGregor writes: If the impossible were actually to happen - a team whose top scorer managed barely 50 points in the regular season going all the way to the Stanley Cup final - they will say it was all about goaltending.

And if the Cup is won, they will talk about The Save.

For Pekka Rinne, it came Saturday night in Vancouver at the 17:46 mark of the first overtime period. The score is tied 1-1 with Rinne's Nashville Predators already down one game to none in their series with the Vancouver Canucks, the best team in the entire NHL in the regular season and a team with five players with 50 or more points.

Daniel Sedin, whose 104 points were worth the Art Ross Trophy as the most dangerous scorer, has the puck and can easily shoot. Rinne, the Predators goaltender, has to expect this and is positioned to handle it. Instead, Sedin flips a perfect pass cross-ice to Kevin Bieksa, who is both all alone and faced with an open net. Rinne knows he is late, so he leaps - more like a shortstop than a goaltender - and the sure goal is magically lost. Instead of being down two games to none, the series is split when Nashville scores in the second overtime. Instead of enjoying momentum, the Canucks are now chasing it as they head into Tuesday's Game 3.

Nashville coach Barry Trotz watched The Save on video several times Sunday during the four-and-a-half-hour charter flight to Nashville. "It was even better in real life, trust me," Trotz said. "In video it was almost like when they do NFL films and you want to watch it in slow motion and put some music to it, because it was that nice."

4. Doing it the Tampa Bay way:

The Toronto Blue Jays' season is still awaiting definition. They finish off a very tough 10-game round trip with a three-game set against the Tampa Bay Rays who are in second place in the AL East, two games ahead of Toronto and seemingly wild card contenders despite heading into a rebuilding phase. And as much as Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos deserves credit for what he's done in Toronto to this stage, the way the the Rays have managed payroll and competitivenes is legendary. Their Wall Street-infused management style has already been the subject of a well-regarded book and with the MLB draft approaching they're set to reload again: Thanks to MLB's quirky draft rules -- in which teams that lose valued free agents are granted additional picks -- the Rays have 12 of the first 89 selections in the draft that begins June 6, including 10 of the first 60 in what could be one of the two or three best pools of amateur talent in the past decade.

"We can't take 'em all," Harrison said. "We've got a lot of picks, but we don't have as many as we're being linked to."

Speculation has run rampant in scouting circles over what the Rays plan to do with their unprecedented haul, which it owes to losing Rafael Soriano, Carl Crawford, Grant Balfour, Brad Hawpe, Joaquin Benoit, Randy Choate and Chad Qualls to free agency. Obviously teams will scout many multiples more players than they will ever select, but one can forgive a rival team's scout for packing up and leaving a high school or college game upon the arrival of someone representing the Rays organization.

5. Even in print, Rex Ryan is a loudmouth:

Love him or hate him, New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan realizes that there's no point being one of the most famous sports figures in the biggest media market in North America and being a shrinking violet, so what the hell, might as well write a book and trash a few guys, including a New York Giants' PR guy: Now that it's time for Rex Ryan to promote his new book, expect a fresh wave of bold assertions and predictions from the New York Jets coach. Ryan, promoting his book "Play Like You Mean It," launched into his usual bombastic ways in comments on Monday to ESPN.

Among the topics he addressed:

Jets' rivalry with the Giants: Ryan was knocked by Giants DE Justin Tuck and team spokesman Pat Hanlon over the weekend for comments in the book where he says the Jets will be New York's favorite team.

His retort: "The facts are we've played better than the Giants the past two years, and those are the only two years I've been here," Ryan said.

He had a special zinger for Hanlon: "My big thing is, I think I can whip Pat. I'm worried about him throwing a BlackBerry at me."



6. Canadian presence in the EPL on the rise:

The Globe's Paul Attfield recognizes the possibility as Norwich City, powered by Brampton's Simeon Jackson, are poised to be promoted bring the Canadian presence in the EPL to two, potentially: Having fired his new club into the top flight of English football, it would seem unlikely, if very harsh, for Norwich City to do anything but take Simeon Jackson with it for the Canaries' first foray into the Premier League since the 2004-05 season. Coming to the end of the first year of a two-year contract, Jackson should be joining the likes of potential Canadian international David (Junior) Hoilett - if the Brampton, Ont.-born striker ever makes his mind up - assuming Blackburn Rovers aren't relegated first, but then there have been a whole host of players deemed good enough to help get a team promoted but not good enough to join them in the promised land. The likes of former Blackburn, West Ham and Leicester striker David Speedie springs to mind. After scoring just four goals in his first 33 games for Norwich City following an off-season move from Gillingham last summer, there was no time like the present for Jackson to deliver, and credit to him he's done just that in recent weeks. Jackson, who was born in Jamaica but raised in Mississauga, Ont., has responded with nine goals in his last seven games, including the winner in Monday's 1-0 promotion-clinching victory over Portsmouth, as Norwich picked up the points it needed to nail down second spot behind Championship winner Queens Park Rangers.

7. Osama Bin Laden is dead -- Athletes reflect via Twitter:

This is pretty amazing. At Deadspin.com someone made anessay compiled entirely from athlete's tweets in the wake of the news of Bin Laden's assasination; worth reading the whole thing, seriously: So we was looking 4 BIN LADEN that whole time in a Cave/moutain & this MOFO is hidden in a mansion watching the NBA playoffs! Oh hell naww!

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