Here’s the one place you can read some news and notes that don’t talk about Tom Cruise or who to nominate to the Supreme Court (what about David Stern, he is a lawyer).
• Teams are talking free agents and blogs like this around the Web are trying to keep up — the best place to get a look at what everyone is saying is at the latest Carnival of the NBA, up at Motoring, the Detroit Pistons blog.
• Update: A number of people seem to be coming here looking for what happened to the Lakers Ground message boards — they moved. Just follow that link and you will be there. I’m not really a message board guy (clearly), but this is the one I check the most often, and the new server is faster than the old server like James Worthy was faster than Kevin McHale.
• Frank Hamblin will be back this year as an assistant coach under Phil Jackson, along with Kurt Rambis. The other coaching spots are less firm (Brian Shaw is in the mix), but expect those first two to handle the duties at the Summer Pro League.
• Knickerblogger will be happy to know Scott Layden still has a job.
• Update:: Here is the full Lakers Summer Pro League roster: Andrew Bynum, Ronny Turiaf, Von Wafer, Sasha Vujacic, Marcus Douthit (last year’s second round draft pick), Smush Parker (a tall guard with decent defense but prone to turnovers and questionable shooting), Will Conroy (thanks to Kevin Pelton, the man-of-many-places, for that last link), Devin Green, Tony Bobbitt, Trevor Harvey, Carlos Powell and Eric Sandrin (the only non African-American on the Harlem Globetrotters earlier this year).
• By the way, check back here on Sunday for my first post from the Summer Pro League, looking at the Lakers first two games plus notes on any other players that look interesting and random stuff that I pick up (ie., the brands of beer served at the Pyramid, the quality of hot dogs, how many autographs Mitch Kupchak gets asked for in an average 10-minutes span, etc.).
• The Lakers have hired 26-year-old Spero Dedes to do their radio broadcasts. Has anybody out there heard his work? I’m curious to hear a report.
• Years of being the Clippers is coming back to haunt that team. They couldn’t get Kobe last year, Ray Allen never seem to seriously look their way this season. Years of stingy and poor management make it hard to attract free agents, even to a big market team with the potential to be good.