It wasn’t as easy as it had appeared to be, but after 48 more minutes on a playoff Tuesday night at STAPLES Center, L.A. had its second win. Three different Lakers made respectively key plays in the final 1:20 of action as the home team staved off a late Jazz charge to take a 2-0…
So the Utah Jazz will head back to Los Angeles in a few days for the first round of the 2009 NBA Playoffs. L.A. made sure of that with an impressive final performance en route to its 65th regular season win. Heading into its finale, L.A. surely knew the potential playoff scenarios: Beat the Jazz,…
Scoring against the Warriors isn’t much of a problem for any team, let alone the Lakers. In fact, in the three previous matchups between the two California squads, L.A. had averaged 124.3 points, all in winning efforts. Make that four wins for a season sweep. L.A. had to settle for 114 points on Thursday night…
In the NBA perhaps more than any other professional league, big leads can be fickle. With 1:18 left in the third quarter of L.A.’s Sunday afternoon game against Dallas, the Lakers led by a comfortable 87-74 margin, a scoreboard reward for generally controlling the Mavs for the entire game. In the next six minutes, however,…
Consecutive road losses in Phoenix, Denver and Portland over the last week and change seemed to worry a few Lakers fans (you know who you are). In that case, back-to-back victories in Houston and San Antonio – punctuated as Kobe Bryant’s dagger triple slashed the net with 1:46 remaining to put L.A. up 98-93 –…
Heading into Houston certainly looked like a tasty challenge for the Lakers, who were entering an arena that hadn’t seen a home loss in 12 games, not to mention dealing with the absence of a suspended Lamar Odom. Well, one player the Lakers had in uniform happened to be the MVP. Kobe Bryant entered Mamba…
When I was here in Los Angeles, the thing that really jumped out at me about Kobe was the size of his heart. He shows it on the court and off the court with his community involvement, and the way that he wants his teammates to succeed. I remember times when I played well, it seemed like Kobe was one of the happiest guys … He enjoys seeing the success of other people.
Since Friday night’s win against Minnesota, nearly every member of the Lakers traveling crew told me how tough it was for L.A. to play in Portland. Mychal Thompson (who played for the Blazers for seven years and the Lakers for four and a half) told me. Stu Lantz told me. Joel Meyers, Spero Dedes, John…
L.A.’s Friday night contest against a short-handed Minnesota Timberwolves didn’t prove to be much of a contest as the Lakers cruised to their league-best 50th win in 62 games. Sure enough, when the game’s three biggest highlights come courtesy of D.J. Mbenga, Shannon Brown and … Mbenga again … it’s not a good sign for…
With Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire out with respective ankle and eye injuries, going into STAPLES Center against a rolling crew of purple and gold clad athletes figured to be a tough test… … But one might have thought the Suns could hang around for more than six minutes. Instead, after Phoenix opened a 20-17…
Falling down by as many as 12 points in the third quarter at ORACLE Arena against the Warriors didn’t seem to worry the Lakers. Not even a little bit. After all, Golden State may possess more than its fair share of offensive firepower, but the squad simply struggles to get stops when it counts. Keeping…
