Archive for September, 2008
O.C. Register: He stood there Monday, a prince who had become king, and decreed: “I am happy. There’s a lot to be happy about, a lot to be thankful about.”
Kobe Bryant rules like never before – with an improbably high approval rating and the outright confidence that his team shouldwin the NBA championship this season.
“We’ve got all the tools here,” Bryant said. “We’ve got all the pieces of the puzzle. Now it’s on us to do the work. If we do the work, we should win it.”
That work began officially Tuesday with the first Lakers practice of the season, but with Bryant planning to tap only selectively into the disappointment of falling short in the NBA Finals last season: “Use it whenever you need it,” he said.
There is otherwise no reason for Bryant to retrieve the scowl he so often wore one calendar year ago. He even tried Monday to douse his only existing brushfire by calling his interest in leaving the Lakers for a $50 million European payday “a joke.”
Bryant, who can opt out of his contract at season’s end, said he just blurted out the answer that he’d be interested because he had told USA Basketball teammate – and Nike sponsorship brother – LeBron James not to worry about fielding any dangerous questions during their joint news conference at the Olympics.
Continue reading ‘For Kobe, 30 is the new 20′
NBA Finals, straight into the Olympics. Both Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol made us proud in bringing home the Silver and Gold Medals to their respective countries. It’s almost amazing, I still remember how excited I was – and how much that game lived up to the hype.
The downside is, do Kobe & Gasol have enough energy – or should Phil rest them the entire pre-season? Here is what Phil had to say…
“This week I’m just seeing how they feel, how’s their energy level, and then we’ll adjust,” coach Phil Jackson said. “I was told not to say that I wasn’t going to play Kobe in exhibition games.
“So I’m not going to say Kobe’s not going to play in this exhibition game or that exhibition game. But there is a chance they may not play in an exhibition game.”
Putting your fan biased aside, do you think this would be smart? I definetely think it will help on Kobe and Gasol’s legs, but the real question is can the Lakers achieve the chemistry needed for a fast start without those two major components… or are they just that damn good we don’t have to worry about it?
Sound-off!
Yahoo! Sports: Flanked by his two 7-footers, a basketball in his hands, another season stretching in front of him, Kobe Bryant narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. This was the same cold stare that had chilled opponent and teammate alike, the same withering glare Bryant had flashed from that podium in Boston on the night the Celtics shoved his Los Angeles Lakers from the NBA Finals. Bryant’s eyes, once again, burned with defiance.
For a moment, anyway. The photographer gave his cue, the flashbulbs popped and Kobe Bryant instantly melted into a smile.
“I’m happy,” he would say some 30 minutes later, still grinning during a media session on the eve of training camp.
Given that the franchise’s fortunes have shifted season-to-season on Bryant’s moods for more than a decade now, this qualified as good news, though hardly surprising. As Bryant said himself: These days, there’s a lot to be happy about.
Andrew Bynum, the Lakers’ 20-year-old center, says he has recovered “100 percent” from his knee injury and is ready to deliver on the promise and talent he showed during the first half of last season. Pau Gasol, whose arrival midway through last season transformed the Lakers into title contenders, has returned, albeit without the burden of being the team’s primary interior defender. Trevor Ariza also has healed, giving the Lakers an athletic perimeter defender, if not another starting option at small forward should Lamar Odom’s transition to the position not go smoothly.
Even the disappointment of losing in the Finals faded for Bryant as soon as he slipped a gold medal around his neck in Beijing, a day after his 30th birthday.
“I’ve just been rolling,” Bryant said. “Thirty is the new 20 anyway. … I’m all good.”
Continue reading ‘Lakerland forecast: sunny and warm’
Forum Blue & Gold: Baseball training camps seem to get all the love, with their ties to spring and a feeling of rebirth.
But for basketball and NBA fans, today is our day of spring, it’s just that the crack of bats is replaced with sneakers squeaking on hardwood. But the underlying tenets are the same:
Today there is hope, there is optimism. Not just for Lakers fans, who see a team that could potentially provide us with a year of thrills culminated in a parade through downtown, but in NBA cities across the land. Today there is a sense of hope in Milwaukee and Atlanta, a sense of optimism in Phoenix and Orlando and Sacramento. There is the hope of youth, the optimism of potential, the excitement of what could be and what is dreamed.
For fans, today, the first day of camp, should be about savoring the feeling and excitement of an oncoming season. It should be about the untainted joy that sport can provide. We’ll spend plenty of time talking about Xs and Os, contracts and injuries, as the season wears on.
But today is none of that. Today is about hope. Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.
Hey Guys,
We’re counting down the days till the start of the new season, and it’s about time for everyone to be making predictions. This year, instead of just doing one prediction, I decided to go out and interview one blogger for every NBA team.
The bloggers whose opinions we will be graced with over the next few weeks are the best of the best, as all of them have featured in Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie basketball blog’s Blog Association, where Kelly Dwyer has been profiling the best team-centric NBA blogs out there. If you have any inclination of increasing your knowledge about the NBA, these are the blogs you need to read and subscribe to. (I know I will be!)
Today, we are honored to interview Jeremy from Pickaxe and Roll, in my opinion the top Nuggets blog on the Web. Jeremy was good enough to make time to answer some questions on the Lakers and the Nuggets for us.
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TheLakersNation.com Exclusive Report!
Media Day — Monday, September 29th
By Chris Manning
Media day was quite an experience. It is an event I always looked at as some sacred ground for the top media members. This year, however, I was fortunate to go as a representative of TheLakersNation.com with KLAC AM570. So above all else, thank you KLAC for allowing TheLakersNation.com to join you!
For the first time, I was going to experience media day first hand and I’m happy to write this up for everyone else exclusively here at TheLakersNation.com
I arrived there a bit early, around 10:15AM. The facility is also where the L.A. Kings practice, the entire place is just stunningly beautiful. When I arrived and got into the gym area where media day was being held, I couldn’t help but notice the little things. The championship trophies up by Buss’ office window, the big Lakers logo in the center of the court, and the look of an NBA regulation basket. All these things immediately triggered one thing for me – Lakers basketball is officially back.
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This is something that should be interesting. Perhaps media day wasn’t all drama free as we had hoped?
L.A.Times: Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said recently that he is considering making Lamar Odom the team’s sixth man this season. The Lakers convened this afternoon for a media session in El Segundo before the start of training camp Tuesday and Odom voiced his disdain for Jackson’s idea.
“He must have woke up and bumped his head. He probably hit his head on something — boom,” Odom said about Jackson. “To start off like that, you’ve got to be out of your . . . mind.”
Remember all the times you were nervous about that European team sweeping Kobe from us? Fear not. It was all a “joke” according to Kobe…
O.C. Register: Team USA winning the gold medal was a big one. Here’s another one for everyone stateside — and especially Lakers fans sweating Kobe Bryant’s option to terminate his Lakers contract at season’s end: Bryant has no intention of jumping to Europe and playing there.
O.C. Register: From the desk of Philip D. Jackson, coach of nine NBA champions:
I’ve got to use up this old “From the desk of” stationary, because by the time this season ends, that clause about “nine NBA champions” is probably going to need amending to “10.”
I’m not one for putting the future ahead of the present, but my 2008-09 Lakers will have much more than Kobe Bryant: As Mitch Kupchak put it recently, this long and deep roster has me “challenged to get really creative.”
That makes this a big training camp for me, which is why I’m staying organized by writing this little memo to myself. I already feel as fresh as my four newborn and toddling grandkids after a summer without any hip-replacement surgeries.
Now we get to work Tuesday, meaning four full weeks before the regular season starts Oct. 28 vs. Portland (very young team, but an NBA Finals darkhorse in my book, by the way!) to figure some things out about our situation.
Summing up the key issues for camp: the Andrew Bynum situation, the small-forward situation, the rotation situation, the power situation and the “Aha!” situation. (“Situation” is my favorite bail-out word when I speak, and I can’t help but even overuse it here while in this writing sit- … hmm, this writing position.)
Continue reading ‘5 things to watch for in Lakers training camp’
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