Beaneball

In other Laker news, Mitch Kupchak apparently wants to bring Sun Yue over for 2008-09. (L.A. Times story.) "The Asian Magic Johnson" may be a bit much. The thing I'm worried about is that he'll basically be the Chinese Luke Walton: good passer, can run the floor, but a liability as an outside shooter and defender. Does L.A. really need two of those guys on the team? Especially when the second one probably won't play?

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 12:10 | |

A quick rundown of the effects of yesterday's draft on the Lakers.

First, the Spurs took coveted point guard George Hill in the first round, denying him to the Lakers. To me, it was an odd pick, given that DJ White, Mario Chalmers, Chris Douglas-Roberts, and others were still on the board. In any case, though, there went any thoughts of L.A. moving up to the top of the second round to pick him. They instead ended up with Joe Crawford from Kentucky. I refuse to make a Joey Crawford joke here, because they will be (and have been) made elsewhere. Chad Ford says that he doubts he'll stick in the league. If he's not even that good, he could have a hard time pushing Coby Karl off the roster.

L.A. appears so far to have made no trades, but other teams did deals involving players that might have been coming to the Lakers. Notably, Memphis pulled off a head-scratcher of a deal, sending Mike Miller and Kevin Love to Minnesota for OJ Mayo. Minnesota can probably use Miller, so I think that takes him off the table in any Lamar Odom deal.

As an aside, can this deal possibly be explained? The full list goes like this: Marko Jaric, Antoine Walker, Greg Buckner, and OJ Mayo to Memphis for Kevin Love, Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal, and Jason Collins. Collins is a useful 10th-12th guy who can bang and play smart defense, and his contract for $6 million is expiring this year. For an undersized Minnesota team, he's a useful guy to have around. Cardinal is a bad contract, at $5.8 million for a player who doesn't really bring anything to the team, but there are only two years left on the deal. Mike Miller is, of course, Mike Miller: I've sung his praises before, so I won't do it again here. He'll be the second coming of Wally Szczerbiak in Minnesota, except he's a better all-around player. To boot, his deal is pretty reasonable, at $8.3 million for two more years. And Kevin Love is a guy Minnesota was rumored to want/need for a while. Memphis could have also used him, mostly because they don't have any good players in the front court.

On the other side of the ledger is Antoine Walker, who shouldn't even play, but has three years left on his deal that's for basically the same dollars as Mike Miller. You've also got Marko Jaric, who's not a horrible player (36% from three last year), but he's not what you'd call "good" either (43% overall), and he's also got three years left on his deal at $6 million. Greg Buckner is a defensive-minded two-guard who doesn't add anything on the offensive end, with two years left on a $2.7 million per year deal. And then there's OJ Mayo, who overlapped with Randy Foye in Minnesota (i.e. they probably weren't going to keep both of them), but in Memphis, he'll compete with Javaris Crittenton, Mike Conley, and Kyle Lowry for playing time unless they just make him a straight-up shooting guard (which strikes me as a bad idea).

Ok, so what happened is Memphis, in order to get OJ Mayo, takes on two three-year deals while giving up shorter contracts, and doesn't add any players you actually want on the floor. Minnesota, by contrast, gets shorter deals, making up for some horrendous past mistakes, and gets back a very good player (Miller), a potentially very good player (Love), and a useful benchy (Collins). OJ Mayo is worth all this? I don't think we can even blame Memphis ownership for this, because I don't see a salary reduction at all here. I just see Minnesota completely ripping off Memphis.

Anyway, back to the Lakers: Richard Jefferson was also traded, so, thank goodness, he's off the table as well, unless Milwaukee wants Odom. Again, though, I'd hate this deal, even if Milwaukee included a sweetener, say by throwing in Charlie Villanueva and taking back Chris Mihm.

What about Andres Nocioni? The Bulls' only pick was Derrick Rose (since Sonny Weems is apparently headed for Denver), who hardly gets in Odom's way in Chicago, and in fact makes some of their guards expendable. The thing is that Ben Gordon and Chris Duhon are free agents, and Kirk Hinrich makes $11 million, so a deal involving him would have to also have someone like Luke Walton or Vlad Radmanovich going to Chicago, which only makes the deal worse from the Lakers' perspective. So I don't think the Derrick Rose draft pick makes an Odom-for-Nocioni swap any more likely. Does it make it less likely? I don't think that's the case, either, given that it was pretty unlikely from Chicago's perspective anyway: Nocioni, Noah, etc. is a lot to give up for Lamar Odom.

And how about Ron Artest? Well, buzz now is that he is opting out of his deal, despite his "99%" comment from last week, but he also says he won't sign for less money to play for a contender, which is the right move for a 28-year-old for whom this is likely his last chance at a big contract. Of course, if he does opt out, he'll already have gone back on one promise, so Lakers fans can have some hope that he'll go back on another and sign for the mid-level exception after all. And hey, maybe they can pull a Joe Smith under the table deal with him and promise to resign him for big money after 2009.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 11:24 | |

Here's a great post by Andrew Kamentezky about Shaq that pretty much sums my take on everything O'Neal. On the great Kobe-Shaq divide, it's starting to look like there is no winner: they're both assholes. The difference is that Shaq has gotten cuddly media treatment his whole career, while it's only in the last year or so that the reporters have stepped it up for Kobe.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 00:56 | |

At Foxsports, Charley Rosen says some dumb things and some smart things and some things I can't really evaluate.

While Doc Rivers did a superb job, he was way off-base in deriding Phil Jackson for "whining" about the refs after the lopsided 38-10 foul situation in Game 2. Since he's been there before, Jackson knew that the public airing of his grievance would work to his team's benefit — and it did. In fact, it always does. In other words, loudly complaining about being short-changed by the refs in a playoff series is as much a part of a coach's job description as formulating a game plan. Besides which, Jackson's protestations were entirely justified.

This paragraph is slightly incomplete, since Doc, as I noted before, did enough complaining himself during the series to get T'd up multiple times. Phil made some bold statements after the 38-10 game, and that's what Doc wants to focus the attention on, but Doc was, I think, the more visible whiner in this series.

And thank you, Charley Rosen, for acknowledging that Phil was justified in his complaints.

With all due respect, the only plausible reason for Lamar Odom's lack of on-court awareness is that he suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder.

In any case, Odom is imminently dispensable and must be dealt for someone like Ron Artest, Udonis Haslem or Shane Battier.

Dr. Rosen, folks! No, in any case, it's really hard for me to believe that these are the three best guys Rosen could come up with in a trade for Odom. Artest, maybe. I talked about him before. Haslem? My god -- he's a classic skill-less power forward, and I don't really see why that's valuable when the hole the Lakers need to fill at this point is at small forward. Battier? Nice defensive player, will knock down a shot once in a while, good glue guy, etc. Worth the massive trading chip named Lamar Odom? Not even close. L.A. can do a lot better if they decide to trade Odom.

All of the media reports that Jackson was thoroughly out-coached by Rivers are absurd. Rivers simply had the far superior team and had many more options (particularly on offense) at his disposal.

I don't think that's true. I think the Lakers options on offense got outplayed in this particular series, but I don't think the Celtics offensive player are better. Sam Cassell, Leon Powe, Rajon Rondo, Kendrick Perkins, PJ Brown, etc. are nice players, useful in their own way, but not a one of them has the offensive capabilities of Jordan Farmar, Sasha Vujacic, Vlad Radmanovic, or Derek Fisher. No, this was a "defense vs. offense" series, just like it was billed to be.

In fact, the Lakers' shooters (Sasha Vujacic, Vladamir Radmanovic and Derek Fisher) all got plenty of good-enough looks but simply failed to covert them.

Exactly! These Laker players are better offensively than the Celtics equivalents, but didn't shoot well when they had open looks in this series. Rosen seems to be saying exactly that in this sentence, contradicting the sentence that came just before it.

Also, the failure of the Lakers' screen/roll defense was primarily due to the lack of awareness of the baseline rotators, not because the defensive game plan provided the screenee with no immediate help.

Interesting. Can anyone remember a time when the Lakers' screen-and-roll defense was good? Wasn't this supposed to be the weakness of the Shaq-Kobe Lakers as well, that a team like San Antonio could exploit? People always blamed Shaq for that, for refusing to come out on the ball-handler, but maybe it's just that Phil doesn't coach S-A-R defense well enough to actually pound the scheme into the heads of his players.

Jackson only made two minor mistakes: Not giving Ira Newble enough pressure-time daylight so as to be prepared to take a turn guarding Paul Pierce; and not reacting quickly enough when the Celtics played small-ball.

The second thing I don't really have any insight on, but the first strikes me as bizarre. The noise going around is that Newble had no idea what he was doing in the triangle, and thus was not just useless but actually a problem on offense. I'm not sure that ten minutes per game for the 11th guy on the bench was really going to win the series for the Lakers anyway. I guess that's why Rosen refers to this as a "minor" mistake.

Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney and Ken Mauer are all front-runners, homers, arrogant, grudge-holders and vastly overrated. As such, they should be prevented from ever working both conference finals and championship series forever more.

Interesting, especially given the media love-fest for Dick Bavetta (colorful, ancient) and Bob Delaney (he was undercover in the mob!).

However, despite his repeated chest-thumpings, it's one thing to play well in a 39-point blowout and quite another to succeed in the waning moments of a game that's still up for grabs. Until he does the job in the clutch, Garnett is still not a franchise player.

Thank you! Thank you, Charley Rosen! This is exactly right. Garnett celebrated throwing Lamar Odom on the floor in a blowout, celebrated scoring 26 points in a 39-point win, celebrated ... coming up small in the previous five games, missing wide-open jumpers, getting into foul trouble, having to get bailed out by Ray Allen and Paul Pierce and Leon Powe. Rosen says it right, despite everyone's claims that "Garnett has now proven himself".

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 12:59 | |

This OCR piece suggests that Lamar Odom won't be traded this offseason. I say "yea" to that.

It also floats the idea that Odom might be moved to the bench rather than being the starting small forward, so that he'd play with the second unit. Given how Phil Jackson uses his bench, this might not be a terrible idea, because he could still get Odom a lot of minutes (Odom's wasted if he's only play 20-25 minutes) and he could have him on the floor at the times when he needs him there, and he could even run a three-bigs lineup when he's comfortable with it, but could otherwise go with a rotating cast: of the Pau, Bynum, Odom group, there'd always be two on the floor, with Odom at PF, Bynum at C, and Pau switching between the two spots depending on whether he was playing with Bynum or Odom. And of course Odom could still be available to play SF or even SG (with Kobe moving to the SF spot) if Jackson wanted all three on the floor for matchups or because they were playing well or whatever other reason.

Throwing the group into training camp and seeing how it all works out sounds better to me than gambling on "I don't know if Odom will work" and trading him for an inferior player that's a more traditional small forward. This is especially true if Sasha Vujacic and Ronny Turiaf resign with the team, because then you've got the entire squad coming back: when you're talking about a young team that had a lot of success the year before, a major shake-up (which is what an Odom trade would be) might not be the best in terms of keeping them all playing on the same page together.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 15:12 | |

Here's a roundup of some stuff about the Lakers, Lamar Odom, and so forth.

Mark Heisler says that Lamar Odom is a candidate to be traded. Heisler makes the point that everyone, myself included, has been making: Lamar is probably miscast as a small forward, in no small part because of his shaky outside shooting. He mentions the new-to-me bit that Odom was actually part of the Gasol trade until the Grizzlies' owner asked that he be taken out in favor of players that would give more (and quicker) cap relief (i.e. Kwame Brown). Heisler then simply states as a given that the Lakers will "surely shop him this off-season." Unfortunately, he mentions no potential trade partners, no small forwards that might come back in the deal, and so on.

In the same story, Heisler refers to Kobe Bryant as "the best there ever was at creating a shot," which, come to think of it, sounds about right. I wasn't privy to the fantastic Jordan years, since I was too young, but I've seen things on tape, and he didn't do the things that Kobe does with regularity. Kobe's up-fakes and step-throughs and slithery drives and over-the-head layups to avoid shot-blockers, and sideways jumpers falling out of bounds are, if not things that no one else does, at least things that no one else does with the regularity and the success that Kobe does them. Instead of tearing Bryant down as "not Jordan" or whatever else you want to say, we really should be appreciating the most beautiful individual basketball player many of us are likely to ever see. I've said it before: if LeBron James-type ball is the future of the league, then count me out. There's no artistry, no jazz in his game. Kobe is Charlie Parker, LeBron is a small-town basement-show-playing hardcore band. That band may be brilliant in its own way, but subtle and a beautiful sight to behold it is not.

I won't link to each and every one, but the L.A. Times Lakers Blog has links to audio taken from the press conferences given after (or, in Jordan Farmar's case, before) their exit interviews.

The same blog also reported that Trevor Ariza will be back in a Laker uniform next year, as he exercised his player option.

Forum Blue and Gold has an excellent breakdown of the Laker roster, including their salary situation for next year. It mentions something I didn't realize, which is that Chris Mihm has a player option for next year. Given that he hardly played, and that the option is for $2.7M, he's certain to exercise it. I had, in my previous post, marked him as a guy that wouldn't be on the team, but that's clearly not that case. That clouds the picture a little bit regarding a potential multi-player Lamar Odom trade, but not too much to really be a concern.

That post also contains some particularly good tidbits breaking down Odom's game as a small forward, including a quote from David Thorpe, one of ESPN's best analysts (a guy who can actually talk about what's going on on the floor).

The Press-Enterprise says that Sasha Vujacic may want the full $5.8M mid-level exception, which strikes me both as too much money and also something the Lakers would have to pay. Who's out there who can bring what Vujacic brings off the bench for this team?

NJ.com writes about a potential Richard Jefferson-for-Lamar Odom swap, which strikes me as a little bit hopeful from their perspective. Here's hoping Mitch Kupchak finds something better if he insists on dealing Odom.

The Orange County Register's Lakers Blog has a story that reminds me why I like Lamar Odom so much: "Odom was in one of the more down-in-the-dumps moods I’ve ever seen him. He said the first thing that happened in his exit meeting with Mitch Kupchak and Phil Jackson was Kupchak apologizing for a local newspaper column suggesting Odom will be shopped by the Lakers this summer." This is a guy who works and works throughout the game and the season and just gets ragged on mercilessly by the fans. He clearly wants to win, and he seems to like the situation he's in with the Lakers, as a strong supporting member of an excellent team: that he's down about potentially being traded is a good thing in my mind. Unfortunately, wanting to be here and actually fitting in with what the Lakers want to do are two different things.

That same story also has a bit about how Richard Jefferson is a strong defender against Paul Pierce, which could help the Lakers in a potential rematch. If Mitch Kupchak or Phil Jackson give even one second to thinking about whether their third-best player, a guy they are considering trading Lamar Odom for, matches up with Paul Pierce, a player the Lakers are guaranteed to see exactly twice next year, they ought to be fired for gross negligence. You don't build your team with an eye toward a Finals appearance that may never happen for the Lakers (especially if you think Odom-for-Jefferson actually weakens the team overall) and is probably even less likely to happen for the Celtics.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 22:42 | |

From Chad Ford on ESPN: "With the Lakers flaming out in the Finals, it didn't take long for speculation about Lamar Odom to begin. A number of teams covet Odom because of his expiring contract.

I'd expect the Lakers to hear from the Nets (for Richard Jefferson), the Bulls (for Andres Nocioni), the Kings (for Ron Artest) and the Grizzlies (for Mike Miller)."

Immediately, I say "I dunno about that." $13 million is a large expiring contract, and it's not like Lamar is Kwame Brown: he's a good player, so whoever gets him gets double benefit. He has his flaws, of course, but who doesn't? In short, why wouldn't the Lakers want to keep him and get the benefit of his play and his expiring contract for themselves? I guess two reasons. One, they're so far over the salary cap already that even after his contract comes off, they still won't have much room to maneuver for free agents. Two, Odom's a power forward and with Andrew Bynum coming back to join Pau Gasol, the best Laker lineup seems to me to put Gasol as the starting four with Bynum at center. Odom would then be pushed to small forward, a position he's less well-suited to because it minimizes his rebounding, a strength of his game; forces him to shoot from the perimeter more, a weakness; matches him up with guys who have the quickness to stop his drives; and leaves him less room to go to work on the blocks because Gasol and Bynum are already there. In short, Odom at small forward maximizes his weaknesses and minimizes his strengths. It might thus be the best use of L.A.'s resources to trade him for a true small forward like the four listed above in the quote from Ford.

A straight-up Richard Jefferson deal works cap-wise, but sounds terrible to me player-wise. Odom is a rebounder and an interior presence. Jefferson is a perimeter player who needs shots to be successful. He's a better scorer than anyone on the team not named Kobe Bryant, but that's pretty much his entire game. In particular, I'd worry about the duplication between his game and Bryant's, and the fact that Jefferson doesn't do other things to make up for the fact that Kobe and Pau should be getting shots ahead of him, and Andrew Bynum needs his as well. Look at how well the Nets have played with Jefferson and Vince Carter playing next to each other. Also, three years of Richard Jefferson? I say boo to this deal unless there's a sweetener. Sean Williams would be nice.

Andres Nocioni has four years left on his deal, but his $8.5M salary means other players would have to be involved. Drew Gooden would make the money work, but who the hell wants Drew Gooden? I can't imagine them trading away Joakim Noah, although perhaps a Michael Beasley arrival in Chicago would change that. In order to make the salaries work, it'd have to be Nocioni, Noah, plus say Ty Thomas and Thabo Sefalosha. That'd be quite a bounty for the Lakers, even if Thomas and Sefalosha are just mediocre bench players. Nocioni gives the Lakers a second rough-and-tumble Euro-type (assuming they resign Sasha) and a guy who can and will drive to the rim. Noah is potentially a very good rebounder and his front-court passing skills sound dreamy to me in the triangle. This deal would actually make me pretty happy. I love Ronny Turiaf, but he's a little too Mark Madsen for me, as a number of plays this series showed: Noah would replace him as the backup power forward (Pau starting). Nocioni would become the starting SF, pushing Radmanovic to the bench, where his single-skill profile fits better. L.A. has Chris Mihm, Ira Newble, and DJ Mbenga all departing this year, so there's room for Sefalosha and Thomas on the roster, where they can be useful and help push the team toward a twelve-deep kind of roster. Thumbs-up, then, to a potential Chicago deal. Downside? I don't know if this deal is one Chicago wants to make. It clears salary-cap space after 2009, especially when paired with Drew Gooden's $6.5M deal coming off the books at the same time. And Odom is a good player, particularly in the likely lower-pressure environment of Chicago, not expected to be a championship contender. But is he good enough to give up on a gifted young big man and a useful small forward?

The Lakers have been linked with Ron Artest forever. I've never been sure whether he fits on the team, though. He'd again be the new starting SF, thus having the same benefit of pushing Radmanovic to the bench as Nocioni would. But his contract is also expiring, though it's only at half the price. The Kings would have to package Artest would one or two of their eight or so crummy power forwards (Mikki Moore, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Kenny Thomas, Shelden Williams ...) in order to make the salaries work, and I don't see how a package like that would attract the Lakers' eye. I guess you can put a Mikki Moore on the bench in the Ronny Turiaf spot, but unlike Joakim Noah, it's not clear what Moore brings that Turiaf doesn't, so why go through that trouble? Artest's contract situation is also up in the air, as far as I know, because he has an opt-out. He's said, I think, that he won't use it, but it does make the trading situation harder until everything's official. Artest is also completely unable to stay on the floor. He misses a lot of games from year to year, substantially lowering his value. I say boo to a Kings trade.

Mike Miller is intriguing. He's a tremendous three-point shooter, he can slash to the basket, he's got enough strength to finish and rebound (although he doesn't do the latter with a lot of consistency), and he'd be reunited with Pau Gasol. To make the money work, the Lakers would probably have to take back Darko Milicic, Brian Cardinal, or Jason Collins as well. Collins is expiring, and Milicic could be useful as a mobile big man with some passing skills and a bit of a midrange game, so this kind of package wouldn't be terrible, particularly since I'd rather have Mike Miller for two years than Nocioni for four. I'd give a thumbs-up to a Grizzlies deal, with a preference to getting Milicic in the package instead of one of the other two guys. That said, it's clearly below the potential Chicago package because, even though Miller is better than Nocioni, the addition of Noah in the Chicago package, plus two other useful guys, completely blows Milicic out of the water. Darko is basically a lesser Slava Medvedenko at this point (no really, go look at their per-36-minute stats on Basketball Reference), and as much as I loved Slava, it was always kind of an irrational love. The one thing Darko adds is surprisingly tremendous shot-blocking: he averaged 1.6 blocks in just 23.8 minutes per game this year. His 36-minute rate (2.5) would have ranked him fourth in the NBA if that were his per-game number.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 18:35 | |

I don't remember who wrote it, but I read recently that a whole new generation of Lakers fans is being introduced to the Lakers-Celtics rivalry. I don't usually go in for the rivalry stuff (I could generally care less about the Giants, for instance), but this series has changed my NBA landscape: I officially hate the Celtics. This doesn't come about through any one act or game or anything, but a confluence of factors.

There's Kevin Garnett's increasingly tiresome act, pounding his chest after every tiny good thing he does, never letting an opponent's after-the-whistle practice shot go in, never smiling or looking like he enjoys playing a game for a living. It reached a peak in the closing minutes of Game 6: with about 5:00 to play, he shoved Lamar Odom on a drive to the basket with one hand, so Odom's shot was a weak lob to the basket that Garnett easily snatched from the air with his other hand. Garnett was called for the obvious foul, and then celebrated as if he'd done something good, sticking out his tongue, ranting about something or other. The Celtics, remember, were up something like 30 or 35 at this point. Is that how a classy player reacts to fouling an opponent in that situation? By celebrating and sticking out your tongue and yelling? Here's a hint, Kevin Garnett: that isn't how Bill Russell would have reacted in that situation. Garnett, by coming up small time and time again in the playoffs, having to be carried by Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, by showing that, even as the Defensive Player of the Year, he needs to be protected by allowing him to play weakside help defense instead of manning up the Lakers best post player, has shown that he's no Bill Russell. This sentence in this blog post ought to be the last time anyone breathes those two names in the same sentence again.

I hate that Garnett's nonsense act has spread to the other players. Why can't Kendrick Perkins be a nice happy-go-lucky kid? Why can't James Posey smile the way he did when he was on the Heat?

And the ugly sportsmanship of Garnett's shove-and-celebrate move showed up a few minutes later as Eddie House threw an alley-oop pass to Tony Allen with something like 2:00 to play and about a 35-point lead. That's a classless move. If you did that in the regular season, you'd probably end up with an elbow to the head the next time the teams met. You dribble out the clock and take a jump shot at that situation in the game. You don't drive the lane and throw alley-oops. Especially if your names are Eddie House, who the Celtics thought was bad enough to play Sam Cassell over him half the time, and Tony Allen, who played almost as little as Brian Scalabrine in the playoffs. Live up to the legacy, Boston.

There's the fact that the Celtics employ PJ Brown, who's that nasty old guy everyone hates on the floor, the guy who doesn't have any skill left but makes up for it with a bag of tricks, some clever (the pull the chair move), some illegal (pushes, holds, and shoves every single time down the floor), and some dirty (swiping at Jordan Farmar's head after Farmer embarrassed him by pulling down a rebound over him).

There's Game 2. And it's more than Game 2. Thinking back, I think my story is that five of the six games were refereed evenly, but the line at which the officials chose to draw where a foul was and were it wasn't favored the Celtics. The key to the series was whether the Celtics cloggy defense, assisted by grabbing and holding and pushing and elbowing and shoving, would defeat the Lakers (beautiful when it's on) flow offense. The officials chose to referee the games in such a way that the little inside grabbing and holding were (consistently) not called. This meant that the Lakers were the ones who had to adjust, and they couldn't: their jump shooters came up short in the series, and their big men were unable to adjust and score with an eight-foot game when they couldn't get to the basket. Anyway, none of this is to say anything about conspiracies or Stern Buttons or anything like that; it's simply to say that the way the games were refereed happened to favor the Bad Guys.

Why else do I hate the Celtics? I guess there are still some little things. There's Sam Cassell chucking Sasha Vujacic on the floor in Game 5 and getting nary a whisper from the referees. There's Ray Allen's perpetually smug look. There's the fact that the Celtics will be remembered as the champions despite being this close to losing in the first round to Atlanta. There's Danny Ainge's bullshit Executive of the Year award, which will go down in history as one of the worst trophies in history once it becomes obvious that he sacrificed the team's future for a single year of job-saving glory, with a major assist from a former Celtic with a clear hankering for the glory days (McHale). Flags fly forever, but Boston fans won't be happy when the Celtics are bounced from the second round of the playoffs next year and completely miss the playoffs two years after that. Basically, I hate that it worked. I hate that mortgaging the future actually came out to the desired result.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 00:38 | |

I don't remember if it was the LA Times or the Boston Globe, since both are equally invested in Laker-bashing these days (TJ Simers, I'm looking at your dumb ass), but someone applauded Doc Rivers the other day for picking up an early technical by screaming at the ref. The implication is that he was able to game the refs, to get in their heads and thus affect the outcome of the game. Well, the Lakers have been whistled for two techs in the second quarter of this game, Kobe got one in Game Two, and Phil Jackson said a lot of bald things after that game, but since Boston is still getting all the calls, no love for the Lakers on the ref-gaming front. Double standards up the wazoo. My newest complaint: PJ Brown's entire existence is to foul post players every time they try to get a rebound and, if he's lucky, goad them into a foul or a technical. But I haven't seen a whistle blown on his nonsense once, except for when he tangled up Jordan Farmar in, I think, Game Two. God do I hate PJ Brown.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 22:16 | |

I wrote this on my iPhone in the airport (in L.A., waiting for a flight to, of all places, Boston) on Thursday night, but haven't had a chance to post it until now.

I'm incredibly upset right now. A combination of ineptitude and a historic official screw job have conspired to end the Lakers' season in its tracks. Coming into this series, I thought the Lakers were the far superior team. They have more talent, the best player on the floor would be theirs, they'd risen to the top of a historically great Western conference, winning nearly as many games as Boston did without the benefit of playing in a conference with only five or so good teams, they'd beaten a very good San Antonio team in five games, a Denver team that might have been the best eight seed ever in four, and a Utah team that matched up well with them and plays better at home than almost anyone in six, all while watching Boston struggle past a terrible Atlanta team and a one-man Cleveland squad.

All signs pointed to a five-game win. Now it looks like a five-game loss. The Lakers will likely be deflated for Game Five, and I wouldn't be surprised by, nor would I particularly care about, a seriously lackluster effort. If Kobe puts the team on his back and extends the season, then great: make it a six-game loss. Either way, all the hard work of everyone involved has been tossed away through a combination of terribly timed poor play and a refereeing job I'm going to be talking about six years from now the way Sacramento fans still think about 2002.

It's all just so hard to believe. How do you blow a twenty-one point first quarter lead? At home? To a team whose idea of offensive sets is "dribble around a lot and throw up a jumper with three left on the shot clock"? To a team that still, 106 games into the season, hasn't worked out its rotation? To a team whose second- best benchy is thug extraordinaire PJ Brown? It just mystifies me. And now we have to go through a whole other season, with the West probably just as tough, trying to figure out how to play Bynum and Pau together, to try to win it all. I think the Lakers can do it, but knowing that, on paper as it were, and actually avoiding the injuries etc that happen are two different things. Like those 2002 Kings, this may have been the chance.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 22:16 | |

The Lakers proved they could win ugly tonight, pulling out the 87-81 home win over the Celtics. As indicated by the fact that L.A. only scored 87 points, a lot went wrong: Lamar Odom had a poor offensive game, joined by Pau Gasol; Vladimir Radmanovic had foul trouble that kept his shooting off the floor again; Ray Allen went off for 25 points by raining in five open threes; the Lakers shot just 62% from the foul line, missing 13 free throws; Boston grabbed fourteen offensive boards.

So what went right? Kobe was aggressive all night, getting into the lane and making shots at or near the lane, and getting foul calls he wasn't getting in Boston (he shot 18 of the Laker free throws). Sasha Vujacic had one of those nights, shooting 7-10 to essentially negate Ray Allen's offensive contributions. Paul Pierce was horrendous, shooting 2-14 and picking up five fouls. (This was partly a result of some misses of open shots he'd been making in Boston and partly a result of getting way fewer of those open looks as the Laker defense tightened up on him, led by Sasha and Kobe.) Kevin Garnett only shot 6-21 as his jumper wasn't falling and he only found his way into the lane a few times (though this seemed more by Celtic design than by Laker defensive efforts -- he didn't miss many paint shots or give the ball up from the lane many times because he pretty much hung around the perimeter the entire game).

How about the foul situation? Simmons figured Bennett Salvatore would be in this game, which isn't so prescient when you think about it: he hadn't worked the first two games, and he's in a small group of guys whom you know are going to work the Finals, so you have to figure this game is his. But Simmons also figured that Salvatore would pull one of his screw jobs, which didn't really happen. The Lakers shot more free throws than the Celtics, but only 12 more, not the egregious 28 of Game 2. Twelve is easily explainable by more aggressiveness in this game and the Lakers' offensive style in general: they're a cutting, driving, posting team that should be getting fouls against a team that clutches and grabs as much as the Celtics do. The Celtics, by contrast, are a jump-shooting team, with the exception of Paul Pierce.

Even more than the foul shot situation, there were only two horrible calls all night, but both went against the Lakers. One was Kevin Garnett's obvious travel in the third quarter, when he was doing his KG PIVOT thing where he jukes left and right like six times. In the midst of all this, he basically forgot which foot was his pivot and switched it before going up for a fallaway jumper. The refs completely boned it, failing to blow the whistle, and PJ Brown ended up with an offensive board and two foul shots. (Of course, the whole thing would have been null had the Lakers managed to secure their defensive glass, but that's for another time.) Second was the Kendrick Perkins / Radmanovic foul, where Vlad-Rad was futilely attempting to guard Perkins in the post. Rad had Perkins fronted, and the nice lob pass came over the top. While the ball was in the air, Rad basically just gave the foul, knowing he couldn't handle the bigger offensive player down there, grabbing onto Perkins's arm. Perkins caught the ball anyway and put it in for a layup. For some reason, the refs let the continuation go and gave Perkins a three-point play, despite the obvious fact that Vlad had fouled Perkins before he ever caught the ball.

In short, the Lakers didn't receive any special help from the refs tonight, and, as I've been saying, they didn't need it. Was it a closer, uglier win than I would have liked? Sure. Was it still a well-earned win? Sure.

What needs to happen in Game 4, knowing that Paul Pierce at least will shoot better, and maybe KG as well (he's bound to start draining these shots at some point, right?)? Better play from Lamar Odom. He wasn't out of control offensively tonight, and he came alive in the second half, getting to the bucket a couple of times to set up Pau Gasol offensive-rebound scores, but he made silly defensive fouls in the first half and almost made a terrible play with six seconds left. Instead of recognizing that the Celtics were (stupidly) conceding the game and thus dribbling the clock out, he went in for a dunk, but pushed off, and got called for an offensive foul. He has to, in short, wake up. Gasol needs to have a Game 2-type offensive game again, instead of the 3-9 showing of tonight where he was basically a non-factor. You weren't even aware he was on the floor most of the time. He had twelve rebounds and didn't let KG get an easy offensive boards over him like he did in Game 2, so that's a plus -- he needs to keep that up, but have a few more of his shots fall. Oh, also, don't shoot 3-8 at the line. It'd be nice if Derek Fisher shot better than 1-6, but that's not something anyone needs to hound him about. He took the shots tonight that he always takes and sometimes they don't go in. It's not critical so long as someone else steps up, as Sasha did tonight. Sasha won't shoot 70% again, but hopefully with contributions from Odom and Gasol, he won't have to, and his hounding of Pierce and Eddie House into frustrated pushes and elbows will continue to be valuable even when his shot isn't falling (so long as he's taking those shots in the flow of the offense like he was tonight).

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 02:20 | |

That's called The Stern Button. 38-10 on the free throw margin. Really? That's impossible. When Kobe Bryant is on one team, and two of the three offensive stars for the other team are exclusively jump shooters, 38-10 should never ever happen. That's outrageous. That's a travesty.

I shouldn't make reference to The Stern Button, though. Even if he was in the stands. I don't actually think the league or the referees are corrupt. I just think they're incompetent. Everyone loves Bob Delaney because of his FBI background, but is he a good referee? Not in this game he wasn't. Who made the preposterous call on Ronny Turiaf's block on the Celtic fast break? Who completely missed Kobe getting slapped across the arm on at least three occasions driving to the basket? Who refused to blow the whistle while Pau was getting mercilessly hacked under the basket as time ran out in the first half? I don't know if it was Delaney, Crawford, or the third guy, but whoever it was ought to hang their heads in shame. As usual, calls were missed on the other side as well, notably Radmanovic traveling on his way to a dunk after the late-game steal, and Jordan Farmar swiping Leon Powe across the arm as he threw down a dunk to end the third quarter. But when the referees are incompetent, which is a given, and the result is a 38-10 free throw margin, which is a factual truth, the conclusion is that the guys in gray screwed the road team. And how many times have we heard that in the NBA?

They weren't the only reason the Lakers lost, of course. Leon Powe might as well retire now, because he'll never have a game this good again. The Lakers couldn't do anything to disturb Rajon Rondo, and they have to fix that going back to L.A. Boston was absurdly hot from three-point range, hitting something like 75% of those shots. Derek Fisher's shot was off. Vlad-Rad made some boneheaded plays. And my god say it ain't so, but Doc Rivers actually coached a good game: he stopped a couple of Laker runs with well-placed timeouts and he played the guys who should have been playing: Rondo basically went the distance instead of Sam Cassell getting siginficant time, Powe played many more minutes than usual, and James Posey, who played well, doing the kinds of things he does (threes and defense), got a fair amount of time as well.

But look, two of the reasons I've mentioned are not going to be repeated (the threes and Powe), and one of them probably won't happen in L.A. (the free throws). Given that the Lakers ended up losing by single digits, any one of those things going differently results in a completely different game. Now, that's not the way to think about it necessarily, because unless the Lakers are down by 26 in the fourth quarter, they don't make that crazy run that they end up making. Instead maybe they're down 12 the entire way or something. That said, the game was close until the closing minutes of the third, when the Celtics went on a run that put them up a ton, making the game look like a rout. Before that, the Lakers were down something like six or ten. If you subtract two threes from the Celtics and close the free throw gap by about 10 (in which case the Celtics would still have been getting the overwhelming number of calls), you've got a Laker lead.

The problem with all of this complaining is that it doesn't change the reality, which is that the Lakers are down 0-2. This means they absolutely must win all three games at home. Given the weakness this Celtics team has shown in the playoffs, that's utterly possible. But it still must be done. Assuming the referees are as incompetent in Games 3-5 as they were in One and Two, I think it's a fair prediction to say that the Lakers will, in fact, win all three of these games at home. That's even if Leon Powe actually sells his soul again, and even if Pau Gasol still doesn't figure out how to box Kevin Garnett out.

And I'm not sure the refs even need to be awful in L.A. Again, look at this game. A twenty-eight free-throw advantage for the Celtics, a 20+ point lead with half of the fourth quarter gone, and they still have to win in the final minute? This is your potential NBA champion? Come on.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 23:51 | |

Pau getting beat by Kevin Garnett for offensive rebounds twice on the same possession is just embarassing. He was just standing around watching the play on the second one, which is horrible. Combine poor endgame play with Kobe's poor shooting and continued inability to score in the paint and you've got a Laker loss, albeit one where you can say "Game 2 is still within reach." Assuming the referees don't continue to be intimidated by the home crowd, that is. They weren't terrible in this game, but the two or three truly horrendous bad calls (e.g. Pau's clean block on Garnett in the first half) went against the Lakers, as you expect to happen in Boston.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in L.A. Lakers at 23:53 | |