"The easy thing to do would have been to change it up, or worse, panic. With Kobe Bryant seemingly unable to miss a shot during the first half of the Sixers' Monday night showdown against the Lakers, no one would have been surprised if coach Doug Collins made some changes.

Yet even with Bryant dropping 24 points on the Sixers during the first half of the game at the Center, including 20 points in the first 17 minutes of the game, Collins' club stuck with the game plan. No, he didn't look at Bryant's big half as an aberration, but he knew it wasn't a dagger.

"Kobe was incredible in that first half. They had five threes and he had four of them," Collins said. "Three of them were off-the-charts tough and I said, 'We're not going to overreact to that.'""