I miss the Fox Sports West sportcast that they used to have every night at 10PM in Southern California. You could count on getting a recap of that days action on any and all SoCal teams. The Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers, Angels, and even hockey were featured for a full 1/2 hour. Now we have to go to the local news and some of them devote about 2 minutes to sports. It's no wonder so many of us are on our computers checking in with sites like TopBuzz to find out what is going on.

FSW would also do a training camp report every night, including video, just to keep us up to date on the progress of our team. Those were the good ole days.

Anyway, the latest reports say that Kobe is only doing light running and not practicing with the team. When asked if he would be ready for the season opener he only said "hopefullly." Chris Mihm will start light running soon and is still watching. Brian Cook's thumb/hand is not 100% but he is practicing. Coach Jackson had given Kurt Rambis an outline for the first week of practice that reportedly was all defensive drills. I do not know if that meant that Coach thought he might be around to advise after his first week of recovery, or just available to forward another outline leading up to the opening game which is just one week away. It is hard to imagine that the report was correct, because if they spent the entire first week on defense that would leave like one day to work on the Triangle before playing in Fresno against Utah.

For those of you who have not been to Fresno, the SaveMart Center is newer and a good place to see a game. The Fresno State basketball team plays there and they have other top entertainment coming into town. However, I went to the preseason opener in Baskerfield and found the tickets expensive, considering both teams mostly played guys trying to make the team. It wasn't competitive, Kobe played little, and Shaq didn't play at all. Kobe will not be playing next week according to reports.

I thought I would include a pic of VladRad. We all know he can hit the long bombs. But he can also run the floor pretty well, moves his feet on defense pretty good when he puts his mind to it, and can post up and drive to the bucket. He just doesn't do that very often because he is always hired to be a gunslinger from the outside.

If any of you guys have found any additional training camp reports and could add something that I missed, just hit the discuss tab below and give us your update.

ALERT- SMUSH PARKER MISSED WEDNESDAY'S PRACTICE DUE TO A SORE SHOULDER AFTER A COLLISION WITH BRIAN COOK, BUT WAS BACK PRACTICING WITH THE TEAM THURSDAY.

JamFan