Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category
Home court is on everyones’ mind!
Daily Breeze: The Dallas Mavericks and Denver Nuggets have loomed large in the Lakers’ rearview mirror recently. The Mavericks and Nuggets each trailed the Lakers by four games in the Western Conference going into Tuesday’s play.
It remains to be seen whether the Lakers finish atop the West for the third consecutive season. No question, it should be their top priority judging by what Lakers coach Phil Jackson had to say.
Jackson actually couldn’t say for certain how the Lakers might fare in the playoffs if they fail to hold on to the No. 1 spot in the West and secure homecourt advantage for at least the first three rounds of the postseason.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t. We haven’t played great on the road this year.
The last two years we had really good road records. We want to have home-court advantage. We feel we can sustain it if we can continue on the pace we’re going.
Continue reading ‘Lakers look for home court through playoffs’
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Are the Lakers really doing well? Share your thoughts.
Daily News: Ron Artest has insisted for months the Lakers haven’t played well. He has been concerned about it and has suggested the reason for their mediocre play was because things were too easy at the start of the season.
He said Sunday he saw a change in the team during the Lakers’ latest victory, however. He said he saw some of the fire and efficiency they displayed while starting the season with an 18-3 record.
The Lakers ended a four- game losing streak on the road with a 102-96 victory Friday over the Phoenix Suns, which gave them a two-game winning streak. They led for most of the second half and outplayed the Suns down the stretch.
“We’ve always been confident,” Artest said. “We were just kind of waiting for it to be handed to us rather than going out there and doing the right things. In Phoenix, we did that. We didn’t play well, but we did make an effort to play team basketball.”
It’s no secret the Lakers (48-18) are a better team when they share the ball, especially when they pass it to 7-footers Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol in the triangle offense. They haven’t been nearly as effective when they abandon the triangle.
Artest called the season “a hell of a storm” and a “roller-coaster ride” when asked to explain why the Lakers haven’t played their best for a while. He said the team has been anxious to get to the playoffs and hasn’t given the regular season its due.
Continue reading ‘Arest: Lakers on the right path’
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Alvin Gentry gives the Lakers some more love.
Daily News: Struggles? What struggles?
OK, so maybe the Lakers haven’t been as crisp in their play this month as they were in February or January, but really, what’s not to like? They’re still the team to beat in the Western Conference, according to Phoenix Suns coach Alvin Gentry.
The Lakers are not as vulnerable as some might think, Gentry insisted Friday.
“I don’t know if there’s any team out there playing that can beat them four out of seven games (in a playoff series),” he said. “I don’t know if that’s possible. They’ve got a completely different agenda than what we have. We’re trying to get ourselves into the playoffs. They’re trying to get themselves ready for a championship run.
“I don’t know if vulnerable is the word I would use.”
To be sure, the Lakers recently had their share of troubles on the road, including a three-game losing streak going into Friday’s game against the Suns. They were swept on a three-game trip to Miami, Charlotte and Orlando earlier this month.
“They haven’t closed out a few games,” Gentry said, referring to their losses to the Heat in overtime and the Magic in the closing seconds after Kobe Bryant missed a potential tying jump shot.
Charlotte played great against them.
“Even the Toronto game, they struggled in that and once again (Bryant) rescued them (with a last-second jump shot to help the Lakers win Tuesday’s game),” Gentry said.
Continue reading ‘Alvin Gentry: Lakers far from vulnerable’
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The numbers behind the clutch shooting and no surprise, Kobe leads.
ESPN: Through the years, there have been many different sets of data about clutch shooting. Any which way I have ever seen it sliced (last five minutes of close games to last ten seconds), as I have written on TrueHoop before, it has looked like Kobe Bryant has been a guy who shoots a ton in crunch time, and hits at a pretty good, but not elite, rate.
I’m open to the idea that he could still be the best clutch player in the NBA. At that time of the game, there’s value in being able to create scoring opportunities. Bryant may shoot those difficult fallaways that often miss, but he’d be a far worse player if he couldn’t get a shot off at all. And that’s the situation some lesser players would find themselves in.
Quite honestly, I think the real way to crown a crunch time king would be with video. Somebody should make a TV special where they string together every crunch time touch of the handful of elite end-game players (Bryant, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony etc.) If we want to tell the world that somebody is the most likely to succeed in a certain setting, let’s take an honest and complete look at how they do in that setting. Show me the turnovers, the misses and all that. Let everyone watch all of that video — not just the makes! — and at the end of that I think we’ll end up with a good sense of who’s the best.
A lot of sports fans think it’s crazy talk to even consider candidates other than Bryant. And they’re especially vocal right now, when Bryant seems to be hitting game-winners just about every night.
So, how’s it going?
Continue reading ‘Kobe’s numbers in crunch time’
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Odom had some really encouraging words regarding the Lakers and them being considered, “soft.”
O.C. Register: “Got dudes on the Raptors talking (bleep),” Odom said. “They ain’t done (bleep), You know what I mean? As a team, as individuals.”
“Our disposition as a team gives like some of these dudes, they feel like they have the right,” Odom said about the Raptors. “The way we’re playing as a unit, they got dudes on their team that are talking …. They are like .500. “But our aura comes off like ‘soft’. This was the second game I almost got thrown out. So I see one coming. I’m just going to take one, like, ‘hold up?’ Our energy, we are so laid back right now that these teams are like…
“That … that [Orlando's] Matt Barnes pulled, that ain’t never going to happen again,” Odom said. “He’s lucky it was a close game.”
…
Odom indicated he’s inclined to take flagrant fouls or even draw a one-game suspension to make clear that the Lakers must be determined and forceful to move forward in this season.
Continue reading ‘Odom willing to make statement, disprove “soft” title’
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Sasha may return tonight, but that hasn’t meant he hasn’t been busy while hurt! Here is a great new program he’s started!
Vujacic.net: Over 30 million Americans – many of them children – suffer from a skin disease called eczema. Sasha Scores for Kids with Eczema, launched with the National Eczema Association (800/818-7546), is a campaign to raise awareness and funds to support this cause. The first 100 donors will receive an autographed photo of Sasha. Donate now!
Sasha became aware of how severe eczema can be through three year old Lakers superfan Jarrett (see Jarrett and Sasha on youtube).
At three months old, Jarrett was diagnosed with eczema. Because of the discomfort and itch, Jarrett scratched his skin so much that it bled. As Jarrett got older, he became somewhat resistant to the skin treatments he had to follow. His parents tried several different coping mechanisms to keep his mind off scratching and create distractions while applying ointments and medicine. Jarrett’s father Eric, says that when Jarrett was two, he began showing interest in the LA Lakers, so they created routines for Jarrett’s treatment revolving around his favorite basketball team.
Jarrett uses his Sasha Soap, Kobe Cream, and Lamar Lotion to help cope with the arduous skin regime he must follow. Jarrett has endeared himself to the entire Lakers team by memorizing all their names, and jersey numbers, and by being what has to be their most adorable fan.
Continue reading ‘Sasha Scores for Kids with Eczema’
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A loss is a loss, its how you lose that determines who you are!
O.C. Register: The Lakers were back.
Not to Orlando after last visiting in June. Not from 10 down in the fourth quarter.
They were back to being competitors, and that’s why their loss Sunday to the Magic will stand as a victory in the long run.
The masters of the obvious will call this a low point, the team’s first three-game skid with Pau Gasol. The real truth is that the Lakers laid out there: high-intensity effort, same as they brought last spring when they were good enough to be NBA champions while losing lost five out of 11 postseason road games.
It’s that difficult to win on the road against focused, good teams, so no shame in not quite pulling it out Sunday.
The Magic showed up playing well, riding a four-game winning streak, and motivated after countless days spent sitting in the treatment room at their training facility, where there hangs a photo of Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelsondejectedly watching the Lakers celebrate the championship on Orlando’s home floor.
“That was just a battle,” Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy said. “That was much more a battle than a basketball game. It was extremely physical, both teams fought extremely hard the entire way.”
As usual in their post-title season, the Lakers ran into a team that fundamentally wanted it more. For a change, the Lakers played like they wanted it, too.
“I saw what I wanted to see,” Kobe Bryant said afterward. “If we play with this kind of effort, it’s going to be hard for a team to beat us four games in a series.”
Continue reading ‘Lakers show signs of life’
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This is very cool…
ESPN: It’s safe to assume that LeBron James and Kobe Bryant haven’t talked privately about giving the world what it wants – the dream NBA Finals matchup between James’ Cleveland Cavaliers and Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers. But in January, the two superstars talked about giving another gift to the basketball world, or at least to the basketball world’s greatest players.
James and Bryant decided to buy each member of the 2010 NBA All-Star team a pair of custom-made “Beats by Dr. Dre’’ Monster headphones. James bought them for his 12 Eastern Conference teammates, while Bryant did the same for the 14 other Western Conference all-stars.
Speaking via blackberry, James and Bryant settled on getting Dre’s $350 “Studio’’ version headphones. They then contacted Dr. Dre and asked him to customize each set of headphones by making them in the All-Star colors (blue for the East, red for the West) and putting each player’s number on them. That cost an extra $100 per set.
Continue reading ‘LeBron and Kobe Team Up’
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The inconsistent efforts from the team and still #2 in the NBA.
L.A. Times: Arf!
If “dog days” was in the dictionary, they might have a picture of a marquee reading:
INDIANA AT LAKERS
Tuesday, March 2
Of course, having misplaced their game, the Lakers can’t ease up against anyone . . . or, at least, that was the plan, before easing up in Tuesday night’s first half, then awakening to bury the lowly Pacers, 122-99.
Kobe Bryant, coming off his three-for-17 game against Denver, went five for 14 from the field but scored 24 points, his most since his Feb. 23 return in Memphis.
For all their struggles, the Lakers still moved six games ahead of the West, even if the question all Lakerdom is asking is:
THIS TEAM IS 46-15?
Coach Phil Jackson, normally the sunniest of optimists, acknowledged his team’s malaise at Monday’s practice, noting: “With Kobe playing like he is, it’s hard to judge who we are right now.”
On the other hand, it wasn’t hard to judge who the Pacers were. As the late Chuck Daly used to say, “You are what your record says you are, no better, no worse” — and they were the team with the 20-39 record, No. 26 in the NBA.
Reggie Miller, the greatest Pacer of them all, dates their fall to the 2004 Auburn Hills melee, noting recently they “have never, ever recovered from that night. Things will never be the same until they get lucky in the draft.”
At the moment, the Pacers are also the team trying to play small ball, making the Lakers their ultimate test.
“They’re the ultimate test, period,” Coach Jim O’Brien said before the game. “It doesn’t matter what lineup you put out there when you play the world champions, you know you’re going to be tested at every spot. . . .
Continue reading ‘Lakers show more bark than bite’
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LeBron wants to be a Laker? Lazenby reports…
HoopsHype: The greatest NBA free agent of all time, LeBron James, is quietly making overtures to the Los Angeles Lakers.
He wants to play for them. And James is not all that concerned whether Kobe Bryant is part of the equation. Bryant, of course, has yet to sign a contract extension with L.A. and could wind up a free-agent himself, albeit one with high mileage.
But the overtures have been made. LeBron wants to wear the purple and gold. Mainly, he wants to wear a championship ring, which means he wants to play for Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
“LeBron wants to win. He’s a smart guy,” explainsone of my best inside sources, a close Jackson associate. “And Phil loves LeBron, absolutely LOVES him.”
There are many, many complicating factors to such a scenario, not the least of which is the fact that it’s way far from certain that Jackson will even be the coach of the Lakers next year.
“The Lakers have not made Phil an offer,” the Jackson source points out. However, rest assured of this, Jackson’s close associate maintained. “Phil will coach somewhere next year.”
Jackson wouldn’t dare take off next year if he’s not coaching the Lakers because he believes the following year will bring a lock-out, the source says. Jackson craves the chance to win another title before the NBA owners lock out the players in 2011-2012 to force a new contract.
“The whole league is under review,” the source points out. “Franchise values are falling, so the owners feel they must force a new labor agreement.”
Continue reading ‘Report: LeBron wants to be a Laker’
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