The road to the ring for Los Angeles will be anything but easy, they'll make sure of that themselves. The Lakers continued their winning ways taking a 2-0 series lead over the Utah Jazz but, as always, they had to flirt with disaster before hitting the showers. The first half saw Kobe Bryant deliberately playing the distributor role, which for a shooting guard he is more adept at doing than given credit for. The biggest problem seemed to be maintaining focus after building leads as much as twenty points. The Lakers had a typical defensive letdown at the end of the half, giving up too many easy buckets. The Jazz finished the second quarter strong with a 9-0 run lead by point guard extraordinaire Deron Williams who at times seemed as if he was the only Utah player with any semblance of heart…A place Kobe knows all to well from the Smush Parker/Kwame Brown era of a few seasons ago. D-Will may ball like a man possessed, but his hair looks straight out of one of those aerosol hair-in-a-can mops. I don’t mean to pick on the man but it just looks plain weird, almost like a Julius Ceasar-like helmet.
Andrew Bynum started strong but finished anything but, fumbling passes and looking to the zebras to bail him out rather than attacking the rim with purpose. There will be no quarter given Andrew…anything you get will have to be earned, so start going to the hole with the intention of inflicting damage. Young Bynum apparently hasn’t found a way to channel his inner anger yet…hard to do when Playboy bunnies on the shoulders are part of the rehab process. I have an idea Drew, imagine the Jazz are trying to add them to their harem and for you to keep them, you have to outplay the Jazz on the hardwood….Motivation enough kid?
Derek Fisher provided the type of veteran leadership needed to spark the team with key shots and numerous hustle plays, even ending up on his back after flying over the fans in the front row while diving for the ball. The body may not allow him to be the defensive player he once was but his effort can’t never be questioned. The man has the heart of a lion.
Lamar Odom, Trevor Ariza and Shannon Brown made the Lakers bench look nothing like the weak balsa wood it had been over the second half of the season. Everytime the Jazz had a little pep in their step and closed the lead to single digits, the Lakeshow had a response. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t the Showtime type win that Los Angeles fans enjoyed in the 80’s. It was a victory however and one step closer to the second round. One step closer to the ultimate goal, a championship. With the series on its way back to Salt Lake I expect a very different, more inspired Jazz squad and an especially raucous crowd. You can be sure they haven’t forgotten last season’s playoff loss to L.A.
The Lakers play with fire more often than a pyromaniac at the Zippo factory, constantly offering hope to teams that are down by what seem to be insurmountable leads. I can’t quite grasp what goes on in the mind of Phil Jackson. He watches the team he gets millions of dollars a year to instruct on the fundamentals of the game, yet sits idle when his players repeatedly commit cardinal sins on the court. It makes for exciting games and last second drama which plays to the whole Hollywood feel here in LaLaLand but drives me absolutely insane as a basketball fan.
In one of my favorite movies of all time, The Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman’s character Red utters a line that hope is a dangerous thing…I would wholeheartedly agree. Giving teams hope is the most dangerous thing you can do because they start to believe. They start to believe they can compete. They start to believe they can comeback. They start to believe they can win.
Hope is a dangerous thing Phil.
It’s your job to call time outs to quell comeback runs and break momentum. It’s your job to remind players that hope is exactly what you want to take from the opposition. Its your job to impress upon your players just how perilous it is to allow teams to believe. Opening the door and inviting disaster over and over again will eventually come back to haunt your team. Tonight that didn’t happen. Tonight L.A. held home court and walked away with a 10 point victory, but the Jazz will go back home with a new sense of confidence, a chip on their shoulder and more importantly…hope.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
MANNY BEING MANNY
Manny being Manny.
Those three words open up Pandora’s box in my feeble little mind.
I went from admiring his hitting ability in Cleveland, to loathing his very existence during his time in Boston (I’m a Yankees fan) to jumping on the Mannywood express after his trade to Los Angeles in the middle of last season.
As a long suffering Dodgers fan, it was impossible to not fall in love with Manny.
He literally took the city by storm, sending aftershocks through a city that doesn‘t flinch unless it registers at least 5 on the Richter scale. Manny single handedly turned the Dodgers into contenders overnight. He arrived in L.A. on July 31st 2008 as part of a three way trade between the Red Sox, Pittsburg Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The key players involved were Ramirez to the Dodgers , Jason Bay from the Pirates to Boston and Andy LaRoche and prospects from the Dodgers and Boston to Pittsburg. First Pau Gasol, then this....I love L.A.
I remember the hoopla well, my 21 year old nephew has been a Manny fanatic since his days in Cleveland. Four score and seven Christmas’s ago I went against my Yankee loving laurels and bought him a home white Manny Ramirez authentic #24 Red Sox jersey. No name on the back, just crispy white with red lettering. I have to admit, it was beautiful…even if it was a Boston Red Sox jersey. He moved to Colorado to attend college on a baseball scholarship about a year ago and called me all giddy when the trade went down. He may be a Manny fan, but he’s a Dodgers fan above all else so this was his version of a baseball wet dream, little did I know it would turn out to be mine too.
From the day he pulled the #99 Dodgers uniform, the City of Angels was infatuated. He kept our attention and allowed us to dream championship dreams that we hadn’t felt since the Kirk Gibson era. The next two months saw Manny put on the most incredible display of hitting that I’ve ever seen and in the process the Dodgers rose to the top of the National League West.
It was simply magical.
That’s saying a lot from a city that watched Magic Johnson ply his trade and become a legend. I got to see 5 Dodgers games in person during that time, all from the same field level seats behind the Dodgers dugout and the left field pavilion with a crystal clear view of Manny. The buzz in the air was electric. Every time he emerged from the dugout to take the field, he’d warm up with a game of catch with the batboy but judging from the reaction of the dreadlock wig sporting crowd you’d think he had the cure for cancer and they were all stricken. He hit like a man among boys, winning National League Player of the Month honors for August 2008 He went 44-for 106, hitting .415 with nine homeruns, 25 RBI, 21 runs scored and seven doubles. He would finish the season with the Dodgers with 17 HR’s, 53 RBI and a .396 batting average. Including his pre-trade stats with Boston, his stats for 2008 were 37 HR’s and 121 RBI’s. He would finish 4th in the NL MVP voting, but keep in mind, he only played two months in the NL. Though they fell short of a World Series, losing to the eventual champion Phillies in the NLCS. It was a great run by L.A. and the playoff starved fans knew the had witnessed something special.
The drama continued throughout his free agent off season with him holding out until the bitter end and eventually accepting L.A.’s original offer of $45 million over two years…but only because there were no other suitors willing to go that high, otherwise he’d have been long gone. A few days ago he came out and said he’d like to play for Cleveland again before retiring., this after the free agent soap opera and the new season barely underway. Fans in LaLa Land are dumbfounded.
Last night he hit two homeruns in the Dodgers 9-5 victory over the Colorado Rockies. Between homeruns he managed to collect an error in the box score on a routine fly ball by nonchalantly trotting over to snap it up…but dropped it instead. He seemed completely unfazed, almost entertained by his miscue.
His very next at bat he hit a towering flyball over the fence for his second homerun and calmly ran the base paths with a wry grin.
This guy knows drama better than Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears and TNT combined.
I don’t know whether to love him or hate him, but I can’t wait for the next episode of must see tv.
The burning questions enquiring minds in the Southland want to know are:
1. Will he lead the Dodgers to a World Series Championship before going back to Cleveland?
2. Will local notorious baseball groupie Alyssa Milano get a taste of Manny being Manny before the Dodgers season comes to a close.
Those three words open up Pandora’s box in my feeble little mind.
I went from admiring his hitting ability in Cleveland, to loathing his very existence during his time in Boston (I’m a Yankees fan) to jumping on the Mannywood express after his trade to Los Angeles in the middle of last season.
As a long suffering Dodgers fan, it was impossible to not fall in love with Manny.
He literally took the city by storm, sending aftershocks through a city that doesn‘t flinch unless it registers at least 5 on the Richter scale. Manny single handedly turned the Dodgers into contenders overnight. He arrived in L.A. on July 31st 2008 as part of a three way trade between the Red Sox, Pittsburg Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The key players involved were Ramirez to the Dodgers , Jason Bay from the Pirates to Boston and Andy LaRoche and prospects from the Dodgers and Boston to Pittsburg. First Pau Gasol, then this....I love L.A.
I remember the hoopla well, my 21 year old nephew has been a Manny fanatic since his days in Cleveland. Four score and seven Christmas’s ago I went against my Yankee loving laurels and bought him a home white Manny Ramirez authentic #24 Red Sox jersey. No name on the back, just crispy white with red lettering. I have to admit, it was beautiful…even if it was a Boston Red Sox jersey. He moved to Colorado to attend college on a baseball scholarship about a year ago and called me all giddy when the trade went down. He may be a Manny fan, but he’s a Dodgers fan above all else so this was his version of a baseball wet dream, little did I know it would turn out to be mine too.
From the day he pulled the #99 Dodgers uniform, the City of Angels was infatuated. He kept our attention and allowed us to dream championship dreams that we hadn’t felt since the Kirk Gibson era. The next two months saw Manny put on the most incredible display of hitting that I’ve ever seen and in the process the Dodgers rose to the top of the National League West.
It was simply magical.
That’s saying a lot from a city that watched Magic Johnson ply his trade and become a legend. I got to see 5 Dodgers games in person during that time, all from the same field level seats behind the Dodgers dugout and the left field pavilion with a crystal clear view of Manny. The buzz in the air was electric. Every time he emerged from the dugout to take the field, he’d warm up with a game of catch with the batboy but judging from the reaction of the dreadlock wig sporting crowd you’d think he had the cure for cancer and they were all stricken. He hit like a man among boys, winning National League Player of the Month honors for August 2008 He went 44-for 106, hitting .415 with nine homeruns, 25 RBI, 21 runs scored and seven doubles. He would finish the season with the Dodgers with 17 HR’s, 53 RBI and a .396 batting average. Including his pre-trade stats with Boston, his stats for 2008 were 37 HR’s and 121 RBI’s. He would finish 4th in the NL MVP voting, but keep in mind, he only played two months in the NL. Though they fell short of a World Series, losing to the eventual champion Phillies in the NLCS. It was a great run by L.A. and the playoff starved fans knew the had witnessed something special.
The drama continued throughout his free agent off season with him holding out until the bitter end and eventually accepting L.A.’s original offer of $45 million over two years…but only because there were no other suitors willing to go that high, otherwise he’d have been long gone. A few days ago he came out and said he’d like to play for Cleveland again before retiring., this after the free agent soap opera and the new season barely underway. Fans in LaLa Land are dumbfounded.
Last night he hit two homeruns in the Dodgers 9-5 victory over the Colorado Rockies. Between homeruns he managed to collect an error in the box score on a routine fly ball by nonchalantly trotting over to snap it up…but dropped it instead. He seemed completely unfazed, almost entertained by his miscue.
His very next at bat he hit a towering flyball over the fence for his second homerun and calmly ran the base paths with a wry grin.
This guy knows drama better than Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears and TNT combined.
I don’t know whether to love him or hate him, but I can’t wait for the next episode of must see tv.
The burning questions enquiring minds in the Southland want to know are:
1. Will he lead the Dodgers to a World Series Championship before going back to Cleveland?
2. Will local notorious baseball groupie Alyssa Milano get a taste of Manny being Manny before the Dodgers season comes to a close.
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About Me
- Robert Elkhorn
- Los Angeles native, Lakers loyalist. Basketball & baseball player, beach bum, snowboarder.