Around the World (Wide Web)

From Brian Kamemetzky, Land O’ Lakers: They’re baaaaaaaack! Last week, with the Lakers struggling, trade talk was put front and center in no small part by GM Mitch Kupchak (and, to a lesser degree, Magic Johnson, although he sold his minority ownership and has no official say). Not exclusively something around the margins, either, but perhaps something bigger. Which, generally speaking, is code for trading Andrew Bynum. The rumor du jour- both last week and again rekindled this morning- involves importing Carmelo Anthony for L.A.’s young center, but it could be anyone, really. Bynum’s name has been front and center at every deadline and during every offseason, going back to the days before Kevin Garnett made his way from Minnesota to Boston.

From Dexter Fishmore, Silver Screen and Roll: For about 30 seconds this evening, I thought about putting together a post summarizing today’s developments on the Carmelo Anthony front, but I soon realized this was an utterly hopeless task. Chris Broussard’s ESPN report this morning, to the effect that the Lakers and Nuggets have had preliminary discussions about a trade of Melo for Andrew Bynum, has plunged Lakerdom into the deranged whirlwind of anonymous rumor-mongering that’s come to define NBA trade discussions in the modern age. Suffice it to say, we’ve rapidly reached a point where you can find an unnamed source to vouch for pretty much any set of Melo-related facts you’d prefer to believe. About half an hour ago, for whatever it’s worth, Mike Bresnahan of the LA Times posted an article on the newspaper’s website that offers a pretty vigorous refudiation of the rumors. Laker officials, evidently, tell Bresnahan there’s “zero chance” of a Melo deal. The misgivings relate not to Melo’s value as a player but to dolla dolla bills, y’all.

From Mike Truddell, Basket Blog: Heading into the Lakers’ season-long 7-game road trip featuring some of the league’s tougher places to win, Phil Jackson saw an opportunity for his team to at best regain and at least build towards the championship level of last season’s playoffs. Through two victories over New Orleans (101-95) and Memphis (93-84), Jackson is getting what he’d hoped for, at least out of his defense. It wasn’t entirely positive, not with the allowance of 29 rather easy first quarter points to the Grizzlies and 32 third quarter points to the Hornets, yet the D was generally staunch, and at its most imposing level in crunch time. Memphis scored only 10 fourth quarter points until two meaningless triples in the final 53 seconds with the Lakers up 91-78, while Chris Paul and Co. managed just 13 points in their fourth quarter.

From Sekou Smith, Hangtime Blog: Technically speaking, Kobe Bryant‘s 2006-07 season was one his two best in terms of sheer numbers (he was even better the season before). He averaged 31.6 points per game, shot career bests from the floor (.463) and the free throw line (.868) while also averaging 5.7 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.4 steals. As you might imagine, KB Bryant piled up plenty of highlights that year. That provides us today’s installment of our Kobe’s Top 10 Plays series:

Lastly, Jose3030 has NBA Unscripted – LA Lakers 2010-2011 in its entirety up on twitvid.com. You can check it out here.