RealClearSports: Old Lakers Play Like the Old Lakers

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

O, ye of little faith. Now what do you think of the Lakers? Too old? Too tired? How about too good?

There is nothing the sporting world does faster than jumping on bandwagons, unless it's jumping to conclusions. Lose a game, lose two games, and instead of talking about shots falling there's weeping and wailing about the sky falling.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: There's No Magic for Orlando

By Art Spander

So life returns to normal. The Lakers win another championship, the Magic kick themselves – or maybe an effigy of Mickey Mouse – and we settle down to a summer of contemplating exactly how good Kobe Bryant really is.

Oh, the Lakers haven’t yet won the NBA title? Indeed they have; only the league has yet to make the acknowledgement.

You heard all the comparisons, Hollywood vs. Disney World, not that there’s much difference between the two if you don’t count humidity and the traffic on Sunset Boulevard. In Hollywood, however, they always know how the script ends.

And watching Hollywood’s team, the Lakers, so do we.

Not a bad game Thursday night, the fourth of these very enticing finals. The home team (bad guys, if you’re some screenwriter who has Laker tickets) makes a little noise but, because it can’t make free three throws come apart when it should be coming together.

Long ago we learned pro basketball is a game of ebb and flow, and just because one team – the Magic, in this case – looks brilliant and the other can’t read a defense or seemingly a shot clock, it doesn’t mean that’s not going to change.

Trailing by 12 points at halftime, shooting 33 percent from the floor, the Lakers stepped out of their funk, stepped up the defense, made their usual key shots and beat the Magic, 99-91, in overtime.

Or did the Magic beat themselves?

“Free throws,’’ said Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy, the guy who hasn’t gone hungry – literally that is; figuratively, since he and the Magic have never been champions, they are candidates for food stamps.

“What did we shoot, 59 percent?’’ He knew. What we all knew was that when you get 37 foul shots and miss 15, you don’t deserve to win. When you have a five-point lead with fewer than 30 seconds remaining and get tied in regulation, you don’t deserve to win.

This wasn’t exactly a choke job by the Magic. Rather, it was comeback by the Lakers. Rather than a tightening of throats by Orlando, it was a tightening of the defense by Los Angeles.

They know a good story in Hollywood, and Derek Fisher definitely is one. He was with the Lakers when they won their three titles with Shaq and Kobe. Then, because of things like age and salary caps, he was let go, signing first with the Golden State Warriors, where he fit like an elephant would in a Mini Minor, and after that with the Utah Jazz.

His infant daughter was stricken with retinoblastoma, a cancerous tumor in her left eye, but Fisher kept coming back from the hospital to help the Jazz come back in the first two rounds of the ’07 playoffs. Then, released once again, he was re-signed by the Lakers where, as we noted, he released that rainbow 3-point jump shot.

The first, with 4.6 seconds left in regulation, tied the game, 87-87, Thursday night. The second, with 31.3 seconds in overtime, broke another tie. Explaining why he was open on both attempts, Fisher, who offered a very noticeable smile after the one in OT, told ABC-TV, “No. 24 gets a lot of attention.’’

That, of course, is the man of the hour, Kobe Bryant. And even though Kobe was only 11 of 31 on field goal attempts, he did score 32 points and have eight assists and seven rebounds. Without him, of course, the Lakers aren’t even close.

At intermission, however, some may have concluded they were close to a collapse. Yet even though L.A. was out of synch – “We got hamstrung; we played soft,’’ said Lakers coach Phil Jackson – you sensed Orlando didn’t believe in itself.

The Magic kept waiting for the Lakers to make their run, and with Trevor Ariza scoring 13 points in the third quarter after scoring no points in the first half, they made it.

The Lakers are the better team, the championship team, and the only question was when they would play like champions. The answer was not long in coming.

Kobe has been badgered about during this series by critics who no matter how much he does expect him to do more. There was a story that having been on the Olympic team last summer and then going straight into the NBA season, Kobe is worn out, and the weariness is showing. What’s showing is Bryant’s character. And courage.

We’ve watched great shooters over the years, Sam Jones, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan naturally and now LeBron James. It’s hard to say where Kobe ranks, but it’s not worse than second.

Weary, worn out, smacked around by Mickael Pietrus, hammered by Dwight Howard, Kobe still connects most of the time when he gets free and some of the time when guys are hanging on his arms.

He wanted a championship. He’s got a championship. He and the Lakers. Like Magic.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009. 

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http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/06/theres_no_magic_for_orlando.html
© RealClearSports 2009 

Magic, Serena are in and Cavs are way out

The Magic is in, and the Cavs are way out. Serena is in, meaning her usual controversy as well as the fourth round of the French Open. And Venus is out. Interesting enough weekend for you?

The Lakers had to love it. Without Phil Jackson voicing a single complaint, they now have the home-court advantage for the NBA finals.

ABC-TV has to rue it. Kobe vs. LeBron is simply another failed dream.

Tennis has to appreciate it. Serena Williams is what America finds irresistible, an unending drama, the true reality show.

LeBron James is a great basketball player. If he weren’t, the Cavaliers would have been swept by the Orlando Magic, instead of losing the Eastern Conference finals in six games.

What Nike’s going to do now with that commercial of Muppet-like characters representing a dueling LeBron and Kobe is anyone’s guess. What Cleveland’s going to do now that its team, which had the best record of the regular season, laid a dinosaur-sized egg is everyone’s guess.

LeBron leaves for the Knicks when his contract is up in another year. You want to hang around a team that isn’t a team, but just one magnificent player who virtually by himself could win two games in the playoffs but found it impossible to win four?

Venus Williams played, well, about as poorly as the Cavs, losing on Friday to someone you’ve never heard of, Agnes Szavay, 6-0, 6-4. Yes the multiple Grand Slam winner, the No. 3 seed, got bageled, which is what some of the tennis folk call a shutout. Only the 14th time in 662 matches Venus was blanked in a set.

But Serena wasn’t to put up with that nonsense. She not only rumbled back from her usual slow start on Saturday, over there on the clay in Paris, to beat Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 (don’t they have a limit of three names in tennis?), Serena accused Martinez Sanchez of cheating.

Now, there’s a lady you have to like. Enough of this etiquette stuff.

In the first set, Serena smashed a ball at Sanchez, and most people, including Williams but not her opponent, thought the ball never touched Sanchez’s racket but instead banged off her right arm and dropped on Williams side of the net.

Sanchez won the point, even though the rules dictate that if the ball hit her body, the point belonged to Serena.

Serena first apologized for driving the ball at Sanchez, the normal procedure, but then added about the apparent cheating, “I’m going to get you in the locker room for that. You don’t know me.’’

The rest of us do. Serena has the toughness needed to be a champion, the toughness the Cavaliers only wish they had.

The Orlando Magic aren’t a lot of frauds, not with people such as Dwight Howard or Rashard Lewis. But neither are they supposed to be facing the Lakers.

The script was LeBron against Kobe, this year’s MVP against last year’s MVP. Nice try.

Some of the people out there, the reasonable thinkers, had the smarts to point out that teams with one superstar never win championships, that Michael had Scottie, that Kobe had Shaq. LeBron’s cast didn’t provide that balance.

Amazing didn’t happen in Cleveland. Orlando happened in Cleveland. And to Cleveland. Orlando, in truth, was relentless. If it wasn’t for LeBron’s ridiculous shot with no time on the clock in game two, the Magic would have taken four straight games.

The Lakers will not take four straight from Orlando, but they will win another title. After its inability to show anything resembling Serena Williams’ gutsy style in the first few games against the Nuggets, L.A. came through with a vengeance to take the conference title.

You have to believe that the Lakers finally have figured out what is required. And, even with their sometimes listless play against Houston and then Denver, the Lakers did end up winners, which is all that matters.

Kobe seems particularly focused. He’s the man now. Considerable help from Pau Gasol and Trevor Ariza, but Kobe Bryant controls the game. He doesn’t need to share the basketball and for certain he won’t have to share attention.

No LeBron. But a very enticing NBA final. And should Serena continue another few matches, the final of the French Open could be just as enticing.

RealClearSports: Ignore 'Who's Better' Debates and Enjoy NBA Playoffs

By Art Spander

Another one of those unwinnable arguments. Another incessant and illogical need to compare. Another question that can’t be answered but has some people lined up determined to try.

Is LeBron better than Kobe?

Then again, is Kobe better than Michael? Or Michael better than Magic or Larry? Or, even though he played a different game in a different era, is Bill Russell, on the strength of his championships, better than anyone?

I’m going to appreciate every one of them. They were special, they are special. And just because ESPN or some other publication asks for a vote on who’s No. 1, we don’t have to be lulled into the trap and provide a response.

Now, if you ask if LeBron James was fantastic Thursday night, that’s different. Or if Kobe has been fantastic game after game. Or if Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony have shown they are among the elite, well, there’s no argument.

Basketball is the ultimate team game, so we dare not forget the other characters in the dramas, Pau Gasol, Chauncey Billups, Mo Williams, people far more than role players.

We’re getting everything we could wish, a postseason that – and yes, I’m breaking my own rule of rejecting comparisons – could be the best ever.

From the Bulls-Celtics series, that had it been the NBA finals and not simply a first-rounder still would have us talking and reflecting, the excitement has come sweeping at us in endless waves. What next?

Take it from someone, me, who has been there, someone who started watching the NBA when Jerry West, “The Logo,’’ was a rookie, 1960, it doesn’t get any better than it has been.

Even Magic-Bird. Even Rick Barry-Elvin Hayes. Even when in 1976 Gar Heard threw in that miracle for the Suns and forced the Celtics to go to triple overtime.

I was down on the NBA for a few years. The play didn’t meet the hype. The game was too programmed, too restricted, great athletes figuratively tethered by coaches who would rather have a wrestling match than a ballet.

But what’s out there now – what we’re witnessing, to expand on the theme of LeBron and the Cavaliers – is compelling theater, must-see theater. The wow factor has taken control. And isn’t that what counts?

If you’re a Lakers fan, a Cavs fan, or a fan of the other two teams still playing as May heads into June, it’s results that matter. For the rest of us, it’s method.

To watch LeBron hit that 3-pointer with time running out in Game 2, to watch the Magic hold off the Cavs with Tiger Woods in the building, to watch Denver attempt the virtually impossible scheme of keeping Kobe Bryant from getting off his jumper, is what sport is all about.

We don’t need Charles Barkley or Kenny Smith to tell us how great these games and players have been. We know. And we’re enthralled. How do the Cavs blow a 22-point lead and still win by 10? How does LeBron keep on running and jumping, shooting and passing?

It’s all worked out perfectly for the two networks, ESPN and TNT, one evening Lakers-Nuggets, the next Cavs-Magic, guaranteed excitement every 24 hours.

It’s all worked out perfectly for us, the sporting public who can’t wait for the next tipoff.

In his famed dictionary of 1755, Samuel Johnson, the Englishman, called sport “tumultuous merriment.’’ A brilliant definition, and surely the last few weeks the NBA playoffs have left us tumultuously merry.

Technical fouls have been called and then rescinded. Mark Cuban, unfortunately, belittled Denver’s Kenyon Martin via e-mail. In L.A., Jack Nicholson, from his $2,500 seat, has cheered the Lakers but given the high sign now and then to their opponents.

The NFL is No. 1 in America, a fact well recognized when this week Sports Illustrated put Tom Brady on its cover. And baseball has history on its side, carrying back to the 19th century. But basketball has found its place, on the tube, in our hearts.

If the play has been a trifle erratic, if it’s hard to figure why the Lakers look so good at home and so bewildering away, that’s only contributed to the excitement. Teams coming unglued. Teams coming back.

We were promised entertainment, and the playoffs have lived up to the promise. Is LeBron better than Kobe? Who cares, as long as they and Carmelo and Dwight are making us gasp and hope these games never end.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.   

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http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/05/hoping_playoffs_dont_end.html
© RealClearSports 2009

RealClearSports: A Collision, Not a Dance

By Art Spander

The game is portrayed as one of elegance and grace, ballet in Nikes. In truth, pro basketball is a contact sport, with huge men crashing into each other, shoving and pushing. They’d just as soon knock down an opponent as they would knock down a jumper.

We weren’t sure what to expect when the Lakers met the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night. Other than there would be a lot of fouls. Oh, and that the Nuggets would try to intimidate a Laker team that had everyone bewildered. Including the Lakers themselves.

A few weeks ago, in our usual rush to judgment, and with our monumental impatience, the NBA finalists had been decided, at least by people who have nothing better to do than express opinions.

It would be the Cleveland Cavaliers against the Lakers. It would be LeBron James against Kobe Bryant. It still might be, although we are less sure. And to hear Kobe talk after the Lakers staggered past the Nuggets, 105-103, in the opener of the Western Conference finals, maybe the Lakers also were less sure.

Although the win, which seemingly halted the problems and the doubts created when the Lakers at times lacked direction and maybe lacked a little heart, probably changed everything.

Had the Nuggets been up 1-0 after a game on the Lakers’ home floor, they would be in control. Jack Nicholson and the other swells in the $2,500 courtside seats would be distraught. But it’s the Lakers up 1-0, winning a game of floor burns and bruised bodies, if not of bruised egos.

“They outplayed us,” said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, “and we won the game.”

Unlike a couple of those miserable performances against the Houston Rockets in the last series, when the Lakers needed the entire seven games to beat a team without its two main men, Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming.

The Lakers won because they have Kobe Bryant, who scored 40 points, 18 in the fourth quarter. And because they have Trevor Ariza, who in the closing seconds made a steal that showed anticipation as well as agility.

They won despite Carmelo Anthony, who scored 39 for the Nuggets.

This is what you expect from the big ones, your best players at their best. And so it was with Kobe and Carmelo. One would score. Then the other. Bryant courageously tried to stop Anthony on defense.

“He’s a bull,” Bryant would say in interviews carried on ESPNEWS.

A few days ago, after they had beaten the Rockets by 40 at home, the Lakers lost to the Rockets by 15 on the road. The probable matchup against the Cavs and LeBron seemed as far away as Mars. The sharp knives were out, wielded by critics who justifiably thought the Lakers caved in.

Even Kobe on Tuesday night felt compelled to use the word “capitulated,” indicating he was no less disgusted than the rest of us.

There was no capitulation against the Nuggets, who, while a lesser team than the Lakers, have the paranoia necessary to want to succeed. Denver is out to show something. The Lakers, on the other hand, are mostly worried about showtime.

The Lakers are more than L.A.’s team, they are L.A.’s focus. There’s no pro football franchise, if you don’t count USC, albeit many people do. There are only the Dodgers, Manny-less at the moment but still winning, and the Lakers, a team of stars and of the Hollywood stars. Along with Nicholson, Denzel Washington, Drew Barrymore and Justin Timberlake were in attendance.

Every time the Lakers are on the court, especially postseason, it’s less an athletic contest than a production number. You think the reviews were tough for “Angels & Demons,” check them out after the Lakers have a bad night. The water cooler talk about Tom Hanks is no less catty than it is about Kobe or Pau Gasol.

Kobe is The Man. As opposed to The Manny. Bryant had his own troubles six years ago, but those are a distant memory. Now Kobe is an MVP. Now Kobe is a savior.

“I could score 35 a night if I want, but that’s not something I’m concerned with,” he said without bragging. “I want to win a championship. Tonight, it was something we needed, but that’s not my goal.”

Jackson, the Lakers coach, agreed. “We had very little else going for us besides Kobe,” he insisted. “And at the end when we needed a basket he muscled his way through.”

In pro basketball, you get physical or you get beat.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.

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http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/05/lakers-nuggets-collision-not-dance.html
© RealClearSports 2009