“Men lie women lie, numbers don’t,
Ain’t nothing changed for me except the year it is,
I think I have to send you a reminder, here it is…”

These words from a certain Jay-Z song may have very well been echoed by Kobe Bryant and the Lakers Thursday night as they whipped the Phoenix Suns 121-102 in Los Angeles in a matchup between the Western Conference’s top 2 teams.

With their league-leading 112.3 points per game and blazing 8-1 start, the Suns were garnering a lot of buzz prior to tonight’s game. In case any of us forgot who #1 currently is though, the defending champion Lakers reminded all of us with a blowout victory.

Black Mamba had 29 points while Andrew Bynum did work on Amar’e Stoudemire with 26 points and 15 rebounds while holding Stoudemire to just 8 points on 2 of 15 shooting. The Suns were only able to shoot 36.5% for the night while the Lakers shot 57.6% from the field. Los Angeles did all of this without Pau Gasol who was out nursing a hamstring injury.

To keep things in perspective though, it’s only November and we’ve got a lot of basketball left to go in the season; so this game could either be a precursor of things to come or just a meaningless afterthought come playoff time. For now though, no one can argue that the Lakers run this.

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