Well, here we are. A city, a metropolitan center that had to be content (in terms of the Big Four professional sports leagues) with a couple of Stanley Cup championships over the previous decade. Now, L.A. finds out if its favorite two clubs can win titles in the same month. Los Angeles is overrun by […]

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Hey, no pressure, but … –The Lakers are one championship behind the Boston Celtics for the most NBA titles, 17. They could catch their green arch-rivals by winning The Bubble Finals in Florida. —LeBron James already has passed Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant in career scoring, has only Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in front […]

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I believe it is time to give the National Basketball Association full credit for pulling off something no one was quite sure would work: The NBA Bubble. Twenty-two teams, dispatched to the ESPN/Disney enclosed sports pod in Orlando, and left to figure out the bottom of the standings, and then stage the whole of the […]

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This is another entry in the “Back in the Day” series, where we look back at a sports event I wrote about for the newspaper. In this case, the nearly forgotten 2008 mid-season trade of Shaquille O’Neal from the Miami Heat to the Phoenix Suns. The idea in Phoenix was that Shaq would be the […]

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“Blasts from the Past” is the idea. On days when I feel like writing but don’t feel like doing much research, I am going to revisit topics from my 40 years in journalism. This will be one of those. It is my take, from January of 2008, on Kobe Bryant’s chances of winning his first […]

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I heard about Kobe Bryant while leaving church, around 11:15 a.m. today. “Killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas,” someone said. It took me a few seconds to process. “Kobe, dead? That can’t be right.” Pause. “A helicopter? That’s possible; how many celebrities have died in private planes and copters?” Pause. “Wow. Kobe dead.” At […]

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Two things I believe about sports autographs. 1) No one past the age of 12 should ever ask for one. Adults don’t ask for the signatures of other adults — unless they plan to sell them on for more money, which is vile, and another good reason why adults should not ask for autographs. And, […]

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I already feel sorry for Lonzo Ball. What we can reasonably expect from the Los Angeles Lakers’ 19-year-old NBA rookie bears no resemblance to what most fans and even many “experts” seem to expect from him. One of those self-professed experts is his father, LaVar, who does Lonzo no favors when he suggests — well, […]

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How hard must it be to be the top brass of the Los Angeles Lakers, at this moment? They have the No. 2 pick in the draft, but no first-round pick next year, and they have some hard decisions to make — with the very real possibility if they get things wrong, come Thursday, their […]

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Jerry Buss died on February 18, 2013. Two months later, the team he owned, the Los Angeles Lakers, completed a 45-37 regular season and qualified for the NBA playoffs for the 31st time in the 33 seasons played since Buss bought a controlling interest in the club, ahead of the 1979-80 season. Buss left his […]

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