Thanks you guys for all the supportive comments! Really means a lot to me. Go Lakers!
San Antonio Tuesday. Let’s watch our D on Duncan.
I think we should name games…
Tuesday… ‘Our D is for Duncan’
Then, Wednesday, against Houston, ‘Odom’s Revenge’.

Sorry to do this, but working with TLN Staff has become increasingly hard, if not nearly impossible for me.

I really enjoyed putting together the Previews and Contest, but feel TLN has given me very little choice but to do this.

My last four Previews and Results have been extremely hard to get staff here to even post. I’ve worked very hard to be timely and thorough. Then submitting them at 5-7 in the AM and waiting for hours, some of them have made it to the site 6-8 hrs later, and only after several emails to remind them to do their job. One prediction article was refused because it was considered unacceptable. Only after repeatedly insisting, was it finally posted.
Further, emails and messages are rarely returned. Making a committment to TLN has been a one sided affair. I always tried to keep my word in such matters and take it very seriously, I wish a similar effort would have been recipricated from TLN.

The offense looks fluid. The players seem to have a much better grasp of the offense this year. Ronnie in particular, his energy is contagious, his interior passing is beautiful and he seems to know when and where to cut. Walton is one of the smartest players in the league, an amazing passer for a SF. He makes up for his lack of athleticism with his smarts. Kobe is playing the best I have seen him play in 3 years. Maybe he took all this “not a winner”/”not a team player”/”doesn’t make his team mates better” stuff that has been going around lately personally.

The defense looks better too, though the numbers don’t particularly show it. THey are still allowing a 102.6 ppg but opponents are only shooting 44.5% (14th in the league) from the feild. Not spectacular numbers but better than last year (103.4 ppg and 46.1%). I think the ppg would be lower if they were not turning the ball over so many (15.2 per game). Also the pace is a little bit faster this year. And I would guess that if you took out the Hornets game where no one was sticking with Peja, that those numbers would be better. Still a lot of room for improvement, but the effort is there which is more than you can say for last year.

One of the most impressive stats for this team in rebounding and fouls. They are 4th in the league at +5. They are grabbing 53.2% of the rebounds. Last year the lakers were -1 in the rebounding department. This has also been without Odom, there best rebounder, for 4 of the 5 games. I think if they keep this up and continue to improve on the defensive end (they have looked fantastic is some games and mediocre in others) than they will surprise a lot of people this year.