I suddenly am impressed with this Lakers team, after having despaired of them, most of the season. (Pretty much from the 1-4 start forward.) Kobe Bryant out till sometime next season with the ruptured Achilles, Steve Nash hurt again, a playoffs berth clinched when Utah lost earlier in the evening … Not needing to win […]

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I always thought the Walt Whitman poem eulogizing Abraham Lincoln was over the top. “Fallen cold and dead …” But my reaction to what appears to be Kobe Bryant’s torn Achilles tendon led me to think of the Whitman poem: O Captain! My Captain! (The one that, of a time, was required reading in American […]

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The Miami Heat’s winning streak ended at 27 tonight, in a loss at Chicago, and I like to think the surviving members of the 1971-72 Lakers are celebrating somewhere with a bottle of champagne. Just as the players of the NFL’s unbeaten 1972 Miami Dolphins allegedly do when the latest team to get close to […]

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Back in December, I confessed to my deep and only semi-rational need to see Adrian Peterson fall short of Eric Dickerson’s single-season NFL rushing record. (And he did, in part because I willed it; that’s how fans think.) Here’s one I probably care about more: The Lakers’ NBA record of 33 consecutive victories.

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I have suggested on this blog that college sports are hard to follow, overseas. They are. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world where the notion of “sports” affiliated with “college” does not seem ridiculous. Thus, once you leave the U.S., you are confronted with confusion and disinterest, as pertains to […]

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This makes me smile. If not laugh. If not snort in derision. I saw the final minutes of the Lakers’ 107-102 loss to the Clippers tonight, and when ESPN went back to the studio, the question was posed: “Is Los Angeles a Clippers town now?” This is how you will know if L.A. has become […]

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I prefer to think I was never strident about this. Or did it capriciously. Fire the bum! However often I might have thought about it or written it, years ago, I find I am increasingly loathe to write it now. I believe it is a function of age. For a sports fan (a sports writer) […]

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The Lakers hired Mike D’Antoni. He will be a far better coach than Mike Brown, who was driving the Lakers over a cliff. (Or abandoned the driver’s seat of the vehicle which subsequently was headed over a cliff. He never really seemed in charge, did he.) I like Mike D’Antoni. I am convinced he is […]

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This has to be something everyone who follows the Lakers has been saying the past few weeks, but really, honest, I was thinking it in the summer of 2011: Mike Brown as Lakers coach? What an awful idea! Today, he became a bad idea, but in the rear-view mirror.

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This team has to be better than this, doesn’t it? I can envision Los Angeles Lakers fans saying that, back in SoCal. This 0-3 thing on a team with Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol … it can’t be what they really are about. Can it? I was so impressed by Mitch […]

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