According to one source, Lamar and his agent have been looking for a S&T…
Yahoo! Sports: His agent has been desperately trying to find a sign-and-trade around the league, but there’s little there but the Lakers’ offer of $7 million per season. Odom had a terrific playoffs and Finals on L.A’s championship run, but he has few options to make the Lakers raise their offer. Why has Portland so far sat it out with him? It still makes no sense.
ESPN: Maybe we need to start a new theme: Kobe Bryant can’t win a championship without Phil Jackson.
The great irony of Bryant’s drive for independence from Shaquille O’Neal was that it reinforced the philosophy that you can’t do it on your own. Everyone needs help, and the method for Bryant to acquire the greatest individual reward of his career — the 2009 NBA Finals MVP trophy — was to buy into the wisdom of his coach and former nemesis. In turn, the final steps of Bryant’s evolution allowed Jackson to stand alone as the coach with the most championships in the history of the league.
Over the five years during Jackson’s first stint as Bryant’s coach, the two had grown as distant as California and Maine. Jackson asked management to trade the young star. And when it looked like Jackson wouldn’t be back after the 2003-04 season, Bryant’s response was “I don’t care.”
Contrast that to the lovefest of recent days, when Bryant said, “I’ve been spoiled my whole career playing with Phil. It’s hard to imagine playing for anyone else, obviously. I grew up with him.”
Jackson praised Bryant’s growth, recalling a conversation they had early in Bryant’s career after yet another game in which the ascending star got caught up in his own agenda, this time a one-on-one battle with Vince Carter in Toronto:
“I talked to him a little bit about leadership and the quality and his ability to be a leader, and he said, ‘I’m ready to be a captain right now.’ And I said, ‘But no one is ready to follow you.’
Congrats to Luke Walton who made some NBA history himself…
Father Son Combos to win NBA Championship -
This redeems Shaq for everything in my book. (Bleeping) hilarious!
Congratualtions kobe, u deserve it. You played great . Enjoy it my man enjoy it. And I know what yur sayin rt now “Shaq how my ass taste ” (via twitter)
He also said this about Phil.
Congrats to you to phil jackson. When the general doesn’t panic the troops don’t panic. You are the greatest now. (via twitter)
Pietrus speaks about the hard foul on Gasol at the end of game 4.
L.A.Times: “I think I was going for the ball. I don’t think I was trying to make a dirty play,” Pietrus said. “I’m smart enough with three seconds to go and they’re up 10 [actually 5], why am i going to get a hard foul. No, I was tring to make sure he was going to the free-throw line.”
Pietrus said it wasn’t even the hardest foul he has seen during the playoffs.
“I think from what I did, it was a little caress,” he said.
Gasol doesn’t agree. “The intention of the foul was definitely hurtful,” he said.
“…There was no way that was necessary to do that at that point, but just because I was able to take the hit and hold on to the rim, then it’s not punished. If I would have fell on my back and broke my head, then it would have been punished? It just doesn’t, doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
A great article from one of the all time greats, Jerry West on Kobe Bryant.
ESPN: There is at least one soul in the NBA universe who doesn’t care that Kobe Bryant couldn’t close in Game 3, or that he missed 20 shots and needed Derek Fisher to bail him out in Game 4, or that Kobe’s kids have been calling him Grumpy for days because he’s determined to stay so humorless about this championship stuff.
Fortunately for Bryant it’s the guy whose opinion he treasures most in this game.
Good luck trying to convince Jerry West that the sight of Bryant hunched over at the waist in a recent courtside interview was the first tangible sign of his decline at age 30.
Or that Kobe’s legacy has a Shaquille O’Neal-sized hole until he wins a title without Shaq.
Or that No. 24 should actually, you know, smile once in a while in these NBA Finals.
“Why the hell would you want to smile?” West bellowed into the phone Friday, still lathered after watching the other player he brought to the Lakers in that magical summer of 1996 — Fisher — inspire a coast-to-coast stream of “Fish That Saved L.A.” references with two big triples Thursday night that nudged West’s old team into a 3-1 series lead/stranglehold.
“I love Kobe’s passion,” West continued. “People think he’s not getting any joy out of this? This game is not about having fun. This is the ultimate competition. You can feel good about it afterward.
“I didn’t see Michael Jordan giggling and laughing all the time.”
ESPN: Dwight Howard has his bags packed.
Showing off an it’s-not-over-yet smile and a confident attitude, the Orlando Magic center said Saturday that the NBA finals will be headed back to Los Angeles. The Magic are down 3-1 to the Lakers but want to “make history,” starting with Game 5 on Sunday in their final home game of the best season in franchise history.
“You want me to get up here and say the season is going to be over tomorrow? That’s not what anybody should do or anybody should think,” Howard said. “I believe that we’re going to be going back to L.A.”
Magic coach Stan Van Gundy wanted to make sure his team didn’t lose hope.
So he called players in for a rare day-after-game meeting Friday to make sure his team had moved on from its Game 4 meltdown. Van Gundy, who hardly ever gives speeches or motivational pep talks, delivered one at the meeting about Greg LeMond’s come back in the 1989 Tour de France he hopes will light a spark.
“He had come from behind and then taken the lead and then lost it on one of the late stages, and people started to write him off,” Van Gundy said. “And at the end of the stage he looked beaten, and he and his wife were talking when they left, and they asked his wife what he had said.
“And he said, ‘It’ll just make the story all that much better when I come back and win it all.’”
Phil at it again.
Yahoo! Sports: The NBA has fined Lakers coach Phil Jackson $25,000 for criticizing the officials during Game 4 of the finals. The league also penalized the Lakers $25,000 on Saturday for Jackson’s comments, which came during an interview with ABC between the first and second quarters of their 99-91 overtime victory Thursday.
Jackson said there were some “bogus” calls after the Lakers’ Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum each picked up two fouls in the first quarter.
Here’s what we call a “sweet” championship trophy.
L.A. Times: I realize the Lamar Odom candy thing has been blown up beyond all reasonable proportions… but this is pretty cool. It seems the folks at Wrigley have designed a special version of the Larry O’Brien trophy specifically for LO, made from Skittles, Starburst, Sour Gummi Tape, Life Savers Gummies, and Hubba Bubba…
So the Magic must win three in a row to win the NBA championship. How difficult will that be? Let’s take a look at some statistics and what the Magic believe…
Here is one take on the Magic. All I have to say – good luck…
Some have said that the Magic don’t have what it takes to do that with their pension for choking away games, and even claiming a lack of desire. Look, the desire is there. During this entire playoffs, the Magic have ALWAYS fought back from being down. The 6ers had us down 2-1, the Celtics had us down 3-2. We won those. The Magic have already set some records this finals. How about best FG percentage for a finals game in game 3? How about Dwight setting a record for most blocks in a finals game with 9?? You don’t get 9 blocks with a lack of desire. The point is, we’ve made some NBA history already.
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