Random, glaucoma medication-induced thought of the day about our need for Bynum:

I know, at least for a while, the Players Association managed to exempt glaucoma medication from testing by the league. In relation to the other major sports, basketball, for reasons unknown to me, seems to be the least scrutinized in terms of its current drug policy.

Leading me to wonder, what's the NBA policy on HGH?

That stuff is GREAT for helping the healing process along and let's face it, whatever Vitti's doing now ain't workin' so hot.

Hurry back, Andrew. Hint, hint.

Secondly...

After that incredible overtime win last night on a blown call, I expected the UCLA blog (never checked it out before) to be an interesting place to visit today. But, totally, not.

This blog rocks.

Zen,
if you have time, talk to Kobe about this feat of MJ. Kobe could to this next year. Win all!!! The MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, All Star MVP and of course,the NBA title. if Kobe wants it, he can join the 3pt shooting contest and win it as well..hehehehe..

Good evening all fellow Lakers fans everywhere. Lakers all day, everyday!!! Looking forward to the game tonight against the Clips. Hopefully Denver can beat the Spurs tonight and the Jazz take care of the Suns. Nuggets are at home tonight against the Spurs who are playing their second game of a back to back. Nets are also playing the Hornets tonight as well in New Orleans so there could be more shuffling tonight in the standings. Lakers can be in first place all alone tonight when they win and should the Spurs lose. Go Lakers!!!

While I completely understand the entire Kobe v. Lebron debate that seems to be dominating the sports media right now, my belief is that, if you were to ask either player how they felt about it, it would be relatively low on their list of priorities right now....which speaks volumes to the competitive fire that burns in each of them.

I'm not talking about Jim Gray posing that question at halftime of a nationally televised game, I'm talking about asking that question over a beer, at the end of a long day.

To me, you can see that Kobe is focused solely on the championship opportunity he hasn't had since the Shaq era, while Lebron is focused on trying to return to the finals, and proving the majority wrong. All I know is, be it Kobe, or Lebron, or Garnett, or Paul, or Duncan, watching these guys leave it all out on the court in every game from now 'til June, is a joy to behold....and makes me one lucky guy.

zen,

As standard GHF philosophy, I always want to target the soonest for a player to return. I am sure that the doctors who gave the 8 week estimate were giving the soonest possible return. 8 to 12 weeks would probably have been the realistic estimate.

You might be right as the team underestimating injury return dates. Or we may just be having more bad luck like Chris Mihm, where things weren't as simple and easy as first thought.

Bottom line, the Lakers don't have to misrepresent when players are going to be back for ticket sales. Games will sell out regardless. And Laker fans will predict a championship no matter what. If anything, I think that the Lakers front office and coaches are trying to temper everyone's enthusiasm from the players to the fans so we don't get overoptimistic. They just don't know that all that effort is for naught. The players and the fans know we are going to win -- even if we don't get Andrew and Trevor back right away.

Tom

Jester,

My dad has glaucoma and has a prescription for medical pot, although it took my sister and I over two years to get him to finallly light up.

Needless to say there are few things stranger than sharing a smoke with your 90 year old dad with him supplying.

Only in America. LOL.

No mercy on the Clippers.

Tom

Is anybody watching this incredible broadcast on ESPN right now! This game is officially a blowout. Their doing beard segments! LOL!!!!!!!

Pig

zen,

Well Riley isn't guaranteed the top pick in the draft. What if Miami falls out of the top 2 in the lottery and they have to decide between Bayless, Gordon etc? I don't think he should be taking games off, but he's not guaranteed to get Beasley or Rose.

Kiwi,

Posted by: Kiwi | March 07, 2008 at 02:13 PM

As you can see it's only now I read your post, I have to take care also of daily priorities.

Thanks for the reply, I never expected that I opened a can of worms in asking a question about career change. I wish you all the luck, and if you have to take some time off, that's fine with us and we'll understand. We have to take care of our daily living as well as our sleeping time over and above that Laker passion. Undoubtedly, after having a soiree' of thoughtful exchanges for quite sometime, we developed a family camaraderie that sometimes, we include in our dreams our discussions here in the Lakers Blog. With regards to change in opinion about Kobester, well that's is not new, even KB24 changed his opinion too. Opinions are based on a certain time frame, the conditions, the options at that time but everything changes with the change of time. So there is no guilt there, we all change opinions in due time. I wish you luck on your job hunt, I can give you advice the way we discussed the scrubs before i.e: 'just persevere and stick to the objective and eventually, the law of numbers will work on your side. Goodluck and Godspeed."

Nice piece on Mitch for anyone that hasn't seen it.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/steve_aschburner/03/07/kupchak/index.html

Pig

I don't think that the Lakers misrepresent injury for ticket sales. Not that I put them on some sort of pedestal or whatever, they're a business and could do that sort of thing. I understand the argument that Laker mania is great for business and is dependent on the media reporting us as contenders which is, in part, dependent on Bynum's return.

But: a) they don't have a problem selling tickets as long as Kobe's playing (hard core fans may be crushed by Bynum's loss, but casual fans want entertainment [= Kobe] and hard core fans will go to any game we can anyway...that why we're hard core fans), b) everyone in the organization apparently wanted Kobe to get surgery (even if it meant we may miss the playoffs), so when there was a much more serious business risk, there was no mercenary tomfoolery.

Plus, when I looked up Bynum's injuries online, I got 8 weeks minimum as the prognosis, which is exactly what they said. No one knows how long it will take for someone to heal so they just gave us a "textbook" answer. As for Shaq, well I'm pretty sure they gave the textbook minimum there as well, and Shaq took his sweet time, was lazy, fat and prone to re-injury.

As for why it is policy to give out minimums, I don't know. I can't imagine that the current situation of injuries appearing to linger and not heal quickly builds brand loyalty and increases ticket sales, vs. what would happen if they habitually gave generous time frames and everyone appeared to be coming back early.

And the notion that they were trying to support the media crowning us is not viable, because while we had the best record and were beginning to be called contenders when he went out, we were really buzzed about until Gasol anyway, and most people called us done without Bynum even for 8 weeks in the tough west. I mean, what if they had said 6 weeks? Or 5? Would that have had ESPN suddenly saying we were going to win it all, creating a huge upswing in Lakers' car flag sales? I'm skeptical...

Now Gasol comes, and even with Bynum out indefinitely, Laker mania is fully back (even if Bynum is just as important to our title hopes and he ever was, which I happen [in agreement with my wiser brethren here] to believe to be completely true). So people are bedecking their SUV's with all sorts of craziness, and media pundits are crazily bandwagon jumping when they, at least, should know the injury reports, and Dr. Buss can do his best Mr. Burns impression * completely irregardless of what Gary Vitti may or may not have said at one time or another.

*No, I do not actually believe this is in his nature.

At any rate,

Go Lakers!

Zen & LakerTom,

"The reason the Lakers didn't announce the "real" seriousness of the injury I believe is due to ticket sales."

If this is true, it is not a good policy to hide facts and/or to alter medical facts because of ulterior motives. This is like that Irish candidate of LakerTom, O'Bum'er, he's now under heat, caught 2x already saying one thing while his surrogates says another to non-voters. After sometime, you lose credibility and Lakers fans no longer believe on status reports. LA fans are no dummies.

I'm getting tired of reporters using the same characteristics of play to vote LBJ MVP that they used against Kobe the past two seasons. This dude just called LBJ the best player because he accounted for 74 points against the Knicks. THE KNICKS!

The F-ing KNICKS!

Kobe has already done more than that in the past two years, on multiple occasions. In his 81-point game, Kobe had 6 rebounds and 2 assists as well. That is between 85 and 87 points accounted for by Kobe himself. Yet, Kobe did NOT get MVP that season. In fact, I believe that very night, someone mentioned that 7 other teams did not score 81 points in their games. So that Kobe outscored 7 NBA teams by himself in one night.

Yet he did not get the MVP.

That same season, Kobe did it before, scoring 62 points in only three quarters of play. AND, that season (2 seasons ago), Kobe never played late in a game that was a blowout (so he never got to "run up" his scoring totals), yet averaged 35!!!! points a game. One of the highest scoring averages in the history of the league. LBJ's 30.8 points per game only pales in comparison. And this FAKER is doing his damage against the LEast.

Kobe has averaged better than LBJ's current scoring average over the course of two seasons. His average for the last two seasons is better than 34 points a game. LBJ isn't even old enough to touch that plateau yet. Kobe's THREE SEASON average is going to still be higher than LBJ's pedestrian 30-point scoring average. And, once again, Kobe will have done it against the much superior West.

That means that Kobe will prove to be well more than three times as consistent than LBJ at being the best in the NBA.

At the end of this season, LBJ will have scored this season somewhere around 300 points less than Kobe did two seasons ago, and about 150 less than Kobe did last year and only about 120 more than Kobe this season. Talk about flash in the pan!

If Kobe's season statistically is almost as good as LBJ's, than what of the past two which were therefore much superior? And if being the best statistical player is all Kobe needed to do, how in the world did Nash and Nowitski win the past two seasons? Using this guy's logic, Kobe should be in the running to be winning his third MVP in a row.

Right?

--FearlessWhackJob

F them all. This moving target BS is getting old.

Mamba24

Thx for adding me to roll call!

kobe is the real MVP even pinky finger is injured he can still score 50 a night than lebron.who said that kobe has Bynum,Gasol,ang Odom so he cant win the MVP because ha has co stars LeBron has Wallace,szerbiak,and Ilgauskas
remember szerbiak is the co star of garnett in minnesota in the past
Kobe forever
LeBron is only my scond idol
Paul is third
Lakers VS cavaliers to prove who is the real MVP
Kobe or Lebron
its Kobe i tell u
lakers forever

KOBE = the best ever