Lakers Rebound from an 0-3 Road Trip

Yeah, that’s right, LA is back in the win column. Real impressive. A Kobe Bryant buzzer-beating home win against a barely over .500 middle-of-the-pack Eastern Conference mediocrity, the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors are now 32-30 in the much, much weaker East, visiting arguably the most talented team in the NBA at arguably one of the most difficult places to win in the NBA. This game should have been a 15+ point Laker victory. Yes, I understand Kobe’s Boys see the best game from everyone every night, but this was supposed to be a “statement game” after such the enduring worst Laker losing streak in over 2 years. LA is going to get everyone’s best game all the way through the playoffs, so they need to get used to it. Like I’ve said before, I’m not too concerned about the regular season, it doesn’t mean much. But I’m starting to get concerned about the playoffs.

With the talent in place and the team in position, there’s only one thing stopping the Lakers from closing out a repeat: attitude. They need more of it. We’ve all seen glimpses of it. The aggressive game against Denver last week and even going back Derek Fisher’s obliteration of Luis Scola (aka: The Neanderthal) in last year’s playoffs. The most obvious place where this will be seen is in a more consistent defense, and Kobe knows it. USA Today’s game recap article covers Kobe’s post-game press conference comments on his final shot and the overall game. "They didn't come early at me and I got the shot off. That's part of my responsibility, to close teams out. Our defense tonight was garbage. We have to focus on execution." Amen brother. Simply put, Bynum needs to get big, Gasol needs to get bloody, and if there’s a ball on the floor or in the air, there’d better be five men in purple and gold saying “that ball’s mine.”

As far as getting to the Finals is concerned, I still think it’d take a disaster of epic proportions (or a miracle, depending on you point of view) to keep the Lakers from getting there, even though their lead in the West is now only down to 3 over the Dallas Mavericks. Last year I predicted that that it would be a Laker/Celtic final. I think it’s pretty apparent that that’s not going to happen. Boston is on their last leg with these current players. Unfortunately, 36 is like 90 in NBA years, and there’s no way the green machine has enough gas left to make a final push, even if they’re playing possum now. It’ll be Cleveland, Orlando, or even possibly Atlanta (but they’re a bit of a long-shot) to face the champs, and now any final series would look like a 6-7 gamer. It’s going to be a great June. In order to defend the Championship and try and get Coach Phil Jackson’s fourth three-peat, the Lakers need to put all of their instruments together and get comfortable playing them.

The Lakers have got to get hungry like they were last year after being embarrassed by Boston in game 6 in the 2008 Finals. It’s impossible to try and recreate the intensity from last year. Not just because they looked like they would’ve run through a brick wall to get the ring, but because it’s impossible to try and regenerate something that happened naturally before. It’s not real. They have to find something new to get mad at, and start playing like they aren’t just going to sit on their rings with contentment. They don’t necessarily need to have it all figured out by tomorrow, but time is running out to flip the switch and the playoffs won’t wait.

Help Me Ron-Ron! Help, Help Me Ron-Ron!

Help me Ron-Ron Yea! Get Ariza out of my heart! Last year at the end of the NBA Season I said that if you can only keep one Laker, Lamar Odom or Trevor Ariza, you’ve got to keep Ariza. Boy was I wrong. In the beginning, I wasn’t really a fan of the Ariza-Ron Artest trade. I felt it was kind of a wash defensively (with a slight advantage to Artest), but that Ariza had a youthful fire that this sometimes lackadaisical LA Laker team needed. Boy was I wrong. I still think Trevor is a great asset (and a lot of Houston Rocket fans now agree with me), but recently Ron-Ron has really started to find his groove here in the Entertainment Capitol of the World: Defensive Monster.

In the last 4 games, Artest has proven that he’s worth every penny he earns. He recently dropped 10 pounds, not fat mind you, just weight. The dude is cut (as we saw recently on Jimmy Kimmel. Got to know him pretty well in his underwear). He dropped the weight to be just a little quicker, and boy has it paid off. His defensive intensity really started shining last week with the 76ers, but it was his performance against Carmello Anthony and the Denver Nuggets that really made heads turn. Artest had a sickening 6 steals and 8 forced turnovers from Anthony, holding him to only 21 points and 1 assist. Ron-Ron spent the evening constantly disrupting Mello with tenaciously aggressive 1-on-1 play. If he was any more up on Mello, they’d be doing something inappropriate. Since that game, he has single-handedly proven that Lakers aren’t just Cupcakes, but can be a Rough-and-Tumble team when they need to be, making them a much more dangerous team in the West. By the way, he’s the first Laker to have at least 5 steals in 3 consecutive games since Magic Johnson did it in ’91. Sure he’s a bit of a Wack-a-doo, but in this system, Artest has actually been able to get comfortable in his role and act relatively normal.

Still holding onto hope for the best overall record, Los Angeles still leads the Dallas Mavericks in the West by 5 games, but trail the Cleveland Cavaliers by 2. Barring some unbelievable breakdown form the Cavs, there’s no way the Lakers will overcome the 2 game deficit. The Cavs play a majority of their remaining schedule at home and in the much, much weaker Eastern Conference. LA is practically on the road for the rest of the year. Only 7 home games in their last 22. But there’s really nothing to worry about if you’re a Laker fan. Only Phil Jackson and Greg Popovich really understand the importance of the regular season: besides making it into the post-season, there really isn’t any importance. The point being, the Lakers are holding out and as we’ve seen so many times before, can turn it on when they need to. After a hard fought loss in Miami last night, the Lakers are beginning to exemplify the attitude that defending champions should, that they’re going to fight until the end. And with the important help of Ron Artest, they’re doing it with much more defense than they have ever had before.

Sucker Bets: I'll Take Tiger, You Take the Field

This Thursday the 138th British Open will tee off from Turnberry's Ailsa Course, Scotland. It’s a 7204 yard course with a Par 70, but if the weather looks anything like it did last year, Turnberry’s course might as well be Par 90. Last year Tiger Woods was about two weeks removed from reconstructive knee surgery, meaning none of you watched it. Apparently some guy named Padraig Harrington won it. He won it the year before too, but I knew that because Tiger was playing so it was slightly watchable. I have more respect for Golf and Golfers than most any other sport, mainly because I don’t have the patience to play it, but also because it takes such a tremendous amount of skill to be excellent. It’s just so darn boring without Tiger, and everyone knows it.

So I tell you that I’m going to take Tiger to win it and you get everyone else, what do you do? Never under any circumstances take this bet. Here’s some numbers to help. According to stats from BoDog, Tiger is currently favored at 2/1 odds. The next closest is Sergio Garcia at 20/1. Padraig Harrington isn’t far behind him at 22/1 and he’s won it twice in a row! Whether you bet on sports or not, you can tell that those odds aren’t even close. This spring before the NBA Playoffs, the same BoDog took the wrong side of a similar bet. They proposed to give $50 back to anyone who placed a bet on anyone besides the Lakers to win the Championship, essentially saying, take the Lakers and we’ll take everyone else. About 8,000 hungry fans took them up on it and BoDog ended up losing about $400,000, although I’m sure they ended up in the black before the day was done. To them, it was mostly a marketing ploy and they’re the bookie, so they play by different rules anyway.

Making financial decisions based off of odds set by the betting company is never reliable. Vegas will usually write odds in a way that will swing the hoi polloi into betting a particular way that will make them money. But those tilts are usually small and hard to notice, not 2/1 vs. 20/1. So if someone ever tells you that they’ll take the best two teams/players, and you get everyone else, just say no. Hey, it’s pretty good odds and I know you really want to take it, but you just can’t bet against Tiger. Just like BoDog and the Lakers, it just sounds fantastic, but it’s a sucker bet and you should know it. Whether Tiger wins or tanks this weekend is irrelevant, never take a bet like this.

Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN says that “Turnberry is built for shot-makers. That's why Tom Watson, Nick Price and Norman won [there] (and Nicklaus finished second to Watson in 1977).” Which, of course, begs the question: is there a course that isn’t built for shot-makers? I digress, PGA players and golf experts both say that putting on this course is much more difficult in comparison to the norm. Tiger’s long ball may still be suffering the after effects of having major surgery, but his short game is as strong as ever. It’s an advantage that could make the difference in an Open like this one, and could send him back for another trophy-laden photo-op this weekend in Scotland.

Do the Lakers Still Want to Win?

After the loss of the round 2 superstar Trevor Ariza and the Los Angeles Times reporting that the Lakers and Lamar Odom are still “far apart in negotiations,” does it seem like the Lakers are still on the warpath? Yes and No, I said in the very beginning that if you have to keep either Lamar Odom or Trevor Ariza, you’ve got to do all you can to keep Ariza. Trevor had never been a lifeline offensively, but as we saw during the Rockets series, he certainly was an X-factor for the Lakers. Maybe it was the fact that he was in a contract year, but what he brought to the table was extreme hustle, and 3.29 steals per-48 minutes played, the second highest in the league last year. After officially signing Ron Artest this last Wednesday, the hole Trevor Ariza left was filled… temporarily. A kooky Lakers haircut on a 29 year old firecracker will only last you so long. The Lakers didn’t let Ariza go, he left. There wasn’t a whole much (short of throwing him a bunch of early money) that would’ve kept him here. Artest is a more talented player than Ariza right now, especially from an offensive standpoint, but it is surprising that a local boy with that much potential and heart wouldn’t stay. In retrospect, it certainly would have been nice for Laker fans to look at a line-up starring Trevor Ariza AND Ron Artest.

So we turn our attention to Lamar Odom, the inconsistent 6th man who’s really the 3rd best player on the team. Low salary caps and luxury tax makes it look like higher end negotiations may not take place. Odom is looking for $10 million a year and the Lakers have offered him something closer to the NBA player average of 5.85 for an unspecified length. It’s not outrageous that they settle on something around 8/year, but remember, for every dollar the Lakers go over the salary cap they match with a dollar out of their own pocket sent to the luxury tax. The Lakers are already $12.26 million over the cap, not including a potential contract with Lamar. Essentially, what ever the front office decided to pay Odom, they’ll have to take out of their own pockets, add to the $12.26 million and send off the luxury penalty office. If the Lakers decide to keep him, every Laker fan needs to send a thank you card to Jerry Buss, because the bench stinks without Odom. The other problem that needs to be mentioned is where will Lamar be if he's not with the Lakers. Portland, the Lakers' 2nd biggest threat in the west, is sitting on $10 million cap space and are looking for a forward as well as someone else to handle the ball besides Brandon Roy. Lamar plays all 5 positions. The one-man swing could mean serious problems for the Lakers who continue to struggle against the young Trail Blazer team in the regular season.

Can they win without Ariza or Odom? Yes, but it will be difficult without one of them, and even more difficult without them both. Artest is a good addition, until he blows up and punches a fan in the face (hopefully this will never happen… again), and the securing of Shannon Brown is a good showing for Mitch Kupchak. It definitely shows that Kupchak’s team is trying to address and redefine the effort and heart factor that seemed so inconsistent with this year’s champions. However, the song remains the same: the best team in world is now the top target for everyone else, including the media and amateur blog writers.

NBA Finals 2010: Real Predictions and Excuses for Making Wrong Ones. (Part I)

As a forewarning, go grab a pen and paper. Write down the date, where you are standing, and what’s going on in your life right now so you can tell your grandchildren where you were when you read this blog, because this is going to be epic. The NBA Draft is this Thursday. If what we all expect the first pick happens, Blake Griffin will be going to the Los Angeles Clippers. Here it is kids, the prediction… … is the anticipation killing you? … Clippers & Bucks in the NBA FINALS! Ha ha, I’m SO funny right? A joke about bad teams. I should be making a joke about bad bloggers, but what would I know about that right?

Real Prediction:
NBA Finals 2010. Lakers vs. Celtics. Lakers win 62 games in the regular season and have home court advantage over Boston in the finals. Lakers win the 2010 Finals at Staples in Game 6. Parade down Figueroa. Looting in the streets. Police cars vandalized. Cats & dogs living together. Mass hysteria.

Real Excuses:
First real excuse: There is of course no real way to know what’s going to happen. For the record, this next section will be me covering my bases and pointing out problems with the teams I expect to make it, and reasons why the teams I don't expect to make it might get there. All aboard the Excuse Train!

Second real excuse: I started writing out the reasons why the favored teams might not make it to the finals, and I realized there is way too much to say about everyone. So I’m making it a two-part whine festival. Check back tomorrow for the cheese and the East. Here’s the West.

THE LOS ANGELES LAKERS were and still are the most talented team in the NBA, proven so by the fancy trophy and new banner hanging up in Staples Center. This makes it pretty hard to point out flaws, but there are some. One in particular: HEART. They finally got around to having some in the last two games against Denver and the Finals, but they constantly rely on their talent during the regular season and occasionally during the post, which is really dangerous. They did it last year against Boston and got walloped in game 6. They did it this year in Game 1, 4, and 6 against Houston. The Lakers can score a lot of points, but someone else besides Kobe Bryant, Trevor Ariza, and Derek Fisher needs to get some attitude on the other side of the court. Which brings me to my next point; there are also some pretty big questions as to who will be back. The big talk now is whether or not the Buss family can afford (or will choose to blow out the windows on the luxury tax) to bring back both Lamar Odom AND Trevor Ariza. In my opinion, if you can only keep one, you’ve got to bring back Ariza (keep your eye out for a later post from me on this issue). Shannon Brown, the new rising star may also not be there. All of these are reasons the Lakers may not make it back, but if they stay healthy, keep everyone, and make the decision that one ring just isn’t enough, they’ll be back.

THE DENVER NUGGETS started to cement themselves as the number 2 team in the west this last season. Will they stay there? It’s possible. Will they stay there for the next 5 years? Not likely. If the Nuggets play with the intensity they had this year, they’re pretty much a shoe in to make it through the first round next May. For a while they’ve been the “Bizarro” Lakers. In the past, their star in Carmello Anthony hasn’t had the “do whatever it takes,” attitude while the rest of his team will fight and claw for every inch, taking Allen Iverson out of the equation of course. Without a doubt in my mind, the Iverson/Billups trade was the best trade of the ‘08-‘09 season. That team needed a leader, and Billups gives them that veteran influence. The understandably nick-named “Thuggets,” play a rough brand of ball that got them all the way to the Western Conference Finals. The Lakers should be writing them a "Thank You Card," because the Nuggets bigs certainly toughened up the Lakers inside players. If Denver continues to play to their strengths, which is their actual physical strength, they’ve got a decent shot to make it back to the Conference Finals. What we have to remember though, is that in the west, it’s the Lakers and everyone else.

THE HOUSTON ROCKETS looked a lot better against the Lakers than they should have. Minus Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady, they play a much more rag tag game which created the perfect storm for the Lakers. Houston would probably be better off benching Yao and McGrady if they get to a 7 game series with LA next year. Well, maybe not Yao. It’s hard to bench a guy who’s 7’6” who shoots 86% from the charity stripe. Oh yeah, Aaron Brooks is really fast.

THE SAN ANTONIO SPURS has the best collection of players past their prime. Duncan will go down as one of the all-time greats, but the Spurs era is over. Who knows though, maybe they’ve got one more in them.

EVERYONE ELSE. Portand, New Orleans, Dallas, and Utah. Nope, nope, nope, and nope. Although all are great. Just not quite in the top tier yet. Although Portland seems to give the Lakers problems… in February. I also like the Jazz, but that may be because I played high school basketball with Ronnie Brewer.

Check back tomorrow for the East.