Let’s see, up two points, 01.0 on the clock, other team is the Cleveland Cavaliers, and we’ve got 2-3 minutes to talk about what we’re going to do. Isn’t Topic A (and there is no B or C) … “for crissakes, no matter what else happens … if we have to leave three other guys […]

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Game 2 final: Nuggets 106, Lakers 103. That’s a game apiece, with Nuggets having taken home-court advantage from the Lakers. That’s bad enough news for the Lakers. It gets worse. The Nuggets played the Lakers almost dead even in two games in Los Angeles. Thus, it appears quite likely the Nuggets can win another game […]

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ESPN the Magazine has done a long piece on Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, by far the least successful franchise of the four “major” North American sports. The profile is interesting on several levels, but these are the two that struck me while reading it:

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I can’t be the only person this happens to. You begin watching a sports event. You don’t think you care what happens. You may not even have thought about caring about what happens. And then at some point in the middle of the game, you realize that you not only are interested in the outcome, […]

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Wow. Tough game. Rough game. Up-and-down the floor, lots of contact, bodies flying, a scrambling, awkward, bump-and-run, busted-play, improvisational scrum of a game. That is, the sort of game the Los Angeles Lakers have not been likely to win since, oh, Magic Johnson. Yet they won it, and it was a huge victory. Lakers 105, […]

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This LeBron-Kobe story on espn.com is interesting enough, and was written in a way that is appropriate for generic sports/basketball fans. Jerry West, The Logo, the greatest Laker of them all, the Hall-of-Famer, coach and front-office architect of the Showtime Lakers as well as the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, was quoted as saying he believes LeBron James […]

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It’s never a bad day when the Boston Celtics are eliminated from the playoffs. Actually, it’s always a good day. Always. I can hardly describe my surprise and delight when the Orlando Magic scored the first 11 points of the fourth quarter to break open a 66-61 game Sunday night and cruise to a 101-82 […]

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What a weird series. One team was clearly better in all seven games. Massively better, six games out of seven. Asked what he learned from the Lakers’ series with the Rockets, Kobe Bryant said, “That we’re bipolar.” He wasn’t kidding. In only one game was the margin of victory fewer than 12 points. In only […]

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Lakers are up 51-31 at the half, and it’s not because of Kobe Bryant, who was 2-for-8 for eight points in the half. It’s not because they’re going crazy from the three-point line. It’s because they finally are taking advantage of their enormous height advantage over the Rockets. The Rockets start no one taller than […]

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Reminding you of that Houston Rockets statistic. In every game of the Rockets’ playoffs run, and they have played 12 so far … when they have led after a quarter, they have won. When trailing after a quarter, they have lost. First-quarter score from Staples Center: Lakers 22, Rockets 12.

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