Bullish on the Lakers

November 19, 2007 | 9:00 am

The grass always seems greener on the other side. That is, of course, until said grass takes a visit to your home turf, shoots 35%, scores 32 points in the second half, and is on the wrong end of a 106-78 loss, as the Bulls were to the Lakers on Sunday. So if Chicago indeed remains Kobe's desired destination, it probably doesn't look quite as lush and verdant as it might have a couple months back. Not after the Lakers overcame some first half sloppi/sluggishness to blow the game open in the final 24 minutes. It was a rally kicked off by the starters (Kobe and D-Fish keyed a nice little run to start the third) and blown open by the reserves, who continued their great play as a unit, accounting for 73 of L.A.'s 106 points. The box shows five non-starters finished the game in double figures. Clearly, if the supporting cast was initially bothered by the trade talk, they got over it (unlike their counterparts in Chicago), winning what looked like a few months back like possible homecoming game for a Bullish Kobe with a serious team effort. Now, at least, things look far better as they are for 24. Kobe, some say, even looks happy.

Chicago coach Scott Skiles called the Kobe-to-Chicago speculation a dead issue. It isn't, of course, until Kobe says he doesn't want to be moved, but at the very least, recent events might have put the trade talk in a nice deep coma.

The news wasn't all positive, though, as Kwame Brown went down in the first quarter with knee and ankle injuries after colliding with Chicago's Ben Wallace. He had to be helped off the court, and said he won't make this week's road trip back east. Ronny Turiaf, who missed Sunday's game with a bum ankle, hopes to play Tuesday in Indiana.

A Q and A with Lakers draftee Marc Gasol, who is having himself a quality season in Spain. My Spanish isn't good enough for a direct translation, but here's what the reader who sent the link said. Obviously, additional input is welcome (thanks to Mark R. for the email!):

"...first, the story says that gasol has improved immensely since last year, emerging as the best player in spain's pro-league this year. (el pais comes out of madrid, while gasol plays in girona, six hours away, so this is not a case of local boosterism.) his
stats so far for 32 minutes a game are 17.6 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 1.9
assists. second, he says he's not sure if he'll want to come to the u.s. to
play in the nba. he says nothing negative about the lakers, and is too smart
to comment on the kobe situation, but says he doesn't know if he wants to leave spain. (i don't know enough about the local scene to know if that's just spin--being polite--or if he's genuinely uncertain. and i don't read Spanish well enough to know if his choice of words offers subtle clues to those who can read between the lines. i'll i can tell you is that his literal meaning is that he just doesn't know.) but even though Spanish competition is not at nba level, it does sound as if he's got more potential than people thought even a few months ago, at draft time..."

Comments

Generic_One you were right there really are Zombies :
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/hierakonpolis/zombies.html

Posted by: Mamba24 | November 20, 2007 at 09:43 AM

"I'm sorry but Socks is on record as having said "ship his ___ out!" made him that much more motivated to prove him wrong."

The reports were that he was already working hard on conditioning and strength training months before that came out. I don't see it as having actually changed what he was doing. Does it make him even happier to be having good results so far? Sure. But that's not the same thing as being the reason - or even A reason - for his having improved so much this season.

Posted by: akrasian | November 20, 2007 at 10:20 AM

"It is sad to see comments from people in a city where you cannot even hold onto an NFL team, not even the Raiders!!!!!"

Well, sure. I mean, in an era where the infrastructure (like bridges) doesn't have enough funding to keep up with wear and tear, it's important to use public tax dollars to provide sports owners with free or cheap publically funded stadiums. The fact that LA (unlike Chicago) wouldn't give hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize a highly profitable NFL team is a plus.

Posted by: akrasian | November 20, 2007 at 10:25 AM

The D
Great post bout Gasol's bro!. I was reading the reactons to what people got out of his interview..and what I got out of it is the same as what you got out of it. If he wants to stay over their were he feels he may be somebody..then let him stay

Posted by: Lakeraholic | November 20, 2007 at 11:12 AM

Vman,

>>>PJ won't play rooks but Critt looks about as NBA ready as Farm did last year.

I would agree with that statement. But last year, the only player ahead of Farmar was Smush. This year,
Crittendon has both Fisher and Farmar ahead of him, both of whom are better than Smush was.

And if you look at how Critter has played in the few minutes he's played in the regular season, it really does
show that he has a ways to go to be fully up to NBA level. I'm not talking summer league or preseason, but
the actual minutes during the season. He played well for a rookie, but he didn't play as well as any other
guard on the Lakers, including Sasha.

I know you'd love to give the scant minutes Sasha is getting to Critter, but consider this. They're probably
keeping Crittendon long term. They have him under contract for the next 6 years at a low salary. Sasha's
contract renegotiation comes up next year. So they're going to have to decide whether Sasha's excellent
shooting of the preseason and early season is for real or a fluke to decide whether to re-sign him or not.

What if it's for real. Would you really be happy if they cut Sasha and he signed with some other team
and started getting 24 minutes a game and getting 15 points and a smattering of assists and rebounds?
At the pace he's currently playing, that would be about his average. Is it really worth risking giving that
up just so a rookie can get Sasha's 8 minutes a game and not do quite as well with it?

If Sasha continues to hit 50+% of his three pointers, even in limited minutes, then he becomes a valuable
trade asset. This summer, Jason Kapono got a full MLE contract for hitting 50% of his 3's, and Sasha is a
much better defender than Kapono. Around the trade deadline, there might be some teams with crappy
outside shooting who would gladly give up a first round pick for a 6'7" guard who's hitting 50% of his 3's.
But that only flies if Sasha has gotten enough minutes that they think the shooting percentage is for real.

Or what if Mo Evans gets injured. At this point, I have confidence that they could bring Sasha in and he
could hold his own with the Bench Mob. I think his scoring would be a little better than Mo's, and his defense
only a little bit worse. OTOH, I don't have the same confidence about Crittendon. I think eventually he will
be much better than Sasha, but I can't see it happening this year.

So why bench a player that's hitting 70% overall and 55% of his 3's and playing decent defense? Just so
you can give a rookie time to go through some of his rookie growing pains? I don't think so.

Posted by: Long Time Laker Fan | November 20, 2007 at 12:32 PM

Tim-4-Show,

>>>You should add that no one should vote for anyone EXCEPT a Laker. With the All-Star voting, competing
>>>players who get votes too would essentially take away the votes we cast for Lamar. In other words, Lakers
>>>only + Eastern conference where the votes don't compete against our guys.

My strategy is to vote the fill in a vote from the Clippers -

My typical vote is Kobe, Cat Mobley, Odom, Walton, Andrew Bynum (write-in) and the East.

You could write in Farmar if you prefer, but it only lets you write-in one vote a day for the West, so you
can't write in both Farmar and Bynum.

Posted by: Long Time Laker Fan | November 20, 2007 at 12:39 PM

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Bullish on the Lakers

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Lakers Blog

Round-the-Clock Purple and Gold written by the Kamenetzky brothers.

Bullish on the Lakers

More Sports

Round-the-Clock Purple and Gold
written by the Kamenetzky brothers.