SHOULD KOBE BRYANT COME BACK THIS SEASON? Whether this season is worth coming back to for Bryant was the topic between Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher and Howard Beck. Beck says the guard should probably sit out the entire season because there is nothing to come back to. The Los Angeles Lakers are an injury-ridden mess and are certain to miss the playoffs, so what’s the point? The issue with sitting Bryant out even if he can come back is this: he needs
Kobe Reminiscences on Celtics-Lakers Rivalry You and I weren’t the only ones that were disappointed when the Boston Celtics shipped off Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett this past summer. Kobe Bryant was right there with us. Their departure not only had a domino effect on the competitive landscape of the Eastern Conference, but the entire NBA. The Celtics would no longer be a threat, and that would mean the revived Celtics-Lakers rivalry that this generation finally got to experience to the fullest would also
Since training camp opened, there have been five significant trades involving 10 teams, 19 players and seven draft picks. The big winners have been a team that got rid of the highest scorer among the traded players and a team that acquired a player who has yet to play. The big loser has been a team that swears by analytics. Another way to look at it is like this: The biggest trades thus far have been the ones that haven’t been made
At what point does public acknowledgement of mistakes stop being enough? It drew a lot of attention when Paul George was fouled on the final shot in a huge Indiana-Miami game and it wasn’t called. The latest one, featuring Monta Ellis grabbing both of Austin Rivers’ arms, was far more egregious, and the NBA has admitted it was the wrong call. [Read more…]
I don’t know what the future holds for the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Chris Grant. He’s on the hook for the selection of Anthony Bennett, who, to this point, has done nothing to merit being the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2013. He may have to answer for Tristan Thompson, as well, as the No. 4 pick in 2011. But here’s what he won’t have to do: He won’t have to worry about ever being called a stooge for
There is reason to believe that, after the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers stunned the NBA with last night’s Luol Deng/Andrew Bynum swap, that Deng was just the first domino to fall in Chicago. Well, I suppose that would actually be Derrick Rose, whose loss to season ending injury has given the Bulls a second chance to reassess their future. [Read more…]
Mitch Kupchak I have already made my thoughts known on the Luog Deng-Andrew Bynum trade in a column, the gist of whih is that the big loser in this deal was the Lakers. Go ahead and click through and give it a read as you listen to this audio from the NBA’s Sirius-XM radio channel, in which I go into further detail about why Mitch Kupchak blew a golden opportunity to set the Lakers up for having
Well, Lakers fans, you get to keep staring at Pau Gasol and watch him age before your eyes — until the trade deadline, that is. OK, maybe a couple months longer. And the rebuilding plan that coincides with Kobe Bryant’s two-year contract extension? Don’t expect the Lakers to be flooded with max players. They still need to stay under the luxury tax line for two seasons to avoid the dreaded repeater tax, and it doesn’t look like this season will be