Sports: Basketball: LA's Lakers vs. Houston Rockets

Kobe Bryant, star and guard for the Lakers' basketball team, in unguarded moment chewing his game-shirt while team heads into a fall -- Houston Rockets 99 - Lakers 87 (May16,2k9, L A Times). One fan called it a "fiasco."

This was the sixth game in a seven-game series of the SemiFinals for the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association.

The winner of this physical, sometimes-testy series will advance to the conference finals to face the Denver Nuggets, who've been resting since eliminating Dallas on Wednesday night.

Kobe Bryant admits it's a mystery why the Lakers have been so wildly inconsistent against a team few expected would reach the second round, let alone push the top seed in the West to a Game 7.

So, it's onward to the finals against the Denver Nuggets, who won entry to the Finals by defeating Dallas.