Don’t Mess with Tex

While Kurt’s in Las Vegas, and yet not in Las Vegas, he’s letting me, Gatinho, take another swipe at this …

Last night’s game: Tired legs, bad shot selction, porous defense, residual negativity from the Sac loss, let’s just take our lessons from these two games and move on. This loss was more expected, but it makes the unexpected Sac loss that much more of a gut punch. Let’s continue on to the Tex Winter worship.

The Art of The Triangle: Both Mike Bresnahan of The Times and Ross Siler of The Daily News grabbed the originator of the Overload-offense and got him to offer up a “State of the Lakers” address. His comments on Lamar Odom are somewhat surprising.

“But [Odom] hasn’t learned to play a team concept, hasn’t learned to play off the ball the way he needs to in this offense. He’s not reading that consistently. I’m sure he will. I’ve seen a lot of improvement already.”

“He’s got to be more consistent. He’s got to become more of a factor. He should never be satisfied with five or six points.”

His comments on Kobe contain no new revelations except for the fact that, being an offensive guru, he comments on Kobe’s defense:

“He can give the ball up more, hit the first man that’s open a little more, play without the ball a little more,” Winter said. “Defensively, he needs to be fundamentally a little sounder off the ball. He’s a good on-ball defender but off the ball he wants to gamble too much.”

The Show: I referenced Roland Lazenby’s new book about the history of the club to get a little historical perspective on how fast these Lakers are ingesting the triangle and came up with a couple of items.

The Learning Curve:

“As a rule of thumb, it took a player two years to get comfortable with the on-court reads and the decisions the offense required.”

February 2nd will be the one year anniversary of the end of the Rudy T. experiment and the beginning of the re-implementation of the Triangle as the official offense of the Lakers.

“I started looking at him like Yoda.”:

Apparently, Kobe was calling Tex at home last season for advice once the triangle was re-instituted. But the tables were turned. Rather than Tex following Kobe around the El Segundo facility to get in his ear about what he was doing wrong, Kobe was know seeking out The Master.

“If it wasn’t for Tex, I wouldn’t look at the game or interpret the game the way I do.”

And this also helps.

“Winter [upbraids] anyone, including Bryant, who violates the principles of the triangle…”

His contributions to the overall NBA game; immeasurable. His contributions, even if from afar as a consultant, on these young Lakers; integral to their success.

Check it out: If you haven’t already seen it, Smush “The Grim Reaper” Parker gets some nice run in the March “ish” of SLAM. The article is titled “Hustler’s Ambition”.

Charity begins at the stripe: 57 consecutive free throws for Kobe.