The Official Los Angeles Lakers thread

[Stone Cold is Bout It, Bout It]

Highlight Mix: Lakers @ Queens - 1/4/07

http://www.sendspace.com/file/i0wg55

http://files.filefront.com/CM01042007rar/;6480340;;/fileinfo.html

Song: The Game - 120 Bars
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Highlight Mix: Nuggets @ Lakers -  1/5/07

http://www.sendspace.com/file/x5bn8u

Song: D.O.R.K. - D.O.R.K.'s Anthem (Draft)


Ronny Turiaf Posterizes Reggie Evans:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/bbmni4

[GangstaBoogy]

By Eric Neel
ESPN The Magazine

LOS ANGELES -- For three weeks and 13 games they've looked invincible. Ridiculously deep. Stupid flexible. Well-coached. Disciplined. And all kinds of confident. For three weeks and 13 games, each Dallas Mavericks tip-off felt like a formality, like you weren't wondering if, but how, they'd carve another notch.

Then Sunday night the Lakers up and beat 'em, 101-98, like it wasn't nothing but a thing, like the Mavs were ripe for the taking all along.

How'd they pull it off? What's the secret recipe every other club in the league will be looking to copy?

Easy. All you need is . . .

• 1 cup of out-of-nowhere step-up: The joke around the Lakers' locker room is that Sasha Vujacic isn't a "7:30 Shooter" -- money in practice, but tight come game time (he came into the game shooting just .374 from the field and .310 from three).

But when the Mavericks' defenders started pinching Kobe Bryant in the fourth quarter, daring the supporting cast to beat them, Sasha took the dare and took his locker room stock up a notch, hitting 4 of 5 3-pointers, the last of which gave the Lakers a 100-98 lead.

"He can shoot. We know he can shoot," Luke Walton said afterward. "It's just a matter of confidence."

It's hard to say whether Sasha was truly feeling confident, but mark this down: If you want to mix up a batch of streakbusting you better have one guy, one guy the other club never thought they'd have to think about, who, like a man of faith, is willing to act as if he belonged in the moment and the moment belonged to him.

• 1/2 cup of old-time share-the-ball ball: Friday night, Nuggets coach George Karl called Los Angeles the best passing team in the league. Sunday night they made him look like a prophet, racking up 26 assists (to the Mavericks' 16).

And it wasn't just the number, it was the way they reached it: Interior passes, quick touch-passes, skips from Kobe to an open Luke, ball rotations from corner to top to corner. The ball was constantly moving. They made Dallas work, start to finish, and got open looks that resulted in 54.9 percent field goal shooting.

• 2/3 cup of the guy who's really, truly, no joke starting to believe: The Lakers miss Lamar Odom right now, no doubt. They would like to have Kwame Brown healthy, too, most definitely. But it ain't all bad being thin in the first half of the season. Because when you're thin, if you're lucky, that hoop-smart, unselfish, all-purpose glue guy you've got becomes, by necessity and by the grace of his own blooming confidence, a flat-out stalwart.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Luke Walton, a three-shooting, ball-handling, crazy reverse-180 up-and-over lay-upping, man in full (21 points, 6 assists, 3 rebounds).

"It has to be done if we want to win," he said afterward. "You don't have time to think about it. You do whatever it takes, whether it's passing, scoring, rebounding. You get in there."

Boom. There it is. Mark this down: when Odom comes back this is a three-headed team, much more dangerous than when he left hurt.

• 1 cup of superstar: You have to have Kobe being Kobe, and the Lakers did. But not until the fourth quarter, when he went on a classic spree, hitting four of five shots to begin the fourth quarter and pulled the Lakers back within striking distance. It was like watching Ali in Zaire, waiting and waiting and waiting, and then finally letting go a flurry.

• 1/2 cup of clang: The Mavs weren't the Mavs in this one, and that was bound to happen some night. They got double figures out of five guys, like they always do, but they managed just 42 percent from the field. Credit the Lakers' defense, particularly Vujacic, who was active around the perimeter, and Ronny Turiaf, who was a bulldog down low, though he was often working a mismatch. But credit (or blame) the Mavs themselves, too, who too often settled for jump shots when they should have taken the ball inside.

• A pinch of defining-moment smackdown defense: Lakers up 100-98 with sixteen seconds to go. Jason Terry is driving the lane for a tying layup. The Lakers' bigs don't want to leave Dirk Nowitzki. It's a done deal. And then, in a flash, it isn't, thanks to Smush Parker, who witnesses will tell you was actually wearing a purple-and-gold cape when he came flying in and palm-blocked the shot as it left Terry's hand.

Not only a big block for the box score, but a huge block for the absolute pandemonium it inspired in the Staples Center crowd. The Mavs were beaten in part Sunday because they played a tough team holding serve on what has become a very tough home court, a flat-out nasty place to play.

• A dash of hesitation, a hint of uncertainty: The Mavericks are, rightfully, a very cool bunch.

"They're very confident about how they want to play right now," Phil Jackson said during pregame.

But late, when this thing was tight, their flowing, cutting, five-headed hydra offense stalled out. Guys were standing, watching, waiting for Nowitzki to do some kind of magic. That ain't going to work every night. And it ain't going to work in the playoffs.

The guy they most need to come alive in these moments is Josh Howard. The kid is near unstoppable when he wants to be (limited only by an inconsistent J), capable of getting into space against any style or size defender you want to throw at him. But he passed on open shots at crunch time Sunday night. He deferred. Too much. This is Nowitzki's team, for sure, but the Mavs will be well served by letting a game or three rest squarely on young Josh's shoulders, just to get him knowing, without a dash of hesitation or a hint of uncertainty, that he can't be denied.

• And finally, a smidge of lunacy: The Lakers had fallen behind in the third quarter, and had gotten back into the game thanks to the always impressive, but ultimately very predictable, burst from Kobe. To move from getting close to getting over, though, they needed some extra something, some little bit of crazy. And sure enough, on the night he won his 900th game as a head coach in the NBA, Jackson delivered just that, going with a game-in-the-balance lineup of Vujacic, Walton, Parker, Turiaf and Bryant. They were too small to board and too weird to gel, and they were perfect, the finishing touch, the secret ingredient.

[Vegasmac25]

Lakers are going to give me a heart attack great fucking game. Now lets hope that Sasha can built of these game for the rest of the season.I liked how Bynum played tonight i think he just has to get it together on defensed and try not to get stupid fouls.Luke was aggressive once again and he looked good.Smush was solid again.Cook needs to get his fucking head on straight.

[Stone Cold is Bout It, Bout It]

^I'm yet to see a picture of Turiaf that didn't make me l-m-a-o

Yeah, Turiaf's pictures are always the best. 

[LAKERS_FAN89]

G LAKERS

[GangstaBoogy]

The Lakers have a tendency of losing to teams they're supposed to beat. I hope the winning streak continues.

[Stone Cold is Bout It, Bout It]

Lakers' cast shows character

Undeterred by injuries that have shelved two starters, they find a way to beat the Mavericks, 101-98, ending the league leaders' 13-game winning streak.

It was a stiff request to begin with, the Lakers taking on the Dallas Mavericks, who rolled into town with the league's best record and a 13-game winning streak.

They wouldn't get to 14.

Again defying NBA logic, the short-staffed Lakers went point-for-point with one of the more seasoned offenses in the league and did more than survive. They excelled, taking possession of the last quarter and its final few minutes in a 101-98 victory Sunday at Staples Center.

Continuing to win again and again, with whomever is available to suit up, the Lakers got another stand-up effort from a different player, Sasha Vujacic taking a turn at the front of the line with a career-best 16 points, including a three-pointer that put the Lakers ahead for good, 100-98, with 28.5 seconds to play.

No wonder Phil Jackson couldn't help allowing himself a rare smile as he left the court.

"Quite a finish to that game," he said.

Quite a statement from a team that wasn't really sure what it had when the season began 10 weeks ago. Kobe Bryant and Jackson were still limping from their respective surgeries. Then Lamar Odom went down, followed by Kwame Brown, and, funny thing, it hasn't really mattered.

Sunday's effort was a unique way for Jackson to become the fastest coach ever to collect 900 NBA victories.

Bryant had 26 points on nine-for-20 shooting, eight rebounds and six assists — solid, obviously, but not the story of the game.

That was reserved for Vujacic, who made six of seven shots, four of five from three-point range, and was then surrounded by reporters at his locker for the first time in his three-year Lakers career.

"I'm proud of him because he's taken his lumps here and the fans have been pretty hard on him," Bryant said. "What people don't understand is that he's a tough kid, he's not going to back down. He's not going to stop being aggressive. He's not going to stop working hard. And when you have that combination, the fans are going to turn around because they'll see that."

As if to demonstrate Bryant's point, Vujacic sported a red right eye after the game. He was accidentally poked by former Lakers forward Devean George early in the fourth quarter. He went on to hit three three-pointers before the game ended.

Vujacic insisted he wasn't the hero of the game.

"A hero when we win the championship," he said. "Not yet."

Not to be forgotten in victory: Luke Walton scored 21 points, Ronny Turiaf had 13, and Smush Parker had the defensive play of the game, blocking Jason Terry's driving layup attempt with 16.9 seconds to play and protecting the two-point lead Vujacic had provided.

"He came out of nowhere to get to that ball," Jackson said. "Smush just came off and found him, did a great job."

After Walton made one of two free throws, George was long on a three-point attempt with 3.9 seconds left, and the Lakers officially moved to a collective 4-2 against Dallas, Phoenix, Utah and San Antonio, the top teams in the Western Conference.

The Lakers (23-11), however, were slow to anoint themselves an elite team.

"Teams like Dallas and the Spurs play like that every night," Walton said. "And right now, we're playing like that against them, then we kind of drop off the level of play against the teams that aren't that good. So to be an elite team, you have to be playing at that level every night."

Before the game, when Jackson had only 899 victories, he laughed off the concept of 900, calling it a number, a nothing, "an area code somewhere."

He was more reverent afterward.

"It's a compliment to all the players I've had, the great players, the great teams and the great runs that we've had," said Jackson, who is 900-364 in his career.

The Lakers would need a sharp fourth quarter after trailing, 77-68, through three.

They got it and more, outscoring the Mavericks the rest of the way, 33-21, good enough to end one winning streak while extending their own to four games.

Forward Dirk Nowitzki captured the Mavericks' night by giving credit to "that Vujacic guy."

"Those were points you don't expect," said Nowitzki, who scored 29. "… He was hot, he made big threes for them."

http://www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/nba/lakers/la-sp-lakers8jan08,1,5552517.story?coll=la-headlines-sports-nba-lakers

[LAKERS_FAN89]

The Lakers hit the road once again to visit the Memphis Grizzlies. Los Angeles lead the season series 1-0 after defeating Memphis 91-81 at STAPLES Center. This will be the first game of the Lakers 6th back to back series of the year. They are currently 4-1 in the first half of the double headers

[LAKERS_FAN89]

whats what'what should konw bout that kobe dunk

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

^^LMAO@Memphis buzzing about it 50 times more than the Hakim Warrick dunk...

[LAKERS_FAN89]

^^^haha yeah they say it was more lakers fan so that why it was buzzing bout that dunk.

[wcsoldier]

WTF was that 3rd quarter 

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

Holy shit...That was too pathetic for words.

[GangstaBoogy]

I called it

[LAKERS_FAN89]

i dont know what happend to this games.