|
|
|
Welcome to Lakers Topbuzz! This site is dedicated to bringing you the latest Los Angeles Lakers rumors and news, + a Lakers Forum powered by you, the dedicated fans. It's a Laker Blog & community in one. Please be sure to check in with us often and feel free to participate in the Los Angeles Lakers Forum and comment on stories. Will Kobe be successful in his quest for his 6th NBA Championship? How will the team improve itself (via trades and/or free agency)? Will the Lakers and Phil Jackson succeed in another 3peat? What was the LA Lakers score? Who were great in the Lakers game and who didn't do their share? Which team should we be looking out for on the upcoming Laker Schedule? There's even a gallery of Laker photos (including yes, the Laker Girls :-)). Join the Lakers Message Board fellow fans and chat it up on all the latest trade rumors, free agent signings, LA Laker draft picks and more! Once you join this Laker Fan Site please be sure to read and follow the Forum Rules and Guidelines- thanks!
-Lakers Topbuzz Management |
|
| Lakers Forum | | | | | LAST FORUM POSTS | | | Topic | Replies | | Views | | Poster | | Date | | Time |  Three weeks til the Lakers get rolling | 6 | | 323 | | TitlesThroughThirteen | | Sep, 02 | | 20:29 | | Serge Ibaka vs. Lamar Odom … to be continued | 1 | | 42 | | TitlesThroughThirteen | | Sep, 02 | | 20:25 | | Laker Love (Freestyle Rap) | 18 | | 369 | | Mamba1024 | | Sep, 02 | | 20:22 | | Yahoo Top Center's list - Bynum #5 | 26 | | 1042 | | lakeshowsd | | Sep, 02 | | 20:03 | | So -- Who Has Been Practicing/Training Hard This Summer??? | 0 | | 50 | | RememberMikan-99 | | Sep, 02 | | 19:54 | | Ron Artest to talk to children about mental health | 1 | | 63 | | mambamonk87 | | Sep, 02 | | 19:51 | | How Theo Ratliff will fit in with the Lakers | 4 | | 295 | | Watch_the_Sky_Fall_24 | | Sep, 02 | | 19:14 | | Byron Scott will still coach Lakers someday | 8 | | 418 | | RememberMikan-99 | | Sep, 02 | | 18:51 | | Derrick Carcter Training at IMG Academies | 6 | | 528 | | kb24LOVER | | Sep, 02 | | 17:55 | | 10 Players on the Decline: Lamar #8 | 8 | | 750 | | lakerfrommass | | Sep, 02 | | 15:19 | | Derrick Caracter switches to No. 45 jersey | 11 | | 628 | | darknessmoon | | Sep, 02 | | 13:55 | | LTB's Fact or Fiction Game | go to [pg. 1] | 71 | | 973 | | Moy24 | | Sep, 02 | | 13:13 | | Overlooking the Lakers? | 3 | | 320 | | lakersrydeordie | | Sep, 02 | | 10:52 | | Lakers We Miss: A.C. Green | 4 | | 235 | | xexodus69 | | Sep, 02 | | 05:06 | | How did you become a Lakers fan? | go to [pg. 1] | 69 | | 1122 | | LakerRRTX | | Sep, 02 | | 04:10 | | sup | 18 | | 470 | | PurpleKnight | | Sep, 02 | | 01:40 |
[Access Forum]
| MEMBERS ONLINE | | | | There are 155 unregistered users and 18 registered users on-line | 
You are an anonymous user. You can register for free by clicking here |
|
|
|
Lakers Schedule for the 2010-2011 NBA Regular Season
Posted by: Dave on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 05:10 PM
Laker News
|
  October Opponent Time
Tue 26 vs Houston 7:30pm
Fri 29 @ Phoenix 7:30pm
Sun 31 vs Golden State 6:30pm
November Opponent Time
Tue 02 vs Memphis 7:30pm
Wed 03 @ Sacramento 7:30pm
Fri 05 vs Toronto 7:30pm
Sun 07 vs Portland 6:30pm
Tue 09 vs Minnesota 7:30pm
Thu 11 @ Denver 7:30pm
Sun 14 vs Phoenix 6:30pm
Tue 16 @ Milwaukee 5:00pm
Wed 17 @ Detroit 4:30pm
Fri 19 @ Minnesota 5:00pm
Sun 21 vs Golden State 6:30pm
Tue 23 vs Chicago 7:30pm
Fri 26 @ Utah 6:00pm
Sun 28 vs Indiana 6:30pm
Tue 30 @ Memphis 5:00pm
 December Opponent Time
Wed 01 @ Houston 5:30pm
Fri 03 vs Sacramento 7:30pm
Tue 07 vs Washington 7:30pm
Wed 08 @ LA Clippers 7:30pm
Fri 10 @ Chicago 5:00pm
Sun 12 @ New Jersey 10:00am
Tue 14 @ Washington 4:00pm
Wed 15 @ Indiana 4:00pm
Fri 17 @ Philadelphia 4:00pm
Sun 19 @ Toronto 10:00am
Tue 21 vs Milwaukee 7:30pm
Sat 25 vs Miami 2:00pm
Tue 28 @ San Antonio 5:30pm
Wed 29 @ New Orleans 5:00pm
Fri 31 vs Philadelphia 7:30pm
 January Opponent Time
Sun 02 vs Memphis 6:30pm
Tue 04 vs Detroit 7:30pm
Wed 05 @ Phoenix 7:30pm
Fri 07 vs New Orleans 7:30pm
Sun 09 vs New York 6:30pm
Tue 11 vs Cleveland 7:30pm
Wed 12 @ Golden State 7:30pm
Fri 14 vs New Jersey 7:30pm
Sun 16 @ LA Clippers 12:30pm
Mon 17 vs Oklahoma City 7:30pm
Wed 19 @ Dallas 6:00pm
Fri 21 @ Denver 7:30pm
Tue 25 vs Utah 7:30pm
Fri 28 vs Sacramento 7:30pm
Sun 30 vs Boston 12:30pm
 February Opponent Time
Tue 01 vs Houston 7:30pm
Thu 03 vs San Antonio 7:30pm
Sat 05 @ New Orleans 5:00pm
Mon 07 @ Memphis 5:00pm
Thu 10 @ Boston 5:00pm
Fri 11 @ New York 5:00pm
Sun 13 @ Orlando 12:30pm
Mon 14 @ Charlotte 4:00pm
Wed 16 @ Cleveland 4:30pm
Tue 22 vs Atlanta 7:30pm
Wed 23 @ Portland 7:30pm
Fri 25 vs LA Clippers 7:30pm
Sun 27 @ Oklahoma City 11:30am
March Opponent Time
Tue 01 @ Minnesota 5:00pm
Fri 04 vs Charlotte 7:30pm
Sun 06 @ San Antonio 12:30pm
Tue 08 @ Atlanta 4:00pm
Thu 10 @ Miami 5:00pm
Sat 12 @ Dallas 5:30pm
Mon 14 vs Orlando 7:30pm
Fri 18 vs Minnesota 7:30pm
Sun 20 vs Portland 6:30pm
Tue 22 vs Phoenix 7:30pm
Fri 25 vs LA Clippers 7:30pm
Sun 27 vs New Orleans 6:30pm
Thu 31 vs Dallas 7:30pm
 April Opponent Time
Fri 01 @ Utah 7:30pm
Sun 03 vs Denver 12:30pm
Tue 05 vs Utah 7:30pm
Wed 06 @ Golden State 7:30pm
Fri 08 @ Portland 7:00pm
Sun 10 vs Oklahoma City 6:30pm
Tue 12 vs San Antonio 7:30pm
Wed 13 @ Sacramento 7:30pm
|
Discuss |  Email This
|
|
Brace yourselves: The horror of life after Dr. Buss.
Posted by: SPQR on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 04:05 PM
Lakers Blog
|
 As most of us know, in the end, it is not players, or coaches or even having the most money that makes or breaks a business or sports team. It is the organization. The ownership. The view from the top and brains that go with it, or lack of same in that penthouse suite that primes the pump of success and greatness.
Players and coaches come and go. Look at the Lakers: George Kundla, Bill Sharman, Pat Riley. All greats. All have done their thing. George Mikan, Jerry West, Kareem, Magic, Shaq, Kobe. All greats. All have done their thing. All have come and gone or will soon go. But the Lakers live on and always rise to the top. Why? Because the ownership, the brains, the heart of the organization is strong and smart, it infuses it with the correct mulititude of decisions you have to get right, year after year, decade after decade. It is ulitmately what makes the Lakers what they are. Great players and coaches come and go, but great owners enable great franchises to keep going from success to success.
For other organizations, it is the opposite side of the same coin. Ownership is run by morons. Imbeciles. People who have no clue. And the results are just as steady, but a dark mirror image of the Lakers: decades of failure and mistakes. Never having strong teams, always futility and frustration, no matter what they try. That is the price for fans of teams with bad ownership. Living in sporting oblivion. No hope, no end of suffering. Just the bitter kiss of failure's lips, like a bad lover whose stultifying embrace you can't ever escape.
In Dr. Jerry Buss, we have one of the greatest owners in sports history. As long as he is in charge and lucid, we know we will always have something to look forward to, even during the infrequant lean years.
But at 77, he won't be here holding our collective hands much longer. And that begs the question: what happens to our beloved franchise when he is gone?
In an article first printed back in 1998, Sports Illustrated took a very up close, intimate look at Dr. Buss's successors-his children.
I have to say, what one finds here is not heartening. You get the impression of three children, each with his or her own designs and ambitions to run the show.
And even worse, except for Jeannie Buss, each has a legacy of failure and ineptitude as their only resumes.
Son Johnny, who made the LA Sparks the worst team in the WNBA. Prone to fits of pique and month long depressions over the smallest of problems.
Son Jimmy, who is easily distracted, failed in his mulitple attempts at education, has a mulitude of failed marriages and odd decisions involving his own kid. He is man who wants to run player personel yet thinks scouts are overated, an opinion which brought about the ire of Jerry West.
Finally Jeannie, the one member of the family who may be smart enough and tough enough to try fill her fathers shoes, but unfortunately is the wrong gender for the desires of paterfamilias Jerry's wishes. She is consigned to team finances only. Oh if she were only born a man, or her father more accepting of her gender. How many hundreds or thousands of times in history has a family enterprise been destroyed by this very kind of mistake made by a male ruler who just could not hand over the reigns to a competant daugher instead of an incompetant son?
This type of post Buss power struggle, especially among siblings who have mostly showed nothing but odd personal behavior and failure in their previous endeavors is not a something that engenders confidence in what will happen with this glorious franchise after the great Dr. Buss retires or becomes incapacitated. I can't say I felt anything but trepidation and fear for our future after reading this.
For those who want a glimpse into our very machivellian looking future, here is the article. I will warn you, it is not pleasant reading for those who want to see this team continue to thrive in the next decades. You will learn all you want to ever know about the future owners of the team, and perhaps more than you wanted to.
It is fascinating stuff. Like watching someone on the edge of tall building, knowing full well they will eventually jump. One can only hope the fall is not fatal, but even if it is, you can't tear your eyes away.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1014465/1/index.htm
For those who prefer to read it here, instead of the website here it is:
She's Got Balls
Will Jeanie Buss, daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss, be the next to rule her father's sports kingdom, or will one of her brothers rise to power? A fractured family fable
Franz Lidz
PRINT EMAIL MOST POPULAR SHARE
You all remember King Lear, Shakespeare's play about a dysfunctional 12th-century family. Lear was a capricious autocrat who alternately indulged and badgered his children. The kids endured the old man's shenanigans until Lear, addled by the prospect of his own mortality, carved up his kingdom and parceled it out to them.
Then all hell broke loose.
Act I
Jerry Buss fancies himself a kind of benevolent King Leer. He has snapshots of almost all the women he has ever dated, and he stores them—the photos, not the women—in bound volumes in the library of his Los Angeles estate. "It's quite a collection," he says. "I'm up to album eight."
Women are just one of the collectibles in this extravagant sensualist's life, competing for interest with rare coins, rare stamps and rare comic books. Most important of all is his cache of L.A. sports franchises. At the moment it consists of two basketball teams, the NBA's Lakers and the WNBA's Sparks, but in the past it has included franchises in ice hockey (the Kings), roller hockey (the Blades), TeamTennis (the Strings) and indoor soccer (the Lazers). To house these acquisitions, Buss bought his own arena, the Great Western Forum.
While building his sporting kingdom, Buss sired a large family. Before he embraced the Playboy philosophy in the mid-1960s, he and his wife, JoAnn, had four children: Johnny, Jimmy, Jeanie and Janie. After Jerry divorced JoAnn, in 1972, he had two more kids—Joey, now 14, and Jesse, 10—with one of his girlfriends, Karen Demel. Recently he has become a father figure to Demel's 24-year-old son Sean, who just changed his last name to Buss. No word on whether he plans to change his first name to Juan.
Though Jerry is still sovereign, at 65 he may feel that time's winged messenger is drawing near. Over the last few years he has assigned more responsibility to his four oldest kids. "I want to prepare them for the day they take over the operation," he says. "I feel better having family members involved."
He has installed Johnny, a testy onetime race-car driver, as president of the Sparks; Jimmy, a happy-go-lucky onetime horse trainer, as assistant general manager of the Lakers; Jeanie, an ebullient marketing whiz and onetime Playboy pinup, as president of the Forum; and Janie, an earthy housewife and onetime psychology major, as an executive in the Lakers' community relations office. Even sweet-natured Sean, an employee in the Lakers' season-ticket office who wears three hoops in his left ear and two in his right, appears destined for big things. "Dad is trying to get the L.A. franchise in Ted Turner's new summer football league," Sean reports. "If he does, I'll be working under the general manager. Down the road, if the opportunity of being the G.M. were to arise, I hope Dad would consider me."
For now Dad envisions a triumvirate, with Jeanie in charge of the Forum and the Lakers' business side, Jimmy in charge of Lakers player personnel and Johnny in charge of the Sparks. "There's room for each one of them," Jerry says.
He may be alone in that opinion. Though Johnny's team is one of Jeanie's Forum tenants, the two siblings have barely spoken since 1995 and don't acknowledge each other's presence in the halls of the building. Johnny's relationship with Jimmy is similarly strained: Their last conversation was more than a year ago. And while Jimmy and Jeanie talk, they're not close.
"It's crazy," says one of Jerry's longtime business associates. "Johnny dithers and broods. Jimmy is easily distracted and has no instinct for the jugular. Jeanie is the most capable one, yet she's overlooked by her loving dad. Does Jerry honestly think this arrangement will work? I'm willing to bet—no, I guarantee—that within three years he sells the entire operation to Rupert Murdoch."
Jerry scoffs at this. "I like basketball too much," he says. Still, his problem is not just that he has to give the kingdom away someday but that he has to hang on to it long enough to give it away. "He's one of the last of a dying breed," says NBA commissioner David Stern. "In big-time sports the day of individual owners like Jerry is fading fast. He's sort of wealthy, but he's not extraordinarily wealthy like some of our owners. Given the size and risk of the asset, we are moving toward [an owner who is] a combination of the Forbes 400 and the FORTUNE 500."
The payroll for the Lakers, the engine that drives the Buss empire, is $40 million. The team salary cap is $37 million. "I would like to increase the cap," Jerry says, "but if you project out to what the players seem to be demanding, it would go up to at least $70 million, which is ludicrous."
While Buss isn't carrying any debt, he isn't particularly liquid. The combined value of the Lakers, the Sparks and the Forum is estimated at $300 million, but says Buss, "just about everything we make is pumped back into the business." However, when the Lakers forsake the Forum and move into the new $300 million Staples Center in downtown L.A. toward the end of 1999, Buss is supposed to get a windfall of $50 million to $60 million from the sale of 25% of the team to Fox and the owners of the Kings. That should keep him in pocket change for a while.
Buss was just your average self-made real estate mogul with a Ph.D. in chemistry when he bought the Lakers in 1979. He quickly made the team over to fit his profligate tastes. He brought in the Laker Girls and live bands. He came up with the concept of courtside seats filled with movie stars and other celebrities. He spent mightily to put the show in Showtime by signing Magic Johnson, James Worthy and, more recently, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. The payoff has been five NBA titles in 19 seasons (but none since 1988) and more than $100 million in annual revenue. "What amazes me is that my father is always thinking 10 steps ahead of everyone else," says Janie. "Every deal he makes is always to his advantage. He's just too smart."
Stabbing Marlboros into the comer of his mouth and hauling a slight paunch, Buss cuts an imposing if not exactly regal figure. His is more of a cowboy image: shabby jeans, rugged boots and the slightly ragged look of a ranch hand in a spaghetti Western. But don't be fooled; Buss is one of those public figures whose presence is always slightly more important than the event he's attending. "I live life energetically," he says. "I go out every night, and I'm either dancing or playing poker or watching a game."
During the NBA season he holds court in a private box high above the visitors' bench, the better to see plays unfold. Afterward he can often be seen in the media lounge with the latest addition to his calendar collection (Miss March, Miss April) on his knee, "Just one out of a hundred says, 'Would you buy me a fur coat or something?' " Buss says of his dates. "I usually hear, 'Can you get Kobe Bryant's autograph?' I like people, I really do. It's one reason I gave up chemistry. I was too lonely in the laboratory."
Buss was lonely long before that. His dad, Lydus, was an accountant who apparently loved numbers more than people. He left his wife and only child in the Wyoming mining town of Kemmerer during the Depression and ended up teaching statistics at Berkeley. Jerry's mother, Jessie, barely made a living as a waitress. "I was an infant when my father went west," says Jerry evenly. "I saw him maybe two or three more times before he died [in 1952, when Jerry was 19]. He was the studious type, into Chinese dialects and ancient scrolls." Mathematics, Lydus thought, was the purest creation of the human mind.
Young Jerry loved numbers, too—far more than he loved his stepfather, a plumber named Stub Brown. Jerry was 12 when his mother remarried, making him the oldest of four kids in a decidedly unblended family. "My father was not accepted by his stepfather," reports Jeanie. "He was a Buss living with the Browns. He felt like an outsider. It made him a very compassionate person."
All Jerry's kids describe him as a generous father, even if he spreads himself too thin. "Though he really doesn't have time for us, he always has time for us," says Sean. "He understands what it's like not to have a dad around."
So do Johnny, Jimmy and Jeanie. Though their parents divorced without nuclear warfare, the emotional fallout was devastating for the children. "It left us confused about who our father was," says Johnny, who was 12 at the time of the breakup. "We knew Dad only as the guy who came over on weekends and took us to McDonald's. I could never understand why he'd want to go to Las Vegas with the Playmate of the Year rather than take us to Disneyland. Even though he provided for us wonderfully, we were starved for the love of a father."
Act II
Johnny may never have recovered from the pain of his parents' divorce, but he tries to hide his feelings behind a pensive bearing. Like a military governor occupying an obscure province in the country of Basketball, he issues fiats from his father's bordello-red Forum war room. It has a worn leather sofa, a massive, uncluttered oak desk and, on the credenza behind Johnny, five gleaming NBA championship trophies.
It's a late afternoon in late July, and the fiat of the day concerns Julie Rousseau, coach of the Sparks. "I just fired her," says Johnny. "We've still got 10 games to play, yet we're out of playoff contention. I offered Julie suggestions, but she didn't follow them. Which confused me." A year ago, 11 games into the Sparks' maiden season, Johnny became the first WNBA owner to fire a coach (Linda Sharp). Now, 20 games into the second campaign, he has become the first to fire two coaches. Which puts him in the slightly embarrassing position of having three head coaches on the payroll.
Johnny sits erect in his father's armchair, gazing at his Batman watch. He is a mild, melancholy man of 42, prone to long silences and dark anxieties. Johnny is Hamlet, a prince of indecision, to his father's Lear. Small things plunge him into despair. At Janie's 1992 wedding reception, he was undone by a fellow guest. "Johnny got into an argument, stormed out of the party and spent the entire evening sulking in the back of the bus my dad had chartered," says Janie. "That's the way my brother has been his whole life."
That may or may not have anything to do with the Sparks' failure to ignite. The team has yet to have a winning season, and though L.A. is the WNBA's second-biggest market, the Sparks' average attendance this season was the second lowest in the 10-team league: 7,653 fans. That was 1,300 fewer than the Sparks attracted last year, some 3,000 fewer than the league average and less than half the attendance averaged by the Washington Mystics, an expansion club that won three games all season.
What's more, Johnny's general manager, Rhonda Windham, is a fellow USC alum whose main qualification for the job was seven years in the Lakers' public relations department. Windham signed Sharp, her college coach, to a three-year deal and then—with Johnny's approval—replaced her with Rousseau, who had coached only in high school. "I hired [Sharp] because she knows so much about basketball," says Johnny. "She just needs to hone her skills and develop more knowledge." What kind of knowledge? "About how to coach in the pros. We'd certainly like to see her back." Coaching in L.A.? "Well...not this team."
Johnny sounds no less confused explaining his reluctance to promote the team to L.A. lesbians, an obvious fan base: "I know the lesbian community is showing up, so I leave them alone. I'd rather focus on pulling in more males. Would it hurt if most of our spectators were lesbian? That's hard to say. Right now, 67 percent of our fans are women, 8 percent are men and 25 percent are kids. I doubt that every woman who comes to our games is a lesbian. If, say, half were, then to have a lesbian majority, more than half the kids would have to be, too."
Johnny doesn't have a natural affinity for the business. He was just born to it. "Originally, I wanted to be president of the United States," he says. "But I wasn't much of a student, so that option was out." He wasn't much of an athlete either. He quit the Pacific Palisades High football team two plays into the first day of tryouts. He got kicked off the gymnastics squad for not cutting his hair, and he was kicked out of school for cutting class. Johnny finished up at another high school and enrolled at Santa Monica College, where his record was equally spotty. He signed up for courses; he just didn't attend them.
In 1976, at age 19, Johnny became the boy toy of Australian tennis player Dianne Fromholtz, then No. 2 on the women's tour. He carried her gear and chauffeured her around for two years, until she wrote him a Dear Johnny note. Unhappy in love, he enrolled in the USC drama department. Unhappy in college, he went to work for Dad. He was managing a real estate company in Las Vegas when Jerry called him back to L.A. in 1982 to run the fledgling Lazers of the Major Indoor Soccer League. But after three seasons in which he felt he was being regarded as an unnecessary evil by Forum executives—who in turn felt that Johnny simply didn't understand that the Lazers did not deserve the same treatment as the Lakers—he quit. "I had wanted to be part of a team and make something of my life," he says. "I was part of one, and failed."
Johnny, then 28, fell into a depression that lasted several years. He developed asthma. He stayed in bed for days at a time, surrounded by his comic books, Disneyland posters and talking Pee-wee Herman doll. "I didn't think I had a chemical imbalance," he says. "It had more to do with the frustrations of being the son of a famous man and being unable to find myself on my own."
To pass the time, he played the horses and began racing Formula Three cars. "Racing gave me a sense of self-confidence." Johnny says. That sense was shattered after two years, when Jerry refused to bankroll his next step in the sport.
"Dad wouldn't buy Johnny the million-dollar race car he wanted," Janie says. "In Johnny's mind Dad was throwing up another roadblock so he wouldn't succeed."
Jerry says he acted out of paternal protectiveness. "I had been encouraging him," he says, "but when he started racing at faster speeds, I looked at him like, You're my son. I don't want you to do this."
So Johnny didn't. For the next eight years he cruised aimlessly, a thirtysomething child of privilege trapped by his privileges. "Growing up, we had everything we ever wanted," says Janie, the psych major. "So what's the incentive to accomplish anything?"
Johnny wrote two unproduced screenplays and sang in an uncelebrated country and western band, and one Friday night in 1990 he suddenly married his girlfriend. "On Saturday night," he says, "she read me a list of the monthly expenses she needed to maintain her lifestyle." Four thousand dollars' worth of expenses, according to Johnny's tally, not to mention upkeep on her new Ferrari, a gift from her wealthy ex-husband. On Sunday morning they separated; on Monday morning Johnny called a lawyer. A year later they were divorced.
In 1992 Johnny married L.A. Clipper Girl Christy Curtis. According to Johnny, his father joked, "Are you sure no Laker Girls were available?"
When the WNBA was created in 1996, Jerry passed over the obvious choice for Sparks president—Jeanie, who had made herself available for the job—in favor of Johnny. "I think he picked me because he thought the league was going to be just a quiet little summer thing," Johnny says. Of course, Johnny was ambivalent: "I thought, Oh, my god, another minor league. I can't be involved with another failure. I've failed at everything I've done."
As if by self-fulfilling prophecy, the Sparks are widely regarded as the WNBA's most ineptly run franchise. Johnny says he keeps trying to make things happen promotion-ally but Jeanie keeps standing in the way. She balked at his demands for more dramatic lighting, for fireworks displays and for pregame carnivals in the parking lot, though she ultimately agreed to scaled-down versions of the last two. "All she thinks about is liability," he grumbles. "All I think about is the success of my team. I may fail this time, but it's going to be on my terms and not because my sister is uncooperative. The Sparks are in my blood, in the air I breathe. I feel I've been handed the Olympic torch, and it's my responsibility to keep it lit. If the team fails, I don't know what the consequences for me will be."
Act III
Jimmy Buss, 38, has a practical, politically savvy side that his brother lacks. He's a guy whose guile and drive prove the fallacy of the system of primogeniture.
Jimmy is all for his father's Team Buss approach—to a point. "A great checks-and-balances system," he calls it. "I wouldn't mind Jeanie having control over Lakers finances as long as I had ultimate say over player personnel." He presses his hands together and makes a tiny cathedral with his fingers. "Working with my brother would be a different story, though. I don't know that I'd want to." His feelings toward Johnny fall somewhere between pity and contempt. "For him to base his life on the Sparks is ridiculous," Jimmy says. "That's exactly what he did with the Lazers. You felt he would blow up any second and quit."
Though Jimmy's life has been tinged with tragedy, contentment radiates from him as if from a lighthouse. He's a slightly beefy guy with a round, ruddy face that crinkles easily into a smile. "Jimmy always seemed bigger and faster than me," says Johnny. "He was the cute kid with blue eyes, the athlete, the one girls fell over."
A party animal with lots of friends, Jimmy got by on charm and good looks. Curiously, he shares Jerry's keen interest in numbers. "When I was little, my father would give me a bag of M&Ms if I memorized the serial numbers on a dollar bill," he says. Jimmy was no natural-born capitalist, though. As a boy he was bent more on spending money than on acquiring it.
Before dropping out of USC, Jimmy majored in math and minored in business, or at least invested in minor businesses—video arcades, a bakery—with borrowed money. He and his best friend, Bill Goldenberg, spent many evenings at the Forum studying the Kings, in which Jerry Buss had a stake until he sold it 10 years ago. In 1981 Jerry promised the players a postseason trip to Hawaii if they amassed 100 points. They finished with 99, but Jerry took them anyway. Jimmy and Bill went, too, and spent the first day tooling around Oahu on mopeds. On one curvy stretch, Jimmy pulled ahead and waited for Bill to catch up. Bill didn't show, so Jimmy circled back and found him sprawled on the side of the highway. A truck had fish-tailed and killed him. Jimmy was devastated. "It was left to me to call Bill's parents," he says. "I was looking for sympathy from them, and all they did was blame me for taking him to Hawaii."
Jimmy's saga gets worse. Brokenhearted over Goldenberg's death, he met a girl and, in 1983, married her. He wanted a child; she couldn't have one. So, going through an agency, they adopted a boy from Florida, whom Jimmy named Jager, after another rolling stone. Within months, however, the parents decided to separate. They pretended to continue living together to mollify the social worker who monitored the adoption. This charade lasted six months.
After obtaining a divorce in late 1985, Jimmy hired a nanny, won sole custody of Jager as a single parent and began leading a double life: playing house with two girlfriends in L.A. In early '87 Jimmy learned that one of the two women had been decapitated as she disembarked from a helicopter. "It was the first time in a long time that I'd opened up my heart to anyone," Jimmy says, sighing, "and she was taken away from me."
To heal his aching heart, he married his other girlfriend. They separated more than a year ago. Since then Jimmy and Jager have bounced among his father's various Southern California bungalows. Last year Jimmy pulled Jager out of seventh grade to home-school him. "They had mutually decided it would be good for Jager," says Jeanie with obvious displeasure. "I don't know how many 12-year-olds should be part of that decision-making process." Or, in this case, 37-year-olds. "Jimmy stayed at it for maybe a week before losing interest," says Jeanie. Jimmy insists he stuck with it for a year and it was "a wonderful experience." Jager is now back in school.
When Johnny quit the Lazers in 1985, Jimmy replaced him and, unlike his brother, accepted the job's limitations. "Early on, I learned not to question certain procedures," he says. He leaned on the Lakers for support services and brought annual losses down from $1 million to $500,000. "It was a hopeless exercise, though," he says. "The league had no TV contract, and our salary cap was twice what we were taking in." The team folded in 1989.
About eight years ago Jimmy decided to try his hand at training horses. He had misspent much of his youth at the track, and though he was 6'2", he had attended jockey school when he was 20. His father owned a half-dozen thoroughbreds, and he handed Jimmy the reins. "He picks things up very fast," says Bob Baffert, trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Real Quiet, "and he isn't afraid to ask questions." Although Jimmy had some success with his father's horses, track insiders questioned his dedication, saying he showed up at the track mostly when he felt like it. "At least he wasn't a bad trainer," says Baffert.
In 1997, shortly after Jerry divested himself of the last of his increasingly unprofitable horse racing stock, he asked Jimmy to join the Lakers as a sort of Jerry West in waiting. (On Sept. 4, West, 60, signed on for another four years as Lakers executive vice president.) There is some intra-family skepticism about this move. "Jeez!" says Janie. "Jerry West is like a god. It's hard to think of him and Jimmy in the same sentence."
Not for Jimmy. "I always wanted to be a G.M.," he says. He thinks sizing up a player is no different from assessing a stallion. "With a colt, you watch his stride and how he pops to extension," he says. "I just have to learn the qualities to look for in humans."
Jimmy's tutor, West, may be the shrewdest judge of talent in the NBA, and Jimmy has tagged along with him and general manager Mitch Kupchak on several scouting trips. "I've gotten a ton of knowledge from him," Jimmy says of West. "For instance, that watching how a player acts on the bench is as important as how he acts on the floor. [West] looks at what a player does when he comes out of a game and how he interacts with his coach. He'll walk up to a prospect and say, 'How ya doin'? I've got word that you beat up a woman.' And I'm sitting there thinking, Wow! Is this legal?" Yet Jimmy thinks scouting is vastly overrated. "Evaluating basketball talent is not too difficult," he says. "If you grabbed 10 fans out of a bar and asked them to rate prospects, their opinions would be pretty much identical to those of the pro scouts."
That comment mystifies West. "I have great admiration for what our scouts do," he says. "If the job is so easy, then why do some teams always have more success than others?"
Jimmy doesn't take West's rejoinder personally. "I don't mind criticism so long as I'm comfortable with what I'm doing," he says. "No matter what I accomplish, I'm going to be ridiculed until I win five championship trophies."
Jimmy's long-range plan is really a short-range plan. "Right now my dad is Number 1 in the Lakers organization, and I'm Number 4," he says. "After another year of this apprenticeship, I'd feel comfortable going from 4 to 1. But you'd have to worry about the comfort level of the current 2 and 3." He need not worry about 2. West plans to leave when Jerry Buss does. Ever the diplomat, West says of the post-Jerry Lakers: "Power is one of the things that scares you because of the way it's used. If it's used correctly, no one will even sense it."
Act IV
In a slinky blue cocktail dress, Jeanie Buss promenades to her table at a smart Beverly Hills restaurant. A male diner turns his head and stops eating, fork suspended midway to his mouth. Jeanie blushes. And yet three years ago she posed for Playboy.
No dreamer or eager innocent, Jeanie is a realist, a sensible, funny woman who knows what's what. She's a man's kind of woman, with money in the bank, a passion for slasher films and a profound appreciation of all sports. "Of all my kids," says Jerry, "Jeanie's the one who turned out most like me." By which he means she's the one with the business smarts, the one who actually graduated from USC—with honors, no less.
"Jeanie has a complete knowledge of the interplay of sports marketing, building management and TV," says David Stern. "If she took over the Lakers from her father, I don't think anything would be lost in the transition."
Jeanie has spent many of her 37 years quietly preparing for just that. At 14 she would tag along with her father to World TeamTennis board meetings. The league went under in 1978 but resurfaced in 1981 as TeamTennis. Jerry once again owned the Strings, and he named 19-year-old Jeanie their general manager. "Basically, my dad bought me the team," says Jeanie. "It was a very empowering experience." But not a particularly profitable one. The Strings sputtered along before dissolving in 1993.
"I always felt the TeamTennis thing was hopeless," says John McEnroe, who dated Jeanie for six months in the mid-'90s. "She's been tossed lame sports by her father and yet made something of each of them."
When the Strings went belly-up, Jeanie was also running another dog-cart club, the L.A. Blades in the Roller Hockey International league. "Jeanie's knowledge is second to none in getting a second-tier sport off the ground," says Ken Yaffe, the NHL's liaison to RHI. "Though the executive meetings were male-dominated, Jeanie was very strong-willed and never caved in." She was an outspoken opponent of propping up ailing franchises, and though other owners overruled her on that issue, it cost them dearly. RHI collapsed last year.
The Forum, Jeanie says, is more her home than any house she's lived in. "My 21st birthday was there, I was robbed at gunpoint there, I met my ex-husband there," she says. Jeanie and Steve Timmons, the flat-topped, flame-haired U.S. Olympic volleyball hero, met during a 1986 tournament she was promoting. "I saw Steve as somebody who was very marketable," she says. "What I'd thought was love was really my attraction to his magnetism."
By 1990 Timmons's magnetic field had started to lose its pull. Or perhaps Jeanie had begun to feel a certain power of her own. In any case, they found themselves yanked in opposite directions. She wanted kids; he didn't. "I was always, 'Steve, whatever you want, whatever you want,' " she says. "But whenever I wanted something, he was always, 'You're compromising what I want.' I probably should have been his manager instead of his wife."
Jeanie's pal Magic Johnson laughs when he thinks about her getting hitched. "She goes out with a million men, finally says 'I do' and how long does it last?" he asks. "A month or two?"
"Three years," says Jeanie. "Which is a lot longer than Magic's TV show."
While she never lost her sense of humor, she says she did lose her self-esteem. As a rite of empowerment, she asked herself, Is there anything I've always wanted to do but haven't? Her answer: appear nude in Playboy.
"Very strange," says McEnroe. "It must have had something to do with her unique relationship with her father."
He may be right. Jerry had once owned the Playboy Club in Phoenix, and according to Johnny, Jeanie had always been insecure about her looks. So she grabbed the phone and pitched her assets to the magazine's editors. A six-page spread in the May 1995 issue bares those assets in a Forum locker room, in the Forum loge and—paging Dr. Freud!—on her father's Forum desk. Jerry claims it's the only Playboy he's never looked at. "But I hear Jeanie looked absolutely stunning," he says.
Jeanie took her parents' divorce hard. She was seven when they broke up, and she felt emotionally abandoned. In fourth grade a kid on the playground said, "I never see your dad. Where is he?"
Not sure how to answer, Jeanie said, "He's dead."
At 17 she moved in with her father. The house they shared was Pickfair, the 42-room Beverly Hills estate once owned by silent-screen royalty Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Jeanie treasured the house and became such an expert on it that she led guided tours. Strapped for cash, Jerry sold the place in 1987 to Hollywood mogul Meshulam Riklis and his wife, Pia Zadora, who promptly gutted it.
For Jeanie the razing of Pick-fair resonates in the Lakers' and the Kings' imminent vacating of the Forum. To stay competitive with the nonunion Pond in Anaheim, she has engineered a landmark deal with her union stagehands at the Forum. To fill seats, she hopes to lure a minor league hockey team. The Sparks will stay put, so Jeanie and Johnny will remain estranged bedfellows. Still, trouble thunders in the distance, for them and for Jerry. How will Jerry contend with the Murdochs and the Disneys, who swallow small-time owners whole? How can he compete against corporate octopi with tentacles in TV and movies and other parts of the world beyond sports?
Today at the Beverly Hills restaurant, Jeanie's most immediate concern is a tempest called Johnny. "Every success I have makes it harder for him," she says, cupping her face in her hands. Tears trickle through her fingers. "I feel his pain—we all have pain—but it won't go away unless he does something about it."
She thinks her father's Three Bussketeers idea is wishful thinking. "I can see us all having a role in the business," she says, "but Dad needs to designate one of us the leader." If that one were Johnny, Jeanie would resign. "I wouldn't be crushed," she says. "I'm pretty marketable, and I know I could find a good job."
Act V
Eighty miles east of the Forum, in the horse country of California's Lake Elsinore Valley, Janie Buss Drexel presides over a two-acre farm she calls Skunk Flats. She shares the spread with her husband, their two toddlers and scores of orphaned animals: stray dogs and cats, broken-down horses and ponies. Standing on her front porch, she points out a toothless, nearly sightless foundered pony named Pumpkin. "Most people would put him to sleep or send him to the junkyard like an old car" she says. "I just want to take care of him."
Janie is the 35-year-old Buss baby. "I consider myself the best adjusted of my siblings," she says. "Jeanie was always trying to please my dad, entering beauty pageants, getting good grades. Me? I couldn't have cared less. All I wanted was to ride my horse. Maybe that's where all the animals fit in. They filled the emptiness."
She has been on the Forum's staff since 1987. Before signing on, Janie went to seven colleges and had four majors, finally getting a psychology degree from Cal State-Dominguez Hills. "I didn't do a thing with the degree," she says. "Does anybody?" In the last 11 years she has worked as everything from secretary to her current position as an executive in the community relations office, which allows her to work out of her home. "I have zero interest in managing the business," she says. "I associate that with my father's always being away from home."
Her duties include answering as many as 300 requests a week—from charities, fund-raisers, even terminally ill children. A couple of months back Janie got a letter from a nurse in Oklahoma asking if Shaq would phone a cancer patient on his eighth birthday. "The nurse made it sound as if the boy was about to the any second." Janie says. She takes a deep breath. "It's emotionally draining. If it were my own child who was dying, I'd do anything I could. So I do the best I can."
How often do things work out? "I'm usually afraid to ask," she says.
From her redoubt at Skunk Flats, Janie watches the Shakespearean spectacle of her father's succession unfold. "My brothers would love to run my father's operation," she says, "but I don't think they could. John is too angry and fragile. He's got the first-born syndrome: If people don't play the game his way, he takes the ball away, sits by himself and cries. I feel so sorry for him, but I can't feel real sorry for him."
Janie finds her Prince Hal of a second brother as unworthy of the throne as her Prince of Denmark of a first brother. "Jimmy doesn't have the backbone to negotiate or the confidence to succeed," Janie says. "He defers to his friends, and once you start delegating power, you lose control. Both my brothers are fearful of getting what they want and fearful of failure. If you're not ready to accept failure, you can never face it."
Which leaves Jeanie, the fair Cordelia of this fractured family fable. "Only Jeanie has the brains and the desire," Janie says. "She's a great negotiator and a great numbers cruncher, and she knows how to say no. At some level, Johnny and Jimmy must understand that."
Janie believes her father's "master plan" may be to sit back and watch the three children jockey for position. "Like I say, my dad is always 10 steps ahead," she says. "I mink he's testing us to see if we can get along. He's getting us used to the fact that he won't be around forever, and he's watching each of us to figure out who should do what.
"Well, I guess it's better now than 10 years from now. But realistically, I don't see how it could ever work."
|
|
Discuss 3 Reviews/Comments | Email This
|
|
When Magic and Jordan locked horns at the 92 Olympics.
Posted by: SPQR on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 04:43 PM
Lakers Blog
|
Today, when players are asked who the best player ever is, the politic, self effacing answer is Michael Jordan. But do they really feel that way in their hearts? I doubt it. After all, men like Mikan, Russell, Oscar, Wilt, Baylor, Magic, Kareem, Kobe, Bird and others played the game at the highest level imaginable. They could do things on the court as they wanted, when they wanted. Why would they really feel any player was as good as themselves, let alone better?
What do they really think when they are alone, out of camera and microphone range? When they can express their true feelings?
That scenario played out in a most interesting fashion back in 1992 during the Dream Team assault on the Olympics. And it involved two of the greatest players in NBA history-Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.
Let me set the milieu for you so we can understand the context of this confrontation and what brought it about:
At the time of 92 Olympics, the NBA hierarchy was in a state of change. The Magic-Bird era had just ended, the Jordan ascendancy was blossoming. Magic had retired two years ago, involuntarily, because of the HIV virus. He had lost his last finals to Jordan in 90. Being the competitor that he was, no doubt Magic felt that if he could have continued to play, Jerry West would have made a few tweaks the Lakers and he (Magic) would have led them back to the mountaintop, winning more championships and taking his accustomed individual place at the top of NBA totem pole. In fact, Magic still had visions of this; he intended to come back to basketball after the Olympics, a revanchist strategy that would be spiked in no small part due to Dream Team teammate Karl Malone and Phoenix Sun GM Jerry CoAngelo. So at this point, Magic, who though no longer close to the player he was in his prime, still had very formidable skills, was a prideful and disillusioned man, feeling his career had not been fulfilled and ended as it should. He felt circumstance had given Jordan what should still be his. Neither Magic nor anyone else at this time knew just how great Jordan and his bulls would become. At the time of these Olympics, Magic had to feel he was the King in forced exile from his realm.
Jordan on the other had was rising the sun. He felt that Magic and Bird were the setting sun. He had played long and hard to get where he was and wanted recognition for his accomplishments. The Dream team was seen as a final exposition and good bye tour for the two seminal greats of the NBA: Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Jordan understood this and did not begrudge the two fading legends as they received the lion’s share of the pre Olympic publicity. But in private, he wanted it understood in no uncertain terms that he was now the king of the league.
These dynamics came into play in a very intense and interesting series of events that took place during the 92 games.
One night, during a long conversation, the elephant in the room came alive. The participants where Magic, Jordan, Bird, Barkley, Ewing and erstwhile NFL pro bowl wide receiver Ahmad Rashad.
Bird posed a simple question: Which NBA team was the greatest ever?
Ewing said Russell’s Celtics with their 11 rings. Rashad countered by saying Bird’s 86 team had the greatest front line ever. Barkley agreed saying that that line was “Brutal.” Since he played against it, he should know.
Jordan replied, “You haven’t seen the greatest team of all time yet. I’m just getting started. I am going to win more championships than any of you guys. Let’s have this conversation after I am done playing.”
Magic shot back: “You are not winning five championships!”
Barkley said, “I am going to steal one from you, Michael.”
Magic became indignant, saying his 87 squad was by far the greatest in history. “Me, Kareem, Worthy, Scott and Coop would have dominated your Bulls.”
Barkley was about to speak when Bird piped up, “Quiet!! You haven’t won a thing. You have no say in this. Same with Patrick and Ahmad. Your all gone! You guys have no championships so just sit there and be quiet and maybe you will learn some things.” (As an aside, interesting comments from Bird for those who wonder why Lebron wants to win championships so bad)
At this point, Barkley, ashamed, sulked off. Ewing and Rashad stopped talking. Rashad found this conversation between Jordan, Bird and Magic fascinating and elected to stay as did Ewing.
Jordan continued to throw support to his Bull teams as the Lakers equals. Bird reminded Jordan that he used to torture Pippen till his back gave out on him the last few years.
Magic told Jordan he felt sorry for him, not have a great rival like Bird and Magic did with each other. That he had no one to measure himself against.
The conversation then switched to who was the best one on one player. Jordan immediately became aggressive again. “Give it up. You got no chance on this one. Larry, you don’t have the speed to stay with me. Magic, I can guard you, you can’t guard me. Neither of you guys can play defense like me and you can’t score like me.”
“I don’t know about that,” retorted Magic. “I could have scored more if I had wanted to. It would have been a good one.”
Jordan’s face darkened. He had not minded letting Bird and Magic get their media retirement props in the Barcelona circus tour, but in private, he wanted acknowledgement from his peers for what he was: the best in the league.
“You better give it up,” he told Magic. "I will come in your gym and drop 60 on you. Ask your friend Larry about it. You guys were great players. You did amazing things. But it is over. This is my game now.”
“Michael, don’t forget, me and Larry turned the NBA around. We ARE the NBA," countered Magic.
“I have taken it to a new level,“ retorted Jordan. “And it is not your league anymore. It’s mine!”
"You’re not there yet,” said Magic.
Bird watched this exchange silently. He detected a swagger in Jordan he had never seen before. He recognized the strain of confidence, bordering on arrogance. It was how he used to feel when he was on top of the basketball world. “There were plenty of years when I knew in my heart I was the best guy in the room,” Bird said, years later. “That night I knew in my heart it wasn’t me anymore. And it wasn’t Magic either.”
Rashad, a friend to both Magic and Michael tried to soften the ever heating rhetoric. But he could not. The conversation was becoming ugly, bordering on out of control. Jordan wanted concessions from Magic that Johnson would not provide.
“You time has passed, old man, give it up,” needled Jordan.
Finally, Bird decided to step in to stop the escalation. “Magic, stop! We had our moment. There was a time when nobody was better than you and me. But not anymore. Michael is the best now. Let’s just pass the torch and be on our way.”
That conversation was over, but not the competition.
During scrimmages, Coach Chuck Daly would always have Magic and Michael on different teams. In Magic’s view, he would stock Jordan’s crew with the superior players. He thought Daly was doing this to challenge Magic; to show him that he did not consider his HIV as a factor in his play or a reason to give him mercy or pamper him. Magic rose to the occasion, frequently leading his team to victory over Jordan's. He loved challenges like that and the fact that Daly treated him as just a player, not a sick person.
Trash talk was long and loud during the scrimmages. But one time, Magic just couldn’t resist taking a dig at Jordan who rose to the bait. During a scrimmage, Magic’s (Drexler, Robinson, Malone, Barkley) team had taken a 14-2 lead over Jordan’s (Bird, Pippen, Ewing, Mullin, Laettner) with a dizzying array of Johnson passes leading to the advantage. As he jogged back up court, Magic detoured past Jordan and said, according to sources either, “You’re getting busted,” or “Hey MJ, you better get with it.”
Jordan’s fists clinched and his face got dark. He called for the ball, drove to the basket for a dunk. “That good enough for you?” he asked.
Pippen immediately perked up when he recognized the signs on Jordan’s face and his demeanor.
“Y’all have done it now!” said Pippen.
Jordan went on a defensive tear, swarming the west with traps and full court pressure. He jumped passing lanes, knocked down one handed slams, pushed Magic off the block and hit fadeaways. Within minutes, the score was tied and Magic was complaining about no calls. ”It’s like I’m in Chicago stadium," he complained.
“Welcome to the 90s,” Jordan said cold-bloodedly. Ouch!
At the end of regulation, the game was tied. But Jordan and Magic would not let it end. “We’re going again!” said Jordan. “No,” replied Coach Daly, worried about injury. He was ignored as the overtime started.
The over time was brutal, with all the players fighting at the top of their ability to secure the win and the bragging rights. Robinson grinding in the post, Malone and Barkley fighting for boards, Bird hitting parameter shots, Magic controlling the tempo. But it was Jordan with the last word with transcendent play and wizardry that assistant Dave Gavitt would call the most amazing five minutes of basketball he had ever seen.
I can just imagine what that scrimmage and overtime must have been like. It is true shame for basketball aficionados and fans that a film does not exist of that game. Would any of you want to see that ‘scrimmage’ of Magic vs Michael, populated by teams of all time greats, as much as I would?
At the end, Jordan and Bird strutted and skipped off the court, gloating shamelessly about the win. Magic left the floor demanding a new officiating crew. “Magic was cursing at the refs, his teammates and his coaches,” Jordan recalled. “He couldn’t stand that we beat them. It was the most fun I have ever had playing basketball.”
And that’s it. That is a rare, inside look of what really happens, what these truly rare players really feel, when it is just them, devoid of the cameras, the public spotlight, the politic responses; just them, their egos, their careers and their incredible games to back them up. It is what makes them who they are.
My sources for this post was the GREAT book, When the Game Was Ours by Jackie MacMullan (if you haven’t read this book, you should) and Golden Boys by Cameron Strauth. I simply changed much of the descriptive text to my own words to facilitate the story for this post, give my own ideas on the events and for brevity. I added my own preamble so readers born years later, or too young at the time, would understand the stage these events happened on.
|
|
Discuss | Email This
|
|
Why Wilt Chamberlain is NOT the G.O.A.T.
Posted by: lakeshowsd on Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 09:05 AM
Lakers Blog
|
Here are my long overdue thoughts on the Wilt autobiography. I hope you have some time because this is without a doubt my LONGEST POST on the LTB (perhaps one of the longest LTB posts ever). Hopefully you'll find it worthwhile.
Naturally, I enjoyed Wilt's book immensely. Once I started reading it, I finished it much quicker than the I typically read books. I don't think any fan could have asked for a more open and honest autobiography from any pro athlete. To say that Wilt was larger than life would be a considerable understatement. There were times when I would stop reading for a moment, laugh, shake my head, and say to myself "man, that Wilt was something else."
It was interesting to discover that Wilt wrote the book after the 1972-73 season, which I believe was the last one he played. That would have made him almost 37 years old when he played his final game in the NBA. Looking at Wilt's stats for that final season, he had averaged a league leading 18 rebounds per game, and set the all-time record for field goal percentage at over 72% for the season. Wilt also averaged over 13 points per game, over 4 assists per game, and god knows how many blocks; All-Star numbers by today's standards for NBA Centers. Can you imagine 37-year-old Shaq playing 43 minutes per game and putting up those kinds of overall numbers right now? LOL. Even a center as great as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar never posted those kinds of defense stats, even in his prime. Wilt was 35 years old when he won the Finals MVP. Who else, other than maybe Michael Jordan, has done that? I don't know, but it's impressive none the less.
It was incredible that in a 14 year career, Wilt had I think, 8 different coaches. That's basically a new coach every other year, and three times over the course of his career some of those coaches asked him to radically change the style of his game for the betterment of the team. He went from being the most dominant scorer in league history, to being the best passing big man ever, to being the most dominant defensive player in the league! He basically mastered the 3 major skill sets of basketball (scoring, passing, defense) and demonstrated his mastery by being the most dominant player in the league in each of those categories for at least 1 full season. If that isn't greatness, I don't know what is.
Wilt did a lot of amazing things in his career and one need only consult the NBA record books to understand just how amazing a career he had. Other than winning more titles, there really isn't anything more he could have accomplished in his career, and it's remarkable just how close he came to winning quite a few more than the 2 rings he eventually did win. A bad call from the ref, a lucky shot, a loose ball that didn't bounce his team's way; all these things proved to be the difference between winning and losing championships, and it happened so many times to Wilt's teams in his storied career.
Despite a number of tough breaks in the playoffs, Wilt still gets credit for accomplishing something that his eventual teammates Elgin Baylor, Gail Goodrich, Happy Hairston, and Jerry West cannot say they did: Wilt beat the Celtics in a playoff series. Not only did the 1967' Sixers beat the Celtics, they snapped a Celtic streak of 8 consecutive championships, a fact that was surprisingly not mentioned in the book. The Celtics went on to win back-to-back titles immediately after that season, beating Wilt's teams each time, so perhaps that's why not much was made of that 67' Philadelphia team. Still, had Wilt's team not snapped that Celtic streak, the Celtics would have won an even more impressive 11 consecutive titles. Because of Wilt and his superior team that year, the Celtics had to settle for 8 straight titles (world's smallest fiddle playing for the Celtics. LOL).
Wilt just had so many interesting thoughts and observations in this book, I don't even know where to begin. With the book being originally released in 1973, many of the hard feelings and grudges were still fresh in Wilt's mind at the time. Some of Wilt's comments about Bill Russell were very interesting. While he acknowledged Russell's unyielding and passionate desire to win, Wilt was honest in his appraisal of Russell's offensive ineptitude throughout his entire career. For a player of such legendary status as Russell, his offensive statistics certainly don't support that viewpoint. Wilt was quick to bring this to light when speaking openly of Russell's strengths and weaknesses as a player.
Among other interesting comments in the book was the stuff Wilt said about Chick Hearn. For Wilt to suggest that Chick Hearn's commentary often displayed open favoritism toward Jerry West was surprising. It was downright shocking to find out that during games, Chick would speak of Wilt in precisely the opposite fashion, sometimes showing a subtle antipathy for the great Laker center. In all the years I've listened to Chick Hearn, that was one of the toughest things to imagine as being true. Though if Wilt said it, perhaps there is some element of truth there, hard as it is to believe.
In fact, one of the most fascinating things that I discovered about Wilt was that he was such a vilified character for much of his career. You know, the kind of player that everybody loves to hate. At least that's how Wilt felt about his treatment by the media, opposing teams' fans, players, and coaches around the league. As one who's been the victim of harsh and sometimes unfair criticism in my life, I can certainly sympathize with Wilt's situation.
Being really the first truly great player over 7 feet tall, the sensitivity that Wilt had about being regarded as a over-sized freak was something that really resonated in my mind. Though I've never gone up to someone who appeared to be approximately seven feet tall and asked them how tall there were, I can certainly imagine how old that must get for tall folks. I certainly wouldn't go up to an extremely obese person and ask how fat there were, and I make it a point to never ask a woman's age. Asking a tall person about their height definitely falls in that same category for me, and it's probably right that it should. There is something to be said for common courtesies.
There were some things that Wilt said about his former Laker teammates Jerry West and Elgin Baylor that caught my interest. There was the part about how Jerry West sometimes couldn't handle the pressure of being "Mr. Clutch" and after repeatedly failing in the playoffs to live up to that nickname, he would even go so far as to take a separate flight home from the rest of the team. That way he didn't have to face his disappointed fans as he got off the plane. Then there was how Jerry was extremely careful when it came to controlling and maintaining his clean cut, all American, family guy image; even to the point where he would be dishonest to the media when questioned about certain things that happened during the game.
Wilt mentioned that various times Jerry would feel strongly about something that was wrong with the team, and he would admit as much to Wilt in private, but he always refused to openly speak his mind about it. When it came down to it, I guess Jerry West just wasn't a very confrontational guy. For example, all of the Laker players, including Jerry, thought Van Breda Kolff was a sh*tty coach, but Jerry would never say anything about it, nor would the other players. That must have alienated Wilt, who was generally open and honest about most things. In reality, Van Breda Kolff should have been fired long before he had a chance to sabotage the Lakers in the 1969 NBA Finals, and if more players like Jerry or Elgin had openly voiced their opinions to the Laker front office, highlighting Van Breda Kolff's incompetence, history might have played out more favorably for the Lakers in that season.
There are certain parallels that one can draw from modern day Kobe and Jerry West in the later part of his career. Consider how controlling Kobe has been in terms of his "family guy" image since the Colorado incident. I suppose a lot of players are overly concerned about their image these days, but it's still interesting because Kobe has always idolized Jerry West, and still does to this day.
As far as Wilt's thoughts on Elgin Baylor, I was surprised to find out that Elgin was apparently not much of a defensive player. In Wilt's own words, "defense was something Elg did only to help pass the time between shots." When you consider how many times the Lakers failed to beat the Celtics, who were such a consistently great defensive team back in those days, the things Wilt said about Elgin certainly gives me a new perspective on all those tough losses in the Finals. Can you imagine if Kobe, MJ, or Duncan didn't play the superb defense that we have grown accustomed to seeing from them over the years? Would they have been nearly as successful without that vital element to each man's game? I think not. Knowing what I now know about Elgin Baylor, he certainly drops a few spots on my list of All-Time greats.
Through it all, Wilt was still careful to point out that men like Elgin and Jerry were undoubtedly great players, despite all their failures. I believe he called Jerry West one of the greatest guards of all time, which is no small praise coming from Wilt. Wilt also called Bill Russell the greatest defensive player he'd ever seen and the greatest competitor ever. It was remarkable to discover just how much winning meant to Russell and how it was quite literally the most important thing in his life. According to Wilt, winning meant everything to Russell and his desire to win was so strong that all the stress and nervous energy would cause him to throw up before every important game.
Most interesting of all was how Wilt utterly dominated Russell in virtually all of their head-to-head matchups. Nobody loved a personal challenge more than Wilt, which is the primary reason why he holds so many league records to this day. When people would say that Russell was better than him, Wilt would absolutely crush Russell in terms of individual statistics. In fact, I don't think there is another example in NBA history where great player A repeatedly dominated great player B in the head-to-head matchups, while great player A's team still failed almost every time to beat great player B's team. It was an anomaly to say the least, and it's a true testament to the greatness of those Boston Celtic teams and their vaunted dynasty. I think I vomited in my mouth a little bit when I said that. Okay, sorry, moving on...
One last point of interest was how close Wilt came to becoming a Celtic. I thought it was fascinating that Red Auerbach, of all people, was Wilt's coach at the Kutcher's Country Club, which had a sort of hotel league back when Wilt was a teenager and still in high school. Going up against top ranked collegiate players and NBA pros, even then Wilt dominated the competition. The guy's precociousness knew no bounds (LOL) and he eventually had Auerbach's full attention. Auerbach tried to get Wilt to go to Harvard to play college ball. Of course, the rule back then was that NBA teams got first dibs on drafting players from the colleges in the immediate surrounding areas of each NBA team (or something to that effect). That sneaky Red saw how awesome Wilt's talent was and he wanted to make sure that when Wilt eventually turned pro, he'd be a Celtic. Of course, the rule changed shortly thereafter so that NBA teams could draft players who played in high schools considered local to the nearest NBA Franchise. How might it have changed history if that rule had never been changed, and if Wilt had gone to Harvard for his stint as a college player? Can you imagine a Celtic team with Wilt Chamberlain AND Bill Russell? Chamberlain at center, Russell at power forward, plus Cousy, the two Jones's, Havlicek, Heinsohn, .... talk about jaw-dropping talent. Add Chamberlain to those Celtics teams and you'd have a roster that makes any other NBA team in history look like a sad mockery of talent by comparison. Furthermore, how differently would Wilt's career have been remembered if he had played under Auerbach, and he had won all those titles? Would there be any doubt that he was the single greatest player of all time? Likely not. Wilt would have his own standard of individual greatness that would be entirely untouchable. In terms of greatness, there would be Wilt, and then there would be everyone else.
So after reading Wilt's book and learning pretty much all there is to know about Wilt's career, as well as his thoughts and opinions about other players, coaches, and teams of his generation, I'm actually now convinced that he WASN'T the Greatest of All Time (or for quick reference the G.O.A.T.). There are a number of reasons why I now feel this way, and I'll go over each of them:
1) Wilt was NOT the greatest competitor. He actually admitted that he sometimes lacked motivation on the court and often had to set certain individual goals in order to keep things interesting for him (like trying to break scoring records, or leading the league in assists, or leading the league in rebounds, etc...). Otherwise, Wilt would get bored, frustrated, and eventually uninterested in the game of basketball. I mean, the guy flat out admitted that he sometimes lacked a killer instinct on the basketball court. Who says something like that? Certainly not someone who is trying to be considered the greatest player ever. This is damning evidence for those of us who would make a case for Wilt at the G.O.A.T.
I think that failing to win a championship more often than not, along with all the subsequent criticism he took for being a "loser" was something that drove him to seek new heights of greatness, both as an individual and from a team perspective. To Wilt's credit, he admittedly displayed a consistently strong sense of teamwork and believed in the concept of team basketball. This is ironic because he was so ridiculously dominant from an individual standpoint, but apparently Wilt was always a great teammate and he never felt that he placed his individual goals ahead of the team's goals. In truth, it was his coaches who should get the credit for Wilt taking so many shots and scoring so many points throughout his illustrious career. His early coaches felt that he was virtually unstoppable (which he basically was) and they told him to shoot, and shoot often. Because he was a very coachable player and tried to adapt his game to whatever the coach and the team needed from him, Wilt scored the hell out of the ball. Wilt was often criticized by the media for being a selfish, me-first scorer who didn't play team ball. In reality, Wilt's coaches should have been the ones to take the blame for Wilt shooting so much. In the end, none of them did. That leads me to reason number 2 why Wilt isn't the G.O.A.T.
2) When he lost, Wilt blamed everyone but himself. Maybe he always felt that he gave everything on the court and could never have done anything more to help his teams win more championships. Still, the way Wilt constantly blamed his coaches, other players, the refs, and bad luck for his team's failures... I find it somewhat offputting. Nobody likes a whiner and I sometimes got the sense that Wilt didn't want to own his failures, which is something that I find difficult to respect. Wilt had a lot of pride in himself and his accomplishments. He really didn't feel like he could have contributed more to the game and he hated all the criticism that he had to take over the years. Considering the racial tensions of the time, I'm sure a lot of the criticism was unfair, but I'm sure some of it wasn't, and apparently Wilt didn't want to hear any of it. Like it or not, that's the way the man felt, but I think he did himself a disservice by thinking that way, and it certainly weighs against him in the G.O.A.T. debate.
3) In the end, Wilt is NOT the G.O.AT. Why you ask? It's because I'm now convinced that there is no such player as the G.O.A.T. It is a fictitious and imaginary title that no longer holds any meaning to me. This is perhaps a conclusion that some of you may have already realized, and it's certainly the one I've settled on. Reading Wilt's book simply reminded me that basketball is ultimately a team sport. In a team sport, it's logical to conclude that too much focus cannot be placed on team accomplishments when discussing the greatness of individual players. This has to be taken into consideration when defining the meaning of the G.O.A.T.
Jordan won 6 titles and Wilt won 2 titles. What if the ball had bounced Wilt's way a few more times in so many of those tightly contested playoff series against the Celtics? What if Butch Van Breda Kolff's idiot @ss hadn't kept Wilt out of the game in the 4th quarter of game 7 in the 69' Finals? What if Wilt had been coached by one of the greatest coaches of all time like Red Auerbach, instead of some of the idiot coaches that Wilt had to suffer in his career. Wilt might have had 4, 5, or 6 titles; maybe more. That certainly would have changed history, wouldn't it? No, there's no G.O.A.T. and I see that clearly now. The only thing MJ has over Wilt are the rings, and that just doesn't carry enough weight for me to agree beyond a shadow of doubt that MJ was the better, greater player.
If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to pick a G.O.A.T. (unlikely as that may be, LOL), I would still choose Wilt. For all his greatness, Wilt was a flawed player. He lacked a killer instinct, and ultimately he lacked the wealth of championships to accompany his various individual accolades. Still, he was the single most impressive physical specimen the league has ever seen, and there was virtually nothing the man couldn't do on a basketball court. He accomplished everything one could hope to accomplish in an NBA career, and he did it with style, grace, and magnificence. Then, of course, there was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He's moved up a notch on my G.O.A.T rankings for sure. As I take some time to learn more about the Cap, he might even pass Wilt as the G.O.A.T., assuming I thought there was one to begin with.
There were just so many interesting things about this book and so many fascinating things that Wilt did on and off the court, I'll be here all night typing a novel of my own if I keep going. All in all, it was a joy to learn so much about the great Wilt Chamberlain (sometimes more than I cared to know, LOL), and it's a must-read for any student of basketball history, or any fan of the Big Dipper.
To Randy,
Thanks so much for sending this book my way. I appreciate it more than you know, and I hope that one day I can find a way to return the favor.
Your good friend,
Steve
|
|
Discuss 1 Review/Comment | Email This
|
|
The True state of the Lakers now and our championship hopes.
Posted by: SPQR on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 10:07 AM
Lakers Blog
|
We have made our moves in the last day by signing Matt Barnes and Theo Ratliff.
We may have a move or two left but one suspects that this team is pretty well set now on the product we will root on next year.
So how does it affect our chances for what we all want-a second 3peat?
When I read we signed a Theo Ratliff, my first response was, "It can't be THAT Theo Ratliff. That guy has to be 45 years old and long retired."
Well, it turns out it is THAT Theo Ratliff and he is 37 years old, not retired and now plays for us!
My feelings? He really is old and on his last legs. His numbers do reflect that. But what will he be asked to give us, considering we have Drew and Pau who we all know will be splitting the post pretty much between them? If he can give us 10 to 15 minutes of solid defense and rebounding during the balance of the season, it will be a nice addition. But I do follow that with the strong caveat that I will have to see it before I believe it. He may turn out to be a nice bench player or a big, fat nothing stumbling around as just a decrepit old body.
Barnes is a much better addition. Defense wins championships. Just ask Boston or Los Angeles. He is a nice defender and has decent size. With Kobe, Pau, Drew and Artest, (and even Ratliff if he pans out) you can see some definative and frightening permutations on the defensive end that can play hell with other teams. This could be the best defensive team we have had in long memory. In the best case scenario, the best defensive team perhaps in Lakers history. Barnes is the kind of player, when coupled with a strong team like Los Angeles, is that hard, tough kind of mortar that helps keep the bricks nice and tight and strong.
The more unheralded addition of Steve Blake last week was in my opinion a very big signing. For the first time since this iteration of the Lakers arrived three years ago, we have a capable veteran guard to spell Derek Fisher. His history shows that he may in fact help in the passing game and feed not only the post but other players better than Derek does. One can't overestimate how this may impact an already virulent and explosive offense. A second gaurd as good as Blake is something we have lacked WHILE winning two championships. Something to think about now that we have him.
The other factor involved of course is Drew. He will go into the season healthy and one more time we can hope that he remains that way. If he does, that single factor will weigh even more heavily in our favor than any of our recent additions.
Finally we turn to the Caracter and Ebanks. If they were not a mirage, and at this point evidence seems to indicate they are not, they will add much need youth and ethusiasm AND talent to the end of the bench. If they are for real, as time and season wears on, one can rightfully expect them to have their moments and give us help during the long NBA marathon. If they do, come playoff time, they will certainly be capable of doing damage. Would one expect a steady consistancy from them? No, not at this stage. But remember, there are two rookies, not one. As long as one of them, on different days and different games can contribute, they will in tandem throughout the year be an asset in our championship hunt.
One could say that some of the other teams signed better players than Los Angeles. And in the case of Miami, that is certainly is the case. But that is not the sole factor in equating the improvement the signings make on various teams and it would be a mistake to do that kind of facile, surface evaluation. Because that is only veneer; just visible patina. There is another layer underneath that holds a deeper, immutable truth. You have to weigh in the fact of each teams starting point: how good was that team BEFORE they made their particular additions?
In that regard, we stand alone at the top. It was a supremely talented two time defending champions that expect to have a healthy Bynum, Steve Blake, Theo Ratliff, Matt Barnes, Caracter and Ebanks. When you look at the starting material, then factor in the additions, the Lakers actually in my mind improved more than any team with the obvious exception of Miami. And this spells serious trouble for the rest of the league.
I have always believed it is dangerous for team, even a champion, to sit in statis and not make moves to improve. It can lead to a very unhappy surprise as other teams continue to change, evolve and get better. I think the original 3peat team was an example of that. I am very happy that this time around, the Lakers saw some needs and were proactive in addressing them instead of just hoping or assuming the same cast of characters would win out at the end of another season. I think this was a very exciting and very good offseason for the NBA champions. I think the fruits of their efforts will become very clear in upcoming campaign.
I think next years Laker can and will be the best team we have had since Pau Gasol came here. And that is ominous for all the other teams in basketball, including Miami.
We all know Miami will be good. But how good? I know they will be good, and if all their pieces fall into place and fit perfectly, I THINK they may be special.
But I KNOW the Lakers, given the blessings of good health, will be better than they have been the last three years. And that my friends, will make them a very special team indeed.
I am looking forward to next year as much a fan can. I welcome and embrace the challenges of Boston, Utah, Denver, Dallas, Oklahoma, Orlando and Miami.
Based on what I have seen last year, what we have added this summer, what we can realistically suppose will evolve here, I fully expect to see Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson and company holding the championship trophy aloft the same time next year.
|
|
Discuss | Email This
|
|
Discussion: Lakers Assemble Best Defensive Roster in History
Posted by: lakeshowsd on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 04:35 AM
Lakers Blog
|
It's been a busy and remarkably productive summer for General Manager Mitch Kupchak of the back-to-back World Champion Los Angeles Lakers. It started with the drafting of the Trevor Ariza's clone, or as he's more commonly known, Devin Ebanks with the 43rd pick of the 2010 NBA draft. Derrick Caracter was also selected by the Lakers with the 58th overall pick in the draft. Both players went on to have impressive showings in the Las Vegas Summer league and many fans and experts expect both rookies to make the final roster for next season. Needless to say, it was a fantastic start for Mitch Kupchak, considering how late in the draft the Lakers acquired these two promising young players.
The next pivotal move by Kupchak was the signing of veteran point guard Steve Blake, one of the most coveted point guards from this summer's crop of free agents. Due to Derek Fisher's old age and inconsistency, and Jordan Farmar's lack of dedication and frequent mental mistakes, the point guard position was the biggest area of concern for the Lakers throughout the 2009-10 season. Thankfully, Kupchak wasted no time in signing Blake, who is undoubtedly a player who will serve as both a point guard for the future, and a valuable player in the present.
Soon after that, Mitch Kupchak received a verbal confirmation from legendary coach Phil Jackson that he would be returning to coach the Lakers for one more season. This proved to be perhaps the most important acquisition of all, as the Lakers retained the services of the greatest coach in NBA history. This move would set the table for what many see as an inevitable 3-Peat next season.
After a brief hold out, Derek Fisher was the next Laker to re-sign with the world champs. Honestly, there was little doubt that Fisher would return to the Lakers, as no team in the league would appreciate the old veteran champion more than the Lakers and their faithful fanbase. As the heart and soul of the team, Fisher is a legend in the purple and gold, and he is an invaluable member of the team that will aim to 3-peat next June. Another solid thumbs up for Mitch Kupchak for bringing back Fish.
In the wake of Miami's dramatic power grab in the Eastern Conference, many of us began to question whether these acquisitions would be enough to successfully defend the title. Little did we know that Mitch was hardly finished, and the Laker bench would receive a depth overhaul the likes of which I could not have envisioned. In his most recent display of masterful GM maneuvering, Kupchak stole the day by signing grizzled veteran and defensive master Theo Ratliff, and lock-down defensive forward Matt Barnes.
While Ratliff will not likely be expected to provide more than token contributions, Barnes will undoubtedly serve a vital role as the team's primary backup wingman, filling in the valuable minutes when Kobe or Ron Artest move to the bench for a rest. While I'm fairly indifferent about the signing of an older player like Ratliff, I could not be more excited at the prospect of a quality player like Barnes joining the Laker ranks. He has a reputation for being a hard nosed defender, an impressive athlete, a dependable outside shooter, and a relentless competitor. I think he'll fit in brilliantly with the Lakers and quickly work himself into a regular part of Phil Jackson's rotation.
Assuming the Lakers sign both Caracter and Ebanks, 13 of the mandatory 14 roster spots have been filled for the 2010-11 NBA season. It remains to be seen what else Mitch Kupchak will pull out of his bag of tricks, but it's obvious that his work is just about complete, and the Lakers now have a roster that is ready to do some major damage in the league next season! Grading Mitch Kupchak's performance this summer, I give him a sold 'A'.
Let's examine the Lakers depth chart:
PG - Derek Fisher / Steve Blake
SG - Kobe Bryant / Matt Barnes / Sasha Vujacic
SF - Ron Artest / Luke Walton / Devin Ebanks
PF - Pau Gasol / Lamar Odom / Derrick Caracter
C - Andrew Bynum / Theo Ratliff
Just looking at that team, I get the chills. I'd say that the Lakers have the deepest and most impressive looking roster in the league right now. The Lakers go at least 8 or 9 players deep, with the only real garbage players being the 12th and 13th guys on the bench (Vujacic and Walton). Quite frankly, this puts last year's bench to shame.
Now the million dollar question: Do these 2010-11 Lakers have the most impressive defensive roster ever assembled? This is obviously open to discussion, but at this point in time, I'm having difficulty thinking of any NBA team that ever fielded a better collection of tough, defensive minded players. If they remain relatively healthy next season, the Lakers will easily finish as the top ranked defensive team in the league, and as Kobe would say, you can take that to the bank.
As I see it, there really are no significant weaknesses in this team defensively. Steve Blake will make the Lakers a considerably better defensive team from the point guard position when compared to last season. He's a scrappy defender and he'll more adeptly handle the quickest NBA point guards; certainly better than his predecessor Jordan Farmar. With Blake as the first guard off the bench, Fisher will have the luxury of seeing reduced minutes throughout the regular season, and as a result I expect him to be less of a defensive liability than he was last year.
From the shooting guard and small forward positions is where it just gets ridiculous as far as defense is concerned. First of all, Kobe Bryant is the reigning All-Defensive First Team selection, so that speaks volumes in and of itself. Sasha Vujacic has been known to be a scrappy defender, though I don't expect him to see much playing time this season, all things considered.
Ron Artest is the best in the business in terms of man-to-man, lock down defense, and he's the team's defensive leader from the small forward spot. Ron's reputation and accomplishments speak for themselves, so I shouldn't even need to elaborate on his defensive capabilities. Behind him, Barnes will undoubtedly serve as the best backup defensive guard/forward in the league and even Devin Ebanks is reputed to be a defensive star in the making, which makes him another potential rotation guy.
Honestly, I feel sorry for guys like Brandon Roy, Dwayne Wade, Paul Pierce, Danny Granger, Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, and all the other top notch shooting guards and wingmen in the league. They're never going to catch a break against our collection of defensive beasts at the 2-guard and small forward positions!
Even from the center and power forward spots, the Lakers have managed to make marginal improvements to the roster. Theo Ratliff will bring a veteran presence to the locker room and may yet be a serviceable bench player in the event that Odom, Gasol, or (more likely) Bynum goes down with an injury for any length of time. Still, there really wasn't a need to vastly improve the most formidable front line in the NBA. The Lakers possess the best collection of skilled and versatile big men in the league and defensively, their size and length is a constant concern for any opposing team trying to match up with the Laker bigs.
At this point, I'm thoroughly impressed with this Laker roster, and I'm very excited to see how the new players gel with the core players, and build chemistry throughout the season. Overall, the Lakers will be a veritable force in the league and with these latest acquisitions, they should be considered the heavy favorites to win the championship in 2011.
|
|
Discuss | Email This
|
|
The Plot starts here...how it really came together in Miami.
Posted by: SPQR on Friday, July 16, 2010 - 07:08 PM
Lakers Blog
|
An interesting article today in Sports Illustrated about how the Miami Cerberus was formed.
I will post it, then the link after for those who prefer to read it that way; then a few of my thoughts:
The Plot Starts Here ... ... Showtime Starts Here
In February 2006, during All-Star weekend, LeBron James , Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade posed together for SI. Not long after, they started talking about forming an alliance that would change the NBA for years to come
IAN THOMSEN
PRINT EMAIL MOST POPULAR SHARE
PART I: THE ANNOUNCEMENT
Last week the world's most talented basketball star abandoned the story line that could have culminated with him becoming the most triumphant and beloved player of his age: Born and raised in nearby Akron, he was delivered upon the Cavaliers like a basketball Moses to lead the depressed region of northeast Ohio to the promised land. Now it turns out he wanted no part of that. He expressed no kinship to his people, and he didn't want to be the Man. Instead he chose the less stressful path of sharing the burdens of leadership with fellow free agents Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, who already had committed to the Heat when James announced he was joining them Thursday during a live broadcast of The Decision, the disastrous ESPN infomercial that revealed that James wasn't the lovable guy that his crossover appearances on Nike ads or Saturday Night Live had made him out to be.
All of the upside was gone, leaving only a 25-year-old small forward who after seven hype-filled seasons had failed to produce a championship; who admitted that he didn't have the grace to personally tell his former team's owner that he was leaving; and who had kept his announcement secret because this spectacle was ultimately more important to him than his relationships with the fans he was abandoning in Ohio. Asked how James should have managed his departure, Cavs majority owner Dan Gilbert said, "He would have come in at least a day before and had face-to-face meetings with us. He would have told us what the reasons were and given us the opportunity to make one last argument or move or whatever it might take, even if there was nothing we could do. He should have held a news conference in downtown Cleveland to face the music like a man, let people ask the questions, give his reasons and express gratitude to all of the people in Cleveland who have supported him, knowing this is a blue-collar town and they were going to take it hard.
"There is a difference between Cleveland being deeply disappointed in the decision—which we are—and the feeling of betrayal that only came from his part in the process and the way he communicated it to the world. He crossed the line from disappointment to betrayal."
Teams are occasionally duplicitous in their dealings with players, so should James have owed the Cavs an explanation? The answer is yes, because of how much his relationship with his local team benefited him and Cleveland. "I feel awful that I'm leaving," James admitted as he sat hunched and apprehensive in a director's chair upon a small raised stage, as if he realized he was rendering the only place he's ever lived uninhabitable with his own version of the BP oil spill. Within two hours Gilbert was recklessly ceding the high ground by ripping "our former hero" for his "narcissistic, self-promotional" display. "You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal," wrote Gilbert in an open letter to Cleveland fans.
According to one of his marketing advisers, James did not hold a farewell news conference in Cleveland because he feared for his safety once word got out that he was leaving. But James's tortuous TV appearance, combined with Gilbert's equally regrettable response, only served to enrage the city. That night fans were seen burning JAMES JERSEYS and WITNESS T-shirts on sidewalks and throwing rocks at his 10-story Nike billboard downtown. By Saturday work crews were unpeeling the billboard, strip by strip, while in the Cavs' nearby gift shop all of the LeBron paraphernalia had been removed like mementos of Lenin in the new Russia. "I had this sick sense inside," former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar, a native of suburban Youngstown, told The Plain-Dealer's Terry Pluto. "I really thought that as an athlete, your ultimate goal would be to win a title for your hometown team. That's what drove me when I was with the Browns. I wanted to finish what I started."
PART II: THE MAN
There was something deeper in James's decision that set off negative reactions throughout the league. Not only had he forgotten where he came from, but the reigning two-time MVP seemed to be accepting a lesser station alongside Wade, the 6'4" shooting guard who had led Miami to the 2005--06 championship, and Bosh, the 6'10" All-Star power forward who spent the first seven years of his career with the Raptors. "I was surprised that he went [to Miami]," said Orlando G.M. Otis Smith. "I thought he was more of a competitor. The great ones usually stay in one location."
A Western Conference G.M. added, "It sparks a huge debate about how you determine greatness. We put him on this pedestal and we believed he was fulfilling it—and now we're idiots for believing in him. Maybe at his core he isn't a very confident guy."
Up to the moment of his revelation James, who entered the league to unparalleled hype in 2003, had appeared as comfortable with his celebrity as a young Jordan or Julius Erving. He carried himself with prodigious maturity while winning eight postseason series—twice as many as the Cavs had won in the previous 35 years—which made his obliviousness during and after his strained televised farewell all the more surprising. "It is a tough decision because I know how loyal I am," he said on the air on Thursday. The following night he joined Wade and Bosh to say hello to 13,000 Heat fans, as if their frenzied screams absolved James of any responsibility he might have felt to his home state. "The [Heat] organization is a close-knit group," he told his new audience. "It's all about family, and that's what I'm all about." Easy come, easy go.
Clearly James couldn't see why he had turned off so many believers. Hadn't he, Wade and Bosh each sacrificed at least $15 million over the lifetime of his contract in order to play together in Miami? (Though the difference in real money for James, thanks to the absence of state income tax in Florida, was closer to $6 million.) Wasn't James putting the pursuit of championships ahead of his individual stats, potentially loosening his hold on the MVP trophy? Hadn't profits from The Decision resulted in a contribution of more than $2.5 million to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America?
Until the stain of The Decision is washed away and he has proved the sacrifices to be championship-worthy, however, James has surrendered the benefit of the doubt. "If I was 25 I would try to win it by myself," said Charles Barkley on NBA TV. "This definitely hurts LeBron. When you are 25 you shouldn't be trying to piggyback on other people."
PART III: THE SEA CHANGE
Think back to the NBA's golden era when Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas were winning a combined 10 championships from 1979 to '90. Would those three rivals ever have wanted to join forces? They were more interested in beating each other than in deferring to one another.
"I came of age as commissioner when the Lakers and Celtics each had a Hall of Fame team," says David Stern of the Lakers of Magic, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and Bob McAdoo, and the Celtics of Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson and Bill Walton. But those rosters were assembled over time by management, while this trio has come together as the result of a cabal by the players themselves. This AAU-ization of the NBA is the culmination of three decades of players gaining more and more power, a movement that started with the Magic-Bird era. Next summer the commissioner may, like Dr. Frankenstein, have to kill off the monster he created when he presides over labor negotiations that are expected to result in a lockout. "It's safe to say that if contracts are shorter and guarantees are less, we may see opportunities for this to actually increase," says Stern, noting that players in the next system may become free agents more often. "But the [next] collective bargaining agreement is going to be focused solely on sustainable business models, in a context where we encourage teams within the rules to compete with each other for talent as hard and tenaciously as they possibly can."
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wants the league to reconsider its enforcement of tampering rules as it applies to players, with the inference that Wade helped lure James and Bosh to Miami while they were still under contract. "We're not going to become the thought police, the speech police, the private-meeting police," said Stern, who has received no formal complaints from the Cavs or the Raptors. "That said, if they are directed by their teams [to recruit other players], that would be a different situation."
Collusion among players is a common and unstoppable practice. The NBA salary cap has grown by 1,600% since its original 1984 threshold of $3.6 million per team, which has created a chumminess among the elite players. And never has a group of players exerted as much power as James, Bosh and Wade, all chosen among the top five of the 2003 draft. In 2006 James persuaded Wade and Bosh to join him in agreeing to three-year contract extensions (with a fourth-year option) that would make them free agents this summer to maximize their bargaining power before the collective bargaining agreement expires in 2011. They realized they could thrive together while helping lead the U.S. to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics, and their bond was deepened further last year when Henry Thomas, who represents Bosh and Wade, joined James's representative, Leon Rose, at CAA Sports.
In the meantime Heat president Pat Riley was plotting what he called "the triple play." It began when he traded Shaquille O'Neal to Phoenix in 2008 to clear cap space and continued as he unloaded long-term contracts and developed relationships with confidants of the 15 All-Stars who were among this summer's class of free agents. One advantage of Riley's intelligence gathering was his understanding—as relayed to him by Wade—that James wanted to become less of a scorer and more of a distributor, and that he looked forward to no longer carrying the offense night after night. "Now the pressure of making every shot or shooting a high percentage for our team to win is not a big deal anymore," says James. "You look at Game 7 of the Finals—Kobe Bryant shot 6 for 24 from the field, and they still won because he knew he had help and guys came through for him."
The Cavaliers have depended on him to score (he's averaged at least 27 points per game over the last six seasons), but what if he never wanted to be the second coming of Jordan? James has long viewed himself as having more in common with Magic than with Michael, and this move enables him to become the Man in a more creative and entertaining way—as the playmaker who pushes the ball in the open floor and delights in watching Wade and Bosh finish what he has started. Riley knew exactly how to sell Miami to James. "LeBron would be Magic and Dwyane would be Kobe and Chris would be Kevin Garnett," said Riley, reciting the pitch he made during the Heat's July 2 presentation to James. "He actually liked that conversation. He lit up and he said that would be great if 'I didn't have to score,' that he could be maybe the first guy since Oscar Robertson to be a triple double guy."
The Heat's meeting with James in the IMG offices in downtown Cleveland lasted close to three hours, and Riley was the star. Riley has seven NBA championship rings, and he has three copies of each—one gold, one silver, one platinum—to go with whatever he may be wearing on a particular day. He tossed the bag of rings on a table for James to look inside. "Like a weapon," as Riley would describe the scene later.
"Hey," said Riley playfully, "try one on."
They had spoken in other settings, and Riley knew he had James's attention. After also meeting with the Nets, Knicks, Clippers, Cavaliers and Bulls over the first three days of July in Cleveland, James quickly narrowed his final choices to Miami, Cleveland and Chicago. "The process was taken extremely seriously, and it was not predetermined," says Rose. "I can tell you he vacillated after certain meetings. He went back and forth."
Early last week he was leaning toward Miami, but James insists he didn't make a final decision until a heart-to-heart last Thursday morning with his mother, Gloria. Seven ringless years in the NBA had left James hungry to begin winning championships, even at the cost of his legacy. No doubt he found himself recalling the message Riley delivered: "The main thing is the main thing."
The irony of Miami's coup is that Riley, of all people, was so eager to marry three leaders of rival teams—the same Riley who as a coach used to famously scold his own players for fraternizing with opponents. And the trend of tribalism among NBA players was on display again at Carmelo Anthony's wedding to MTV personality LaLa Vazquez last Saturday in New York City. Among the guests were James (who was booed by spurned Knicks fans as he climbed out of his limo) and Hornets point guard Chris Paul, who may have been inspired by Miami's new big three. According to the New York Post, Paul offered a toast suggesting that he, the groom and new Knick Amar'e Stoudemire should form their own power trio in New York.
PART IV: THE FUTURE
Rivals who are hoping the Heat will need time to fill out the roster are making a serious mistake in underestimating Riley. By dumping Michael Beasley and his $5 million salary on the Timberwolves and offering packages of draft picks and $16 million trade exceptions to Toronto and Cleveland to complete sign-and-trade deals for Bosh and James, Riley has freed up a salary slot for swingman Mike Miller while creating room to re-sign big man Udonis Haslem, whose defense-first mind-set and physical play upfront will be indispensable throughout the playoffs next spring. "Not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven," says James of his expectations for titles. "When I say that, I really believe it. I'm about business."
Even if the three win and win big, there will be complaints that they cut corners to their parades. "I guess I'm a purist, but I believe the journey to the championship is really what it's all about," says a former star who is now a league executive, and who asks to remain anonymous because he may try to acquire one of the Heat stars if their partnership fails. "It's the heartache, the ups and downs, the winning 60 games and losing in the playoffs, and then all of a sudden the breakthrough. Winning the championship is more about the journey than it is about getting three or four guys and [saying] let's win because we're so much better than everybody else. It's like if Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain had gotten together and said, 'Let's both play together in Chicago'—what would have been the meaning of that?"
The championships will be hard to come by if James, Wade and Bosh can't learn how to share the rock over the course of more than 100 regular-season and playoff games. After winning the championship in 2008 with his new All-Star threesome of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, Celtics coach Doc Rivers acknowledged that the experiment might not have succeeded a few years earlier, when each player was still exploring his own potential. But by the time the three united in Boston, each was in his 30s and ready to sacrifice for the team. "I had a group of guys that were very willing to be coached and weren't stuck on who they were," said Rivers two years ago. "I hear guys say they want to win it, but I think what they're really saying is, 'I want to win it as long as I can keep doing what I do.' I had three stars who said they wanted to win and they would change to do it. I don't think you get that a lot."
Gilbert remained skeptical of his former star, accusing James of quitting on the Cavs during the playoffs in each of the past two seasons. "He's going to need to do some deep, deep soul-searching and get an understanding on who he is and if it is important enough to him," Gilbert said on Saturday. "Without that I don't think he'll ever reach his potential from a championship standpoint. It's not anything physical on the outside; he'll have to do some work on the inside to get to the Kobe level, or the Michael Jordan or the Tim Duncan level."
For years Gilbert had dreaded the possibility that James would leave. Now that the day was here, what was he feeling? "It's kind of a relief on the organization," he said, acknowledging that the franchise had made trade after trade with the short-term goal of convincing James to reenlist. "People have to understand this was a Lebron-centric situation," said Gilbert. "We haven't experienced trying to do it the right way, and in a way it's exciting for us to move forward without that kind of weight on us. Because you do start compromising."
Now most of the compromises are going to fall upon James. In one intensive week his profile shifted from NBA darling to a player who has exhausted the public's patience. The last two years' worth of emotional capital that has been invested in speculation about his future is now being held against him like an expensive loan, and the only way he can pay it off is by winning a championship.
http://157.166.255.22/vault/article/magazine/MAG1172070/1/index.htm
A few comment on some things that really caught my eye here.
I generally disregard Charles Barkley's remarks about the greatness of a player or how his actions reflect negatively on his greatness. Barkleys real agenda, whether it be pertaining to Kobe, Lebron or anyone else who comes along the future will be to insure his best friend Michael Jordan will always be considered the GOAT. I also find his remarks about "winning it yourself" a bit hypocritical coming from a guy who left Philly while still in his prime for the greener pastures and better roster of Pheonix in order to get his ring. And when that did not work out, going to Houston to try ride Hakeem and Drexler to a ring.
I found the mention of players like Bird, Magic and Isiah wanted to kill each other rather than play together much more interesting. I watched all those greats play, and that is true. In fact, even though Magic and Isiah were best friends, the wanted to beat each to a pulp when they hooked up on the court. I do think what happened in Miami does show a shift of athletic cultures from those days gone by. I suspect that now, with these huge salaries and mobile party lifestyle, players see each other all the time in very comfortable, intimate settings. Clubs, events, concerts, resorts, vacation retreats. Its all part of 'living the life'. I think this kind of friendship and fraternization, being in the same 'club' is breaking down the walls of competative hate that existed twenty or more years ago. Instead of wanted to kill another great athlete, now it is becoming more acceptable to want to play with another great athlete who you hang with all the time and are close friends with. I think this is a little lamentable.
I also think that some athletes, by their loner nature are more immune to this. Kobe and Tim Duncan come to mind. You really don't hear or see them on this 'star' circuit of parties and concerts. The don't seem to like that kind of scene. I think this type of loaner athlete is more a throwback to those old style players who view sports as more war than fun and games against or with friends. By their very nature, there will always be players like this.
If this Cerberus down in Miami is indeed the just the beginning results of an athletic cultural shift, then we will most certainly see more of these super athletes get on one team in future years. Not a common phenomenon, but one that will happen from time to time under the right circumstances.
The other thing brought up was the question, "Can you imagine Isiah, Bird or Magic wanting to play together instead of wanted to kill each other."
That is an interesting question. All three men played on their own teams and decided to attack each other rather than team up. But one thing this article does not point out, that it should is this: All three of those guys played on star studded teams. They had no need to leave their places of employ to win a ring, like Lebron does in the face of LA, Boston and Orlando. If Magic, Bird or Isiah had found themselves in Lebrons position, would they have done the same? I don't know. We never will.
It is also fascinating that Lebron, despite his scoring prowess, really wants to be a passer; Magic Johnson, not Michael Jordan or Kobe. I have to confess, this is something I have never considered. Because he could score and did score with such great facility, I always assumed he WANTED to. But according to this article he does not, but was forced to because of the team he was on.
I don't look at this as flaw in his character. Not every player desires to be a scoring machine like Kobe or MJ. Magic Johnson, perhaps the greatest player of all time wanted nothing more than to be the passing master, the facilitator.
This leads to the admiration I have for Pat Riley. He found out that Lebron did want to be Magic, not MJ. So he put together a team where Lebron could have that high powered car to drive and then offered the keys to Lebron. I bet no other team in their pitch to him said, "Hey Lebron, if you come here, you can be what you want, the facilitator."
Riley, the master psychologist found Lebron’s deepest desire and played to it. You really have to give the man credit. Riley did his homework well, better than the other teams, and he hit the jackpot. All these decades after coaching Showtime, Riley is still special...and dangerous, with a first rate mind and acumen few possess.
One last thought. All this talk about Lebron now no longer being able to be the man in this article and in the media and LTB is completely erroneous. There are many ways to be the man. You can do like Kobe and MJ did, with scoring and defense. You can do it like Magic in various ways throughout his brilliant career; with complete control of the game through passing and rebounding, or later with passing, rebounding and high scoring. Or like Russell did, on a very talented team with rebounding and defense. Those are ALL ways to be 'the man' and lead your team to a title…and the glory that goes with it.
If Lebron goes the Magic route, becomes a master facilitator with rebounding and scoring mixed in with good measure; if he becomes the leader and obvious best player on that team; if he leads them to championships and wins championship MVPs, he will have done EXACTLY what Russell, Kareem, Magic, Bird, MJ and Kobe did: Lead a very talented team to the championship(s). If he does all that, fills all the resume requirements, he is just as deserving of being 'the man' as all those past players. Because he will have done just as they did…whether we like it or not. No player, despite what Charles Barkley says, has “done it on his own.” EVERY player who tried, failed.
Lebron’s career denoument remains to be written. And he will write it, not fans or journalists who did not like what he did or ignore the reality of the help Kareem, Magic, Bird, Russell, Kobe and MJ had to become ‘the man’.
|
|
Discuss | Email This
|
|
Miami's Laker plan taking shape.
Posted by: SPQR on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - 11:39 AM
Lakers Blog
|
With Miller and Haslem joining Cererbus in Miami, things are taking shape for them.
While they have to beat Boston and Orlando to win the title, there is no question that we are their ulitmate target. We have what they want and they know damn well who (barring injuries) will be representing the West in the final-us, the Lakers, the two time defending Champion.
It is interesting to see the different evaluations of the Miami team on LTB. Some I agree with, others I don't.
One thing brought up is a lack of center. It is said Bosh will man that spot. I think thats what will happen. While this will indeed hurt them against true, powerful, big centers like Drew and Howard, they actually will have a edge with him against most other teams. Why is that important? Because as shown last year, home court in the finals can be the determining factor. Does anyone believe we would have beaten Boston if games 6 and 7 had been there?
I have no doubt that Miami will be pushing hard for home court. And if Bosh gives them a center edge against most NBA teams during the regular season, it helps them achieve this.
One can counter that against us and Boston and Orlando, his lack of size and strength will allow those teams to exploit him on the offense end. And that is so. But in the never ending game of chess that the NBA is, they have the obvious response to that problem against all three of those teams, against every team.
Even though LA, Boston and Orlando may find attacking Bosh down low to be easy prey, Miami will have it just as easy with Lebron and Wade. Despite brave claims, NOBODY is really going to be able to defend that duo. Why do I know this? It is very simple. Nobody, not us, not Boston, nor Orlando could totally defend these guys when they were on their own. Now they are together. It just puts too much pressure on a defense, any defense, to stop it. They are just that great as players.
I am afraid that many fans, many Lakers fans, are just severely underestimating what this paring of these two all time great players means. It is going to be nothing short of nightmare to substantially stop them in tandem. How many times have we seen them pull a Kobe Bryant and just dominate and destroy teams by themselves? To put it another way, its almost like having a Lakers team with two Kobe Bryants on it. Think about how tough that team would be. Thats really pretty much what we are talking about here with Miami.
So while we can dissect them and talk about their weaknessess, Miami fans can do the same. And when they say, "Who is going to stop the tandem of Lebron and Wade?" when they do their analysis, the answer comes back, "Nobody." And that is the truth.
With every signing Miami makes of a decent player, it will make them just that much harder to beat. Because as has been shown right here in LA, when you have stars on your team of high magnitude, it makes even marginal players better. And with Miami, with no offense to Boston or LA, they now have the edge in that kind of star player that we and Boston had a monopoly on...that powers championships.
How dangerous will Miami get? We won't have to wait till the end of the year to know. If they are good enough to win home court for the entire playoffs, they will be very, very good. If they win the Eastern playoffs and get to the finals, then we know that things worked out for them to a tee. If at the end of the year this Miami team beats a combination of Boston, Chicago and Orlando and makes the finals, it means it all worked out for them. That they are exactly what they envisioned.
And if they are that good at that time, they will be as big a threat to us as Boston was. Maybe even more so. Perhaps a different threat, not as good defensively, but offensively just plain unstoppable.
It will be very interesting to watch the evolution of this putative threat to us. The first thing to watch is what other players will they be able to sign. The next thing to observe is how well and how fast Lebron, Wade, Bosh and the rest develop synergy. If they do it fast, they will start to win games at a very fast clip. I suspect at a frightening pace. If they reach that point, watch out. Because then they can start to make a bid for home court and it means things are going exactly as they imagined when they made the deal.
If in the end they are that good to beat out Boston, Chicago and Orlando in the east and actually make the finals, the Lakers will find themselves faced with nothing less than a monster. Because at that point, Miami would have to be a monster to get that far. It would mean everything is working perfectly for them. If that moment arrives, we will have play ball at a very high level, most likely our highest so far in the last three years to get that 3peat. Because if Miami does make the finals, they will just that good.
I have no doubt the signing of Haslem and Miller brings them just that much closer to that final reality that Riley has in mind. The signing of Bosh, Wade and Lebron was a bad day for Los Angeles for obvious reasons. The signing of Miller and Haslem was another good day for Miami.
This Miami thing right now is like some lab experiement, concocted by mad scientist Pat Riley. He has acheived his breakthrough. He feels he is close to a total revolutionary product. He is just trying to get the last, right ingredients he needs to have a final result that will change the NBA world we live in.
Too many more of those 'good' days for Miami are going to spell serious trouble for everyone. If Riley gets the ingredients for the formula he envisions, there might not be anyone who can stop what comes out of his particular lab.
|
|
Discuss | Email This
|
|
Discussion: NBA Live 10 Exposes the Heat's Weak Interior Defense.
Posted by: lakeshowsd on Saturday, July 10, 2010 - 10:08 PM
Lakers Blog
|
Just for giggles, I created the projected starting 5 for the "Super Team" Miami Heat and pitted them against the reigning world champion Lakers in NBA Live 10 for the Playstation 3. Naturally, I played as the Lakers.
I assumed that the Lakers were re-signing Fisher, and he was included in their starting lineup. For the Heat, I assumed that the Heat would sign Udonis Haslem and included him in their starting lineup.
The lineups for each team were as follows -
Heat:
PG: Mario Chalmers
SG: Dwayne Wade
SF: Lebron James
PF: Udonis Haslem
C : Chris Bosh
6th: Mike Miller
Lakers:
PG: Derek Fisher
SG: Kobe Bryant
SF: Ron Artest
PF: Pau Gasol
C : Andrew Bynum
6th: Lamar Odom
The Heat jumped out to the early lead and continued to make it a tight game for most of the first half. Lebron was knocking down threes and he, Wade, and Chalmers were attacking the basket with regularity and getting to the foul line. Gasol actually got in early foul trouble and had to be replaced by Odom in the first quarter. Regardless, I was able to control the tempo by constantly feeding the post in the first half. Using the Lakers, I was able to finish the 1st period with a 3 point lead and I actually built a 9 point lead by halftime.
During the game, I was surprised at how easy it was to score against the much smaller and softer front line of the Heat. It was even easier than I could have imagined, and as you might expect, Bynum and Gasol were all but unstoppable in the post. Bynum was particularly effective and he was able to dominate Chris Bosh in the low post virtually the entire game. It was the complete opposite experience of when I use the Lakers to play against the Celtics for example, who never fail to stifle the Lakers' inside game.
In the second half the Heat changed their offensive strategy up a bit and started running a lot of screen and roll, which proved much more difficult to defend. It was tough because both Haslem and Bosh are good mid-range jumpshooters, and Bynum was struggling to close out on them. The Heat cut the deficit to 4 by mid way 3rd quarter before the Lakers pushed the lead back up to double digits to close out the period. Thankfully, Kobe saved the Lakers collective butts as he has some spectacular shots and drives to the basket in the 3rd quarter. After being in foul trouble in the first half, Gasol also stepped up his offensive production in the 3rd and 4th periods.
The Lakers went on a nice run to start the 4th period and I was able to push the lead up the 17 points by mid way through the quarter. Unfortunately the Heat were far from finished and they picked up the defensive intensity, cutting the lead to 6 points with under a minute remaining in the game. I was glad to see the game accurately reflect the effectiveness of Wade, James, and Chalmers' abilities to steal the basketball. Those 3 will form the most deadly group of perimeter pick-pockets in the league next season, and that was clearly evident even in this simulation. Still, it proved to be too little, too late and the Lakers made enough big plays to close out the game down the stretch.
The real weakness of the Heat proved to be their interior defense because any time I needed a bucket, I was able to just dump it down to Gasol or Bynum in the post and run my offense through them. Both Bynum and Gasol passed well from the post, setting up Artest, Kobe, and Fish for easy jumpers, or the two 7-footers would simply score over the smaller defenders. As a team, the Lakers shot 57% (66% from 3-point land) for the game, while holding the Heat to 46% (30% from three).
I thought those of you who are gamers might appreciate this topic. Once the Heat have closer to a full roster I plan to simulate a 7 game series with the Lakers and for any of you who are interested, I'll post the results here on the LTB.
|
|
Discuss 3 Reviews/Comments | Email This
|
|
Miami fans chant BEAT LA while Dr. Buss watches all.
Posted by: SPQR on Saturday, July 10, 2010 - 01:57 PM
Lakers Blog
|
Really got a kick out of an associated press article today. Down in Miami last night they had the big extravganza of unvieling their three new players, coming out in plums of smoke, side by side as they pointed at the crowd of 13 thousand. James made a point of strutting about on stage for his new screaming, adoring fans.
Miami broadcaster Eric Reid went so far as to call the trio, the "Three Kings." A bit premature there as they have not won a title yet and only Wade ever has.
Sorry to intrude with reality, Mr. Reid, but the Lakers are your Kings and you are our subjects. We are the soveriegn of the entire league, including Miami. The crown rests on our head. We took the throne on the field of battle. We enforce our rule with a well blooded sword. That's how we roll. And that's how it is.
The thousands of fans who showed up to greet their new heros broke out in chants of "BEAT LA."
Imagine, Miami Heat fans chanting Beat LA in July!!! What has the world come to? lol.
Yes, here we are on July 10th and Miami fans are already demanding, expecting and planning a regicide of Los Angeles with the crown to be placed on their own heads. That did not take long. This coming from fans who in the past have only heard that chant on TV spoken by Boston fans, and who never in a million years would have even whispered those words before today.
And so it begins, just a couple weeks after we won the title against Boston, our presummed successor is already panting for and demanding our decapitated, bloody head on a platter.
I don't think there is anything sweeter than beating Boston. There can't be. Its so many things: our history down through the ages and the fact that we are on the verge of having more titles than them. Nothing beats that. Not if you really understand the Lakers-Celtics rivalry and what it means in so many ways. But I will say that beating this Heat team in the finals would come in a pretty close second for me.
We have just won the title, its July 10th, and already the drum beat to war between Miami and Los Angeles has started. This is just the beginning. Those drums are going to get alot louder.
One more thought. Lost on this big Miami move is how very easy the West has become. With Staudimires move to the Knicks, Pheonix is effectively nuetered. He is a flawed player, but a terrific flawed player. He was essential to the Suns. What really stands in our way? Maybe Denver can give us a little tussel if Karl comes back, but they can't beat us. Utah? Naw, not even close. Perhaps the Thunder will end being our biggest challenger. The Thunder. Think about that. Nothing against them, but if the Thunder have become our biggest threat, this thing has become just that easy.
Hello 2011 NBA finals. Reserved tickets, please. Name: Los Angeles Lakers.
Watched the Lakers summer league game last night. That second round pick Caracter is physically HUGE. He also has a nice scoring touch with both hands down low. I have read he is raw. Thats ok. With this Lakers team, we have the talent to let this guy develop for a couple years. It will be interesting to see if this guy can push forward.
Devin Ewbanks had 21 points and showed why many had projected him in the first round. If both he and Caracter end up being good players, this Lakers draft may end up being a steal. And I would say just in the nick of time. This team is long past the time for getting an nice infusion of young talent from the draft. It would be great if this was that year. For those who did not watch the game, I will now post a story about it and the link:
Lakers draftees make splash in debutEmail Print Comments10 By Dave McMenamin
ESPNLosAngeles.com
Archive
Garrett W. Ellwood/Getty Images
Lakers second-round draft pick Devin Ebanks had a promising debut with the Lakers, scoring 21 points in his first summer league game against the Pistons.
LAS VEGAS -- The Lakers' starting lineup for next season appeared a little shaky Friday with news of Derek Fisher planning a trip to Miami to talk with Heat president Pat Riley about a job, but the end of Los Angeles' bench looked a little brighter after impressive summer league debuts by the team's two rookies.
Second-round draft picks Devin Ebanks, selected No. 43 out of West Virginia, and Derrick Caracter, picked No. 58 out of UTEP, both came away looking like steals in their first taste of NBA action.
Ebanks, the 6-9, 210-pound Trevor Ariza body double at small forward (he even wore Ariza's No. 3), led the Lakers with 21 points to go with two assists and two steals.
Caracter, 6-9 and now 270 pounds -- after losing more than 30 pounds since college -- added 20 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks in the Lakers' 89-84 loss to the Pistons.
"I think both Caracter and Ebanks showed themselves capable of being in the league and being on the roster," said Chuck Person, the Lakers' coach for the five games the team will play in the Las Vegas Summer League.
With the Lakers already deep into the luxury tax next season with five players still left to sign, there is financial incentive for the team to sign the pair to rookie minimum salaries of $473,604.
Every dollar paid by the team to the remaining free agents it signs will have to be paid out double in a check to the league office to cover the fee levied for overspending, so filling out the roster with Ebanks and Caracter is the direction general manager Mitch Kupchak wants to go in if they prove capable, rather than going for more expensive options in veterans Josh Powell and D.J. Mbenga who command minimum salaries in the $1 million range.
"I had to play a role at West Virginia that really didn't call for me to score and now I get a chance to show that here," Ebanks said. "It was fun. I was having fun out there, showcasing my talent."
Person described Ebanks as a "runner, a defender ... [and] a good slasher" and noted that while the rookie isn't known as a 3-point shooter, the coach believes he will be able to make them at the pro level. Ebanks was 1-for-3 from 3-point range Friday.
Caracter, who was two picks away from being "Mr. Irrelevant" of the NBA draft, has more of an uphill battle to make the team, but Person came away impressed with the fight he showed.
"Derrick did some good things in the post, made his jump shots, rebounded really well," Person said. "Obviously he has some things to work on, that's the reason he got drafted No. 58. He lacks a little size so his height he makes up for with strength and the ability to have a nose for the ball."
The undersized power forward said he embraces the underdog role.
More on the Lakers
For more news and notes on the Lakers, check out the Land O' Lakers blog from the Kamenetzky brothers. Blog
"Every guy -- this rookie class, the class before me -- I just want to compete with everybody out there," Caracter said. "Just show them that I'm not worried about guys' names or anything like that -- I'm out here to compete and try to help my team win."
While summer league is a tough testing laboratory to get a feel for how a player can react in a structured system -- Detroit and L.A. combined for 46 turnovers in the game, after all -- part of Person's duty as coach is to introduce the incoming players to the triangle offense and see if they can grasp it.
"The guys showed the ability that they can pick it up and execute the things that we can do out of the basic triangle," Person said. "The team shot better than 50 percent from the field, which does show good execution."
Despite the endorsement, Caracter was asked what he needed to work on before Saturday's game against Denver and said: "The triangle. The triangle. Just trying to understand it, understanding the spots and all that that they're teaching me. Everything will work out."
Person also added he was impressed by Ibrahim Jaaber (11 assists) and D.J. Strawberry (14 points), both of whom have an outside shot at making the team as a backup guard, should Shannon Brown leave via free agency.
Bell still available
Veteran free-agent forward Raja Bell refuted an Internet story that reported the 33-year-old rejected a contract offer by the Lakers.
"I have not expressed any disinterest in joining the Lakers," Bell told ESPNLosAngeles.com in a phone interview Friday. "I have not been extended an offer that I could have rejected. They are one of several teams I am in contact with."
Bell said he has received several phone calls from former nemesis Kobe Bryant recruiting his services for next season.
In a radio interview with ESPNDallas.com's Tim McMahon earlier in the week, Bell ranked his top-three preferred destinations as Florida (the Heat or Magic), New York (Knicks or Nets), or Dallas. Bell played for the Mavericks in 2002-03.
http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/news/story?id=5369067
Lastly, the thing that caught my attention even more than Caracter and Ebanks was the presence right in the front row of.......Dr. Jerry Buss.
You know, this guy has won ten championships over the years as owner. He has dealt with and seen NBA gods like Kareem, Magic, Worthy, Shaq, Kobe, Pau and many others. Yet here he is, at his advanced age, in this gym in Las Vegas, front row, watching the Lakers summer league players.
This guy just loves his team and his players. All of them. He wants to know what he has from his best player in Kobe right down to the guys he was watching last night.
Honestly, this guy has a basketball work ethic like Kobe Bryant in his own way. Is it any wonder we have enjoyed the success we have under his aegis?
You know, greats have come and gone here with Buss: Kareem, Worthy, Magic, Shaq, Kobe, and it sucks when it happens. But one thing that we know: under Dr. Buss, the march to excellance will go on. Losing all time great players is always hard to over come. But I tell you, the day I will really start to worry is the day Dr. Buss leaves.
In the end, that may hurt more than the loss of any singularly great player in Lakers history.
|
|
Discuss | Email This
|
|
|
|
| Lakers Poll | |
[ Results |
Polls ]
Votes: 313
Comments: 0
Created by: ReliveThe3PEAT
|
|
| | The current LTB time is 5:29 PM Pacific. |
|
| Showtime Allstars |
Top 15 Active Members by Reputation Voting:
|
|
| Top Posters |
The top 10 posters over the last 5 days:
|
|
| Link to Us | | To link to us, simply copy and paste the html code below on your webpage:
<a href=http://lakers.topbuzz.com/> Los Angeles Lakers</a> rumors, news & fan forum at Lakers Topbuzz!
|
|
|
