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A Lakers Blog. Thoughts, reflections, and the odd rant on the Los Angeles Lakers and the NBA (even the Clippers).

Artest in the West

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The second part of the Laker midseason report card, focusing on the players, will go up later today or tomorrow morning at the latest. That said, there was some big news out west to discuss.

How good does Artest make the Kings? Good question. I thought Tom at Sactown Royalty had a good line the other day, “Obviously, this team needed something. An elite defender/frightening psychopath is certainly something.”

The championship window appeared closed in Sacramento, and this move may or may not pry it back open. But this gives the Kings a couple of years with a Bibby/Artest/Abdur-Rahim/Miller core — that is pretty formidable. If they can fill in the right pieces around it, and if Artest plays for two seasons without a meltdown, this could make them contenders again. If not, they have to blow the thing up and start over, which is basically where they were headed anyway. The Kings rolled the dice on this one, but it’s not a bad bet.

If nothing else, this should be fun to watch.

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Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think: Vince Carter is down on Kobe because Kobe is not a team player.

(Note to Alanis Morissette: That is irony, not rain on your wedding day.)

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One of the best basketball interviews I’ve read in a long time, with defensive guru Hank Egan, is up at probasketballnews.com, and is worth a read.

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One other housekeeping note I’ve been meaning to get to. Most of the time when you post a comment here, that comment should appear instantly. However, to keep out the spam FB&G gets bombarded with, I have some filters set up, and they do a pretty good job. That said, the filter occasionally catches legitimate comments as well, holding them over for me to approve, something that can happen pretty quickly if I’m at my computer but may take a while one weekends or whatever. To give you an example, if you use the word “poker” in a comment, it will get flagged (a lot of poker site spam comes through). There is a long list of words and other things that can flag a comment. So, just know it’s nothing personal and I try to get to your held-up comments as fast as I can. I’m not trying to limit debate, just keep it civil and ad free.


Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. John R says

    The VC boo birds were out last night at Staples. There were a couple of pro-Kobe signs to taunt Vince and Q shut him down until he left in the 3rd.

  2. Gatinho says

    The song should have been “Isn’t it a bummer?”

    “What if God was one of us?”, now that’s ironic.

    The Vince Carter nonsense would fall into the category of irony “for the purpose of comic relief.”

  3. kwame a. says

    Vince is right, Kobe should be teaching the youth how to fake injuries, take off balance low percentage jump shots, disappear in the clutch and orchestrate trades by giving minimal to no effort until you get what you want. Yep, thats our fan favorite perenial non-deserving all-star, the quintessential team player.

  4. John R says

    Is anyone tackling Padgett’s assertion that Utah overinflates the basketball to make it more difficult for shooters?

  5. dan reines says

    I know there’s been some injuries, but it’s amazing to me that the kings are doing as poorly as they are. Man, I’d take the FOUR OF A KIND you mentioned in a New York minute. If I’m a POKER player, that’s a PRETTY GOOD HAND isn’t it?

    Compare Bibby/Miller/Artest/Shareef with Smush/Mihm/Kobe/Lamar. Which team *should* do better over the second half? Which team will? It’s going to be interesting to watch, I think. Let’s just hope there’s a HAPPY ENDING.