The NBA returning to action this season? For a while there, it seemed unlikely. Everyone’s attention was focused on the killer Covid-19 virus, as it should have been, and during the harrowing height of the pandemic it was easy to forget this salient basketball fact: Los Angeles’s two teams would have lost a chance to […]

[Read more →]

This is another entry in the “Back in the Day” series, where we look back at a sports event I wrote about for the newspaper. In this case, the nearly forgotten 2008 mid-season trade of Shaquille O’Neal from the Miami Heat to the Phoenix Suns. The idea in Phoenix was that Shaq would be the […]

[Read more →]

“Blasts from the Past” is the idea. On days when I feel like writing but don’t feel like doing much research, I am going to revisit topics from my 40 years in journalism. This will be one of those. It is my take, from January of 2008, on Kobe Bryant’s chances of winning his first […]

[Read more →]

I heard about Kobe Bryant while leaving church, around 11:15 a.m. today. “Killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas,” someone said. It took me a few seconds to process. “Kobe, dead? That can’t be right.” Pause. “A helicopter? That’s possible; how many celebrities have died in private planes and copters?” Pause. “Wow. Kobe dead.” At […]

[Read more →]

OK, yes. It turns out the Los Angeles Lakers needed more than LeBron James to be relevant in the 2018-19 NBA season. With 18 games to play, the club is 30-34, having lost seven of its past 10, including a game to the Phoenix Suns, owners of the worst record in the NBA. Before they […]

[Read more →]

The LA Galaxy on Saturday afternoon will unveil what is thought to be the first statue of a former player to be displayed at a Major League Soccer stadium. The club said it will be No. 1 in “a series of statues” that will stand just outside the stadium in the new Legends Plaza at […]

[Read more →]

I saw the high school basketball debut of California native Tyson Chandler. Not many people can say that, because among the material I filed on deadline that night, December 2, 1997, is a note about how the Compton College gym was pretty much empty. Chandler was a 15-year-old freshman and, more importantly, already 6-foot-11. But […]

[Read more →]

Have I done this before? After 10-plus years I must have. But know what? I’m not going to check because the 10 teams I love to hate changes a bit, from year to year. This list would probably be unlike any other I might have done. For instance, most of my life I have wished […]

[Read more →]

A sample size too small even to call a sample size, but that never stops us from expressing enthusiasm — or confessing alarm — about a team we have been studying. In this case, the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers of LeBron James. The Lakers who Are Back. Relevant Again. In Theory. The Lakers who […]

[Read more →]

No need to be an international NBA fan to guess the answer to that one. The top-two selling jerseys, at the least. That would be LeBron James, No. 1, as he should be, and Stephen Curry, three-time NBA champion. The NBA recently posted lists on the top 10 jerseys sold in Europe, during the 2017-18 […]

[Read more →]