I believe that games are about much more than individual match-ups, so take the following numbers with a grain of salt. On the other hand, the vast majority of the basketball world seems to be picking the Lakers to win the title with the logic that "Kobe is just on another level from everyone else". Likewise, many expect Kevin Garnett to do well, but to be largely countered by Pau Gasol and/or Lamar Odom. With that in mind, I thought the following was very interesting...

Career head-to-head matchups

Kobe vs. Pierce (14 games)

Pierce - 26.8 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 3.6 apg, 1.7 spg, 45.4% FG, 75% FT, 4.1 TOs

Kobe - 26.5 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 5.3 apg, 1.9 spg, 38.8% FG, 83% FT, 2.8 TOs

Kobe vs. Allen (28 games)

Allen - 20.6 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 5.1 apg, 1.5 spg, 43.4% FG, 91.4% FT, 2.5 TOs

Kobe - 23.6 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 4.6 apg, 1.3 spg, 42.8% FG, 82.3% FT, 2.6 TOs

Garnett vs. Gasol (19 games)

Garnett - 24.6 ppg, 14.1 rpg, 5.4 apg, 1.3 spg, 1.8 bpg, 50.3% FG, 77.1% FT, 2.2 TOs

Gasol - 17.4 ppg, 7.8 rpg, 2.5 apg, .7 spg, 1.5 bpg, 46.0% FG, 79.2% FT, 1.7 TOs

Garnett vs. Odom (24 games)

Garnett - 21.9 ppg, 11.5 rpg, 5.2 apg, 1.3 spg, 1.7 bpg, 51.8% FG, 83.3% FT, 2.1 TOs

Odom - 14.3 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 4.2 apg, .5 spg, 1.0 bpg, 41.1% FG, 71.3% FT, 3.5 TOs

These are all numbers that have been established over a number of years, so it's not a small sample size.

Of course, as I said above, you have to take all of this with a large grain of salt due to new circumstances and current situations. I fully expect Kobe to be the dominant scorer in this series, and for him to play at an extremely high level. At the same time, when historically both Pierce and Allen have played Kobe to a stand-still head-to-head while Garnett has historically destroyed both Gasol and Odom...I just think these things should be pointed out as a bit of a foil to the more shallow analysis that some of the national media is giving us.

(I have to give credit to Celticsblog.com, where I first saw this brought up, as well as to basketballreference.com that has the great player comparison software that makes these comps easy).