SASHA AND I ARE COOLIO, MANU AND I ARE TOO

The first Western Conference Finals game was yesterday and my boss at E! was getting ready to go to NY for the Sex In The City premiere (eh hem, jealous) so it was a busy day. But a fabulous one, nevertheless.

Not only did the Lakers come back from a 20-point deficit to beat the San Antonio Spurs - the biggest deficit in the playoffs since 2002 - but I chatted with Sasha Vujacic. As he was combing back his long locks, he says:

"Hey you! How you been? Good? Everything okay?"

If was a lot of questions at once, by yes, I am proud to say we've reached "Hey you" status. (Either that or he forgot my name, but he calls me "OC" anyways).

SIDE NOTE: I've heard the Diglio make-up songs for Sasha - yes songs - there's two of them and words can not describe the amazingness of these tunes. The Dameshek Show on 710 ESPN has had just as much fun as I have making this Sasha song crisis an on-going joke. It's amazing.

(EDITORS UPDATE: Here's one of the new Sasha songs!)

I totally lucked out yesterday and caught Manu Giniobili walking down the hall to the bus by himself while he was munching on pizza. Manu was more than happy to chat about the game, being stuck on the tarmac and tell me he is reading an Argentinian history book right now. Fascinating stuff.

Okay, so now on to my Sasha chat:

ME: I won't bug you about the song.

SASHA: Don't worry about it! I like the song.

ME: Yeah, right.

SASHA: Don't ask me about the song.

ME: Ha, I won't. Okay, so do you think it was more that they ran out of gas in the 3rd quarter or you guys stepped things up?

SASHA: I think we stepped up and I think we stayed within the game plan. We knew what we were supposed to do, which was good.

ME: They'll have a bit more sleep come Friday, are you worried at all they'll have even more energy?

SASHA: We're never scared. We are never worried about what's going to happen. We want to come in and protect our - Sorry I am doing this -

(he says as he brushes his hair while looking in the full-length locker room mirror)

SASHA: So its going to be like, you know, we've got to protect our home court. There's a reason we play two games and it's great.

ME: You sealed the game at the end with those two free throws.

SASHA: Yeah, it wasn't me; it was the whole team, the way we played and I just got an opportunity to make those two free throws and that's what I love. My teammates were there for 48 minutes and we just played great.