The Official Los Angeles Lakers thread

[wcsoldier]

Well , hopefully Kwame will be back soon.... but I have to laugh at what I read on  some Lakers forums, they were clowning him  for wasting some assists, saying he's not even a starter player caliber and now they 're all wondering and crying who's gonna D on the big men 


And lol at this

[GangstaBoogy]

lol at this

Luke Walton looked like he had no idea what was going on

[Juronimo]

Well , hopefully Kwame will be back soon.... but I have to laugh at what I read on  some Lakers forums, they were clowning him  for wasting some assists, saying he's not even a starter player caliber and now they 're all wondering and crying who's gonna D on the big men 


And lol at this

Most of the fans on other Laker forums hate every Laker not named Kobe. Not suprising. Kwame is invuable to this team.

[Stone Cold is Bout It, Bout It]

[GangstaBoogy]

Anyone know what's up with Aaron McKie? I remember last month the announcer said he was suited up and would play if Phil put him in. After that he's been in a suit & tie every night.

[Stone Cold is Bout It, Bout It]

Highlight Mix: 76ers @ Lakers -  12/31/06

http://www.sendspace.com/file/snz4tz

Song: Pharrell - You Can Do It Too

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

Well , hopefully Kwame will be back soon.... but I have to laugh at what I read on  some Lakers forums, they were clowning him  for wasting some assists, saying he's not even a starter player caliber and now they 're all wondering and crying who's gonna D on the big men 


And lol at this

Most of the fans on other Laker forums hate every Laker not named Kobe. Not suprising. Kwame is invuable to this team.

That's exactly how I feel about some of the Laker fans here sometimes...

[GangstaBoogy]

Kwame Update
Los Angeles Lakers center Kwame Brown expects to be out several weeks because of a severely sprained left ankle. He was injured Sunday night and joins Chris Mihm and Lamar Odom on the sidelines. Lakers spokesman John Black said Tuesday that Brown will be reassessed in 10 days to two weeks.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/teams/lal

[GangstaBoogy]

Looks like Shaq will be back in time to play the Lakers. Gee how convenient. He's back just in time to play the Lakers without Odom & Kwame. I hope Bynum owns him again.

[LAKERS_FAN89]

Lakers.com recently sat down with Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak to discuss the 2006-2007 season.

Lakers.com: What's the biggest side effect of Lamar being out?
Mitch: Well, the negative is that he does so much for our team as a facilitator in terms of getting shots and making plays for other players, not just himself. He's averaging 17-18 points a game so in that regard he can score, but what he really does is create opportunities for other players, guys like Luke and Smush, or Brian Cook, Radmanovic to get open looks because Lamar's first instinct is to drive and when you have a player of his size and ability drive toward the basket, defenses normally collapse and that means somebody else is open. Certainly as our leading rebounding we miss his rebounding and our rebounding efficiency reflects his absence in the time that he has been out. He has emerged as a silent leader on the team, so those are the things that we miss the most. I guess if there is a silver lining, guys that couldn't get on the court very often, like Brian Cook and Radmanovic because of our depth and because of Luke Walton's play, they're getting minutes and they're getting confidence and game legs so provided we can continue to win games at some sort of a pace, to keep us above water, then when Lamar comes back, we'll probably be better off.

Lakers Rebounding Efficiency

 Offensive Defensive Total
Player Pre-Injury Post-Injury Pre-Injury Post-Injury Pre-Injury Post-Injury
Lakers Team 0.0456 0.0380 0.1240 0.1136 0.1696 0.1517
L. Odom 0.0352 NA 0.1948 NA 0.2300 NA
A. Bynum 0.0639 0.0686 0.2291 0.2127 0.2930 0.2813
B. Cook 0.1311 0.0701 0.1223 0.2044 0.2534 0.2745
J. Farmar 0.0153 0.0062 0.0826 0.0682 0.0978 0.0744
K. Brown 0.0909 0.0815 0.1612 0.1125 0.2521 0.1939
K. Bryant 0.0218 0.0116 0.1013 0.1330 0.1232 0.1446
L. Walton 0.0386 0.0475 0.1004 0.1051 0.1390 0.1526
M. Evans 0.0691 0.0223 0.0553 0.0893 0.1243 0.1116
R. Turiaf 0.0795 0.1118 0.1530 0.1118 0.2325 0.2237
S. Parker 0.0186 0.0147 0.0610 0.0476 0.0797 0.0623
S. Vujacic 0.0270 0.0401 0.0810 0.0902 0.1080 0.1302
V. Radmanovic 0.0876 0.0248 0.1257 0.1291 0.2133 0.1540
Lakers.com: How do you measure rebounding efficiency?
Mitch: There are a couple of ways to do it. You can look at players individually and gauge their rebounding efficiency year to year. We normally break it down to rebounds per minute, in other words, how many minutes does a player play before he gets one defensive rebound or one offensive rebound, but in this regard it's really team rebounding. You look how you did as a team before Lamar left, offensively, defensively and total, and then you compare it to where you are today and then you can see the impact his absence has had on our rebounding.

Lakers.com: Specifically, how has Lamar's absence affected Luke Walton's game?
Mitch: Well I touched on it a minute ago, he has, because of his ability to drive and create opportunities for himself, defenses collapse on him and that leaves players that are open, guys like Luke and Brian and Radmanovic and even Smush. With Kobe we have a guy that can do that, but with Lamar we have 2 guys that can do it. I think Luke's efficiency is not the same offensively as it was before Lamar got hurt, but that's just an adjustment period and over the course of next 2 to 3 weeks as long as Lamar is out we'll just have to make the adjustment.

 Lakers.com: What does Brian Cook bring to a game vs. what Vladimir Radmanovic brings to a game, since they are filling in for Lamar?
Mitch: I think they are similar in that they are both about 6'10" and they are both great shooters. I think Brian may have a quicker release and I think Vlade can put the ball on the floor a little bit better than Brian can, and get to the rim and finish. In our game last night he drove baseline and dunked the ball with 2 hands. You don't see Brian do that as much. I think Brian may be a better a rebounder, he's got a bit of an edge to him that maybe Radmanovic doesn't, a little bit of a nasty edge and I think if you can control it that it is a useful thing. Similar type players, but their differences are there, just subtle in nature.

Lakers.com: Are you pleased with how they have filled in since Lamar has been out?
Mitch: Yes, yes absolutely. As I mentioned before, they weren't getting much time before Lamar got hurt and you always tell players that aren't playing much, because they want to play, and as a general manager it's my job every now and then, when you recognize that a guy is down, to bring a guy into the office and talk to him a little bit. What you tell those guys is, "Listen, just stay ready, stay professional, stay ready, it's an 82 game season and over the course of a season you are going to get a chance. Knock on wood no one gets hurt, but people do get hurt, there could be foul trouble, some guy could get the flu right before the game and if you're not ready, then you're not going to perform and that's your chance. So just stay ready and you're going to get your chance." No one expected or is happy about Lamar going down, fortunately he'll be back soon, I don't know if that's 2 weeks or 4 weeks, but he will be back, but here's their chance, here's their chance to step in. And I think they've done well, they've both done well and like I mentioned, when Lamar gets back, I think we'll be a better team.

 Lakers.com: Now after 30 games, how do you assess the development of our younger players?
Mitch: I think that our younger players are ahead of the curve, I really do. Nobody expected Jordan Farmar to be in the rotation. At 19 years old, we liked what he did at UCLA and we liked his post season work-outs and we thought maybe a year or two down the road he'd be able to help us. Andrew Bynum had a good summer, but not a great summer and his training camp was good but not great. Due to injury, to Chris Mihm and Kwame Brown, he was thrust in to starting position and he got invaluable experience and he produced and got a lot of confidence. Now that Kwame's healthy, Andrew is where he should be, which is, at 19 years old, coming off the bench and taking advantage of the second level players that come in at that time and he can be effective against those guys and continue to get confidence. Having said that, he has gone against a couple of front line players in this league and done really well. For example Yao Ming and Tim Duncan, so I think Andrew is ahead of the curve as well. We thought that if Chris Mihm were healthy, Andrew this season would certainly play more than last year, but he probably wouldn't have been our starter or the first guy off the bench. But Chris is gone (with injury) and Kwame is back and Andrew has seized the moment. And he deserves to play, provided his energy level, his competitive nature and his intensity stays the same. Once he loses that he's going to go back to the bench and not play. That's the hardest part about this league is getting up for 82 games, back-to-backs, games you don't feel like playing, when you step on the court after traveling all day, whether it's weather or flight problems, as a professional, no matter how tired you are, when you step on the court and the lights are on you have to flip the switch and be competitive and ready to play. That's the point we try to get across to him, because there was a period there about a month ago when he was going through the motions, but he's back on track now. I would love to see Ronny Turiaf play more, but it looks like now that he is going to be a specialist and provide a boost to us when we need a boost, when there's foul trouble, someone else getting hurt, but we think Ronny has been a very productive young player as well. Ronny is a little bit older; he's 23 so I wouldn't consider him to be in the same category as Jordan and Andrew, who are both 19. Everybody's young, I think you're talking about those 3, but everybody's young. Sasha's 22, Cook is 25, Luke is 26, Kwame is 24.

 Lakers.com: How does the addition of AI change the face of the western conference?
Mitch: We don't know, that's an experiment that many people are curious about, including myself. Apparently it has created an awful lot of excitement in Denver. I'm happy for AI, because like a lot of players, when you're with one city that has had mixed success you're sometimes taken for granted. This organization, we've had great success and I don't think Kobe is taken for granted at all, but I think in Philadelphia AI has been taken for granted. He brought a lot of that on himself, missing events, showing up late, the controversies, press conferences that didn't go well so maybe it was time for him to go somewhere. Based on his reception in Denver, it seems that he has found a place where people are going to appreciate him and it might revitalize his career. The big question is when Carmelo comes back, how are these 2 guys going to coexist. Allen has been around the block, so I think he knows how to try and make it work, but the question is can he pull it off.

Lakers.com: How does AI mesh with Coach George Karl's coaching style?
Mitch: George has coached some of the more volatile personalities in this league. I played with George in college for one season when I was a freshman and he was a senior, so I know him very well. He's a little different, he's a brilliant coach in terms of X's and O's. Players love to play with him. He coached one of the more volatile players in the league, Gary Payton, for many years up in Seattle, so I don't think that is going to be a problem for George. George does like practice, he does like players to practice, and I wouldn't be surprised that every coach feels the same way, because that is how you get better. I don’t know how much Allen practices or doesn't practice. And he's going to be a leader too. A team I played on in Washington many years ago had a guy that probably shouldn't have practiced because his knees were so bad in Wes Unseld. A couple of guys, if they saw Wes not practice, they wouldn't practice, so Wes would practice just to make sure that everyone else was practicing. If he didn't; we only had 11 guys on a team at that time, and one other guy didn't, then we couldn't practice because we would only have 9 guys. So it's important that your leader sets an example in practice. We'll see how that plays out. But if there's a coach in this league that is flexible enough and experienced enough to deal with a guy like Allen Iverson, it would be George.

Lakers.com: As an organization, how do we react to the Nuggets and the Knicks situation?
Mitch: We have no comment, it had nothing to do with us.

Lakers.com: In terms of our players, what do we to steer clear of that situation ever involving us?
Mitch: We talk to the players before the season starts, I address the group and before the playoffs start, I address the group. And that part is mandated by the NBA. Then we go through the rules and it's very clear. If you aren't on the court and then you step on to the court, it's an automatic suspension; the only people allowed on the court other than the 10 players are the coaches. They're reminded what the rules are and what an incident like that can do to their career. As a former player, there are certain things that take place and it happens so quickly, I am not so sure that you could ever eliminate a skirmish on the court, that's just the nature of competition and players in close contact with each other. But you would hope that it would be confined to the 2 players and it would be broken up quickly.

[Antonio_]

^ Good read.

[Stone Cold is Bout It, Bout It]

Barkley to join Albert courtside in Kerr's absence

ATLANTA -- Charles Barkley can critique Kobe Bryant's game all he wants Thursday night from an unfamiliar spot: courtside.


Barkley will take a week off from his usual role on TNT's studio show to join Marv Albert in calling the Los Angeles Lakers' game at Sacramento.


Barkley will be a courtside analyst for the first time in nearly five years and only the fourth time since he began working with the network. Albert requested the former NBA star because partner Steve Kerr had back spasms and was unavailable.


http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2719076

[LAKERS_FAN89]

Thu,
Jan 4  Lakers @ Sacramento 
7:30 pm (TV: KCAL, TNT) (Radio: KLAC-AM 570/KWKW-AM 1330) 

[LAKERS_FAN89]

L.A. people: Don't watch TNT tomorrow night Watch the game on KCAL all the way. Because of this:

ATLANTA -- Charles Barkley can critique Kobe Bryant's game all he wants Thursday night from an unfamiliar spot: courtside.

Barkley will take a week off from his usual role on TNT's studio show to join Marv Albert in calling the Los Angeles Lakers' game at Sacramento.

Barkley will be a courtside analyst for the first time in nearly five years and only the fourth time since he began working with the network. Albert requested the former NBA star because partner Steve Kerr had back spasms and was unavailable.

Bryant was bothered by Barkley's criticism after the Lakers' Game 7 loss to Phoenix in last season's playoffs. Bryant scored only one point and took just three shots in the second half. Barkley said Bryant was selfish for not trying to take greater control of the offense.

Bryant told Barkley he was angry in text message responses. They patched things up before Bryant appeared as a studio guest during TNT's coverage later in the postseason.


I still love the voices of Joel and Stu and not criticizing Kobe too much.

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

FUCK TNT...But also, FUCK K-CAL!...for their bullshit ass tape-delays.