As was said in Part I of this series, the challenge the Lakers face is that if they want to be contenders in the next couple of years they have to do it via trade. They can’t do it through the draft (picking 19) nor do they have the cap room to sign a major […]
Lakers Analysis
Winning Now, Part I
“That’s one of the things when I re-signed here, they promised they would build a contender and build a contender now. I don’t want to have to wait any more than I already have.” —Kobe Bryant after his exit interview When the Lakers decided to pay Kobe and trade Shaq, everyone was clear the plan […]
True Hoop Talks Lakers
Henry Abbot, the Godfather of basketball bloggers (don’t ask me about the horse head incident) has a long Laker post today, talking mostly about the future. A lot of smart people are quoted (plus me) and it makes a good read. Below is my part, but you really need to read the whole thing: Under […]
Game Four Thoughts
The Suns made one key adjustment for Sunday’s game — they pushed the tempo up and forced the Lakers to make their reads and decisions more quickly. The Lakers were not athletic enough or smart enough to deal with that, and under pressure got away from what worked before. They didn’t trap on the pick […]
Game Two Thoughts
In those Greek tragedies we all were supposed to read in high school, there was something called Hamartia. (Apparently Gatinho read them because he pointed me to this.) What is Hamartia? The “tragic hero” attempts to do the “right thing” in a situation where the right thing cannot be done. I could see Kobe in […]
Thoughts from Game One
There’s a reason that Kobe has long struck me as the sort of character seen in Greek mythology or classic novels — his greatest strength is also the cause of his undoing. He could not be Kobe without his supreme self-confidence, without his unshakable belief that the next shot is going to fall regardless of […]
Frustration and Stagnation
Since the final buzzer of the Clippers game, I’ve felt very frustrated. I try not to write posts just to vent, so I’ve lived with that frustration for a while. But it’s not going away and there is good reason — the frustration stems from growing realization that these up and down Lakers are likely […]
Peeking into the future
The Lakers have always been somewhat shrouded in mystery — it may be the most prominent franchise in the NBA but it is run by just a few, a tight-knit family that rarely tips their hand in public (think the anti-Steinbrenners). So last week, when heir-apparent Jim Buss did a radio interview on 570 AM, […]
One Step Up And Two Steps Back
Honestly, I’m of two minds on last night’s ugly loss to Memphis. If this were December I’d tend to write it off as just a bad shooting night. Every team throws up a couple dud games over the course of a season, this could be just one of those. Just forget it and move on. […]
Kobe: Doing What He’s Supposed To
What struck me as odd on Monday, in the wake of Kobe only being able to muster 43 points while being triple teamed and denied the ball, was the debate in some of the media about whether Kobe’s streak was good for the team. The argument goes like this: Kobe has been shooting and not […]