Bluegrassrivals

This all comes from here

No one had grown more weary of hearing Chris Paul’s name this season, and now no one had grown more weary of listening to Chris Paul on Wednesday night. As they walked down the floor in the final seconds, Pau Gasol listened to a barrage of disparaging words out of the mouth of the Los Angeles Clippers star, including the oldest-running, most-cutting shot of all. Yes, Chris Paul called him soft. And, no, Gasol didn’t want to hear it.
Gasol reached down and patted Chris Paul on the top of the head, sending him into an absolute tirade.
“Don’t touch the top of my head like I’m one of your kids,” Paul seethed later.

Bryant on the situation
“Chris doesn’t like that stuff. He’s got that little-man complex. I do that to his head all the time. Man, he just hates it. But he’s a tough little [expletive], and he’s not going to let that [expletive] slide, accident or not.”

Kobe when asked if this has become a rivalry
“Please,” Bryant said. “We’ve got five championships. … Rivals come from the playoffs.”
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Twenty-four hours earlier, Bryant had gone to World Peace and told him simply, Whatever you’ve become, we need the relentless, old Ron Artest. “He has to be the guy that people know Ron Artest as, the Ron Artest from Indiana. Be…that…guy.”

And somehow, there was Artest in the middle of it all, an enforcer, irritant, protecting Gasol when Evans kept popping him. getting into it with Paul, Blake Griffin – anyone who dared mess with the Lakers’ talent. Kobe was downright befuddled over the way some Clippers kept targeting World Peace, kept trying to drag him into conflict.
“Hey, you better talk to them,” Bryant advised the Clippers’ Chauncey Billups. “You better tell them to leave Ron alone. Someone is going to get their ass knocked out in front of everybody.”
When it was over, Bryant was so proud to say: “There’s a couple [expletives] in this league you don’t mess with – and Metta is one of them.”

Kobe is great lol. His interviews are so much better then most.

The Clippers are a very good up and coming team. CP3 and Blake Griffin are a dynamic combo. However, in a playoff series, I would take the Lakers with no hesitation. Experience is something you can't replicate or come up with overnight. The Lakers have it, the Clippers don't, and in the fourth quarter of their most recent game it showed.

And the Lakers have went the distance against Chris Paul before.

^ Exactly. The Clippers have a much longer path to go than many, especially the media, believe. In the wild western conference they will have trouble winning a playoff series, period, that is, if they can sustain and make it in.