Have you picked up on this vibe? UCLA and USC reaching the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. It’s, like, the hot, non-conventional line of thinking in the final hours before the tourney begins. Bill Simmons of espn.com, perhaps the most-read internet sports writer in the country, has the Bruins and Trojans in the Final […]

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A silly and pointless post, but I got these odds e-mailed to me from a gambling site, and maybe they will be of mild interest to those of you filling out their NCAA brackets.

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My first entry on this blog was a recounting of being fired. Which I intended to be, oh, a look at one company’s methods of getting rid of a long-time employee in a time of crisis. I can’t say it was blog-as-catharsis because I don’t remember feeling any worse before or any better after. In […]

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This isn’t easy, but compiling a list isn’t as impossible as it would have been 10 years ago. Back in the 20th century, the greater Los Angeles market had seven, eight, nine full-service sports sections, each with its own panoply of beat writers. To have some sense of the best 10 individuals among what would […]

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Your sport isn’t acting sensibly if situations arise — every year — that make losing more appealing than winning. Again, it is happening in basketball. Both in the NBA and in NCAA Division I.

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I want to get this on the record before the Lakers tip off tonight in New Orleans. I have a bad feeling about the four-game road trip they’re beginning. They haven’t been very animated of late. Their defense has been porous. And they are playing four very good teams.

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“Ha!” you say. What does he know about this? He just got fired! Got me there. Actually, I believe I DO know something about this topic, after nearly 32 years in the business, 23 of them as a departmental manager — and at least three years watching the slow-moving train known as the Unemployment Local […]

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I’m not really a jogger. A jogger would be someone who moves along constantly at some pace clearly not a walk. I mix walking with jogging. Which makes it, what, slogging? Wogging? Jalking? But even though my jogger bona fides are substandard, by moving steadily through a neighborhood I face the same daily decisions real […]

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The month of March is critical for anyone involved in a baseball fantasy league. It’s during spring training that probable closers are identified, 3-4-5 starting pitchers decided on and batting orders are formulated. It’s also when lots of players show signs of impending weakness. And who among us hasn’t done his/her due diligence and gone […]

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OK, it’s mid-March and Andrew Bynum just walked — for the first time — on a treadmill designed to put only about 65 percent of his body weight on his joints. Ohh-kay. The Lakers better not be expecting him back this season. If he can’t walk unaided in mid-March, and the regular season ends in […]

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