“Lob Angeles”: Highlight Reel Fun or Serious Threat

You see them regularly on the Sportscenter Top 10 and hear about them constantly on your Facebook and Twitter feeds, but questions still remain regarding that other Los Angeles basketball team. Although spectacularly exciting and normally highly competitive, the public wants to know if they can count on the Clippers to do real damage after the regular season ends in April.

The Clips have not only been the redheaded stepchild of Los Angeles basketball throughout the years, but also a league-wide joke for decades. Poor decisions like the drafting of Danny Manning and Michael Olowokandi have haunted the organization. Glimpses of hope like the times when Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson ran the floor together have come and gone quickly.

The turning point for this organization might have come on December 14^th though. That day may end up being a memorable event for a franchise that previously would have rather had a memory erasing device like Tommy Lee Jones' in “Men in Black” than a team almanac.

That day, all-star point guard Chris Paul was traded to the team in exchange for several pieces. The teaming of Paul, arguably the best facilitator in the NBA, with rising star and reigning Rookie of the Year Blake Griffin, spelled change for a franchise in need of improvement.

Now, the Clippers are trying to cast themselves as a team to fear in the league, and they are doing a fairly good job. They currently sit atop the Pacific Division with a 12-6 record and have proved to be a reputable team. If you take into consideration that they haven't even sniffed the top two spots of the division since the 2005-2006 season, this is a huge accomplishment.

They have earned valuable wins over several “powerful” teams such as Miami, Dallas, Denver, and Portland, and even beat their L.A. tormentors. They also have a knack for scoring, with five players averaging double-digits a night. In addition, they have proven that they can win at home with a 10-2 record, all the while taking the league by storm on a nightly basis with electrifying highlights.

Although their leading scorer and rebounder is one of the youngest guys on the team at a ripe age of 22 and only in his third season, they do have the benefit of some experience. That experience includes two NBA Champions, Chauncey Billups and Caron Butler, and a few visits to the postseason by Chris Paul and Mo Williams. This veteran leadership should bode well when they reach the promised land of May and June basketball.

On the flip side, there are some red flags.

Great teams win on the road, and the Clippers haven't fared well away from the Staples Center. Currently, they hold a 2-4 road record including blowout losses of 25 at San Antonio and 29 at Utah.

Another critical weakness is their free throw shooting. They are horrendous from the charity stripe at 66%, the second worst team percentage in the league. Griffin is mostly to blame for the inadequacy, shooting a Shaq-like 50.8% on 7.4 free throws a game. Free throw shooting becomes crucial in big games, and this will have to improve for them to be a factor late in the season.

One thing that is peculiar is the resemblance between this new-school Clippers team and the Phoenix Suns of the mid-2000's.

The similarities are striking.

An expert pass-first point guard with a knack for scoring, teamed with a rising star who has freakish athleticism. The Steve Nash-Amare Stoudemire partnership was a deadly one for years that included a lot of wins and some amazing highlight clips.

One thing it did not include was a ring.

Ironically, Amare was in his third season with the Suns and was 22 years old during the 2004-2005 campaign when the Suns finally took off. They had their first 60-win season and made their first of two trips to the Western Conference Finals that year.

Eventually, they fell to more methodical teams. The Spurs took them out and went on to win the title in 2005, and the Mavericks took them out before falling to the Heat in 2006. They continued to knock at the door in the ensuing years, but would never get back to the conference finals. Eventually, the pieces began to fall and they gave up on that regime.

The Clippers hope to differentiate themselves from those Suns teams, and a growing base of support for “Lob City” is rooting them on. Only time will tell if they have what it takes to be a serious contender, and not just a group of entertaining stars.

A clue of future success or failure might be in their upcoming travels, with seven of their next eight games coming on the road. It can start with a vengeful statement to the Utah Jazz, who gave them their worst loss of the season merely two weeks ago in Salt Lake City.

Cast of Oddballs Helps Form World Series Winners

Once or twice every year, my mother makes a dish called “Under the Bridge”.

It’s a family tradition that was passed down from her grandmother, an impoverished lady from Eugene, Oregon who had many mouths to feed and little resources to do it with. It got its name in a simple manner, you grab anything under the bridge, and mix it all together in a pan.

“Under the Bridge” takes many basic things like eggs, onions, milk, potatoes, and even old dry bread, but comes together to form something that is much better than its parts alone.

In a way, the 2010 San Francisco Giants remind me of this dish. Yes, they have the eggs benedict of pitching staffs in Tim Lincecum and company, and a sensational rookie in Buster Posey. But those pieces alone can’t win a World Series, and if you ask them they will tell you they couldn’t have done it without other special ingredients.

These special pieces were players who had been acquired in the past two years. They were guys who were thought to be “washed up”. They were guys who were thought of as the “wrong fit” for other organizations. They were guys who were considered “not ready” for the big leagues. But much like my mother’s dish, when brought together in the right situation, they made up a pretty stellar bunch.

Sometimes, it doesn’t take the big free agency splash or the extravagant midseason trade to win a World Series. The Texas Rangers hoped that Cliff Lee would be the missing piece as C.C. Sabathia proved to be for the New York Yankees last year, and boy were they close.

The Giants used a different formula. They thought a bunch of veteran guys, some who had been there before, and some who had never been close, along with some younger players, might form the right concoction to do it.

They picked up veteran guys who other teams had slept on like Edgar Renteria and Aubrey Huff.

Renteria, the World Series MVP, was thought to be on the downside of his career when the Giants signed him after the 2008 season. He even had a rough time making it through an injury-plagued season in which he only played 72 games and had three stints on the disabled list. But when the World Series came around, he slammed two huge homers including the series-clinching one in Texas, and totaled six RBI’s.

Huff contemplated retirement after the 2009 season because no one had offered him a job. The Giants decided to give him an opportunity, and he provided for them big time throughout the season and in the playoffs. Huff crushed a ball into the right field bleachers in the third inning of the decisive Game 4 that sent them on their way to a 3-1 lead in the series. 

Instead of reaching for the front page names during midseason, they grabbed guys like Cody Ross and Pat Burrell.

Ross began the season with the Florida Marlins, but was waived in August when they came to the conclusion that he was not in their long-term plans. The Giants grabbed him originally to keep him from going to the San Diego Padres, not knowing the postseason implications. Ross ended up knocking in five home runs and ten RBI’s throughout the playoffs and was the team’s best power hitter throughout.

Burrell was released by the Tampa Bay Rays only 24 games into this season with a measly .202 batting average and was called an “ever present cloud in a clubhouse full of sunshine” by one Tampa Bay newspaper. He ended up providing some monster hits for the Giants late in the season, and helped the Giants out with 4 RBI’s and 5 runs throughout the playoffs.

Andres Torres and Madison Bumgarner also got a shot, and proved they were well deserving. Bumgarner, after being sent down to Triple-A Fresno for the start of the season because he couldn’t get his fastball to crack 90 mph, went 2-0 in the playoffs and pitched a shutout 8-inning gem in Game 4. Andres Torres played 12 years in the minors and got his first chance this year at the age of 32, crossed home six times during the playoffs and knocked in 3 RBI’s.

Many a baseball analyst and fan said that the Giants didn’t have the right pieces to win this season. They said the Giants didn’t have enough bats; that they lacked a power hitter to send it into the seats. The moves they made were nice, but wouldn’t be enough to overcome the Padres, then the Phillies, then the Yankees or Rangers.

Well sometimes, just like my mom’s “Under the Bridge” dish, it only takes the combination of certain items to form something special. The 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants proved this.

Kobe's Plot to Overtake MJ Unraveled by Lebron's Decision

BY Michael Selling

Every one of the all-time greats had something to say about the “Decision” that Lebron James made over the summer to form a super trio in South Beach.

They all seemed to echo the same chorus. They acted like a group of bank robbers who needed to get their stories straight before being interrogated by the feds. They questioned it, and said that they never would have made the ultimate sacrifice like Lebron did because their competitive spirits wouldn’t allow them to.

First Michael Jordan said, “There’s no way in hindsight I would have called up Larry and Magic and say, 'Hey let’s get together and play on one team'. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys, I don’t know if they would have been on my team.”

A little while later Magic jumped on the bashing bandwagon saying, “We didn’t think about it cause that’s not what we were about.”

Then, and who didn’t expect this to happen, Sir Charles stepped in to give his two cents. Barkley’s comments were loud and brash, obviously aimed at standing out of the bunch. He repeated what Jordan said about not wanting to play with his competitors, called Lebron’s “Decision” special a “punk move”, and said “I think he should have stayed in Cleveland, him joining Dwayne Wade’s team was disappointing to me.”

All of these comments lead one to believe that the legends of this game might have something to fear. That something is the Miami Heat.

But in all actuality, if anyone is secretly delighted with Lebron’s decision, it should be Michael Jordan. Rather than taking shots at LBJ, he should take him out to dinner.

No, it isn’t because he decided not to go to Chicago to try and steal MJ’s glory and deface the statue that sits out front of the United Center. It’s not because he changed his number from MJ’s number 23 to his own  number six. And it’s definitely not because Lebron and company are going to get more than six rings.

The reason is simple, and it is clear to see in Jordan’s comments and his ultimate desire to be the best. Jordan left the game on top, widely considered the best basketball player ever with six championships and five MVP awards. Jordan could not be bested during his career, not by anyone. But leaving the best didn’t mean he would remain the best, and just as he had done to the greats before him, his legacy would be threatened by someone else.

That someone is not Lebron James. Lebron blew that by not winning in Cleveland. Lebron blew that when he bowed out to Dwight Howard and Orlando in the 2009 NBA playoffs. That staggering loss sent the “King” into a weakening relationship with the Cleveland Cavaliers, the only team that he had the opportunity to surpass MJ with.

The real threat to MJ’s legacy is Kobe Bryant.

Kobe is the Scar to Jordan‘s Mufasa. Kobe was a young, fresh-faced teenager who looked up to Jordan and was overcome by jealousy at Jordan’s reign. He secretly dreamed that one day he could own the kingdom of the NBA, and that dream is on the brink of becoming a reality.

Kobe is only one championship away from tying MJ’s six, and getting more than one is not outside of the realm of possibility. He is only 6,503 points away from overtaking Jordan in scoring, which he could do by scoring a measly 1,083 points per season for six more seasons, something he has done every season except two. He stands at eight All-Defensive First Team awards, only one shy of Jordan’s nine. In many respects, Kobe seems to be in sniffing distance of Jordan’s greatness.

But Lebron’s “Decision” might have played a huge factor in preserving Jordan’s legacy, for now at least. In a way, Lebron played the role of Simba. He entered the league, the year that MJ left, and seven years later, he might have done the only thing that could have possibly prevented Kobe from completing the treacherous plot that he so longed for.

As much as Kobe doesn’t want to acknowledge it, Lebron has dealt a devastating blow to his plan. The ring that was destined to be placed on Kobe’s other hand, the one that would finally allow him to be on the same level as “His Greatness”, will not be coming. This ring that means so much to two of the games best, will be shipped to a coast, but it won’t be the west coast.

Barring any unforeseen injuries to Miami’s Big Three, that ring will be headed to Miami. As much as people want to hate and say it won’t happen, it’s a sure thing. The venom spewed at Lebron this summer was just what he needed to fuel him, and teaming up with an NBA champion like Dwayne Wade, along with a stud big man like Chris Bosh, will ensure that.

At 32 years of age, Kobe knows that he only has a few years to get the job done before injuries and the grind of so many years in the league finally takes its toll. Lebron’s move might have been the one thing that could finally extinguish the fire burning inside Kobe to surpass Jordan.

Recently, Jordan made a perfunctory comment about Kobe, saying that he “is always going to be in the conversation of some of the greatest players who’ve played,” but when ranking where Kobe stands amongst guards, he said “I would say he’s got to be in the top 10.”

Kobe responded by making a similarly ingenuous comment that Jordan’s comment was an “accurate statement.”

“I’m definitely one of the top 10 guards. It could mean two, it could mean one, it could mean four or five.”

Honestly, it doesn’t take an expert to read between the lines on this one. This is a battle between two of the game’s greats for supremacy, for the right to call this game theirs. Jordan cannot control the outcome of Kobe’s career, and he knows that. He can try to join the discussion, but it won’t matter. The only thing that matters is what Kobe accomplishes by the time he decides to hang up his purple and gold Lakers jersey.

Until then, MJ can only hope that Lebron’s decision ultimately serves as protection for his legacy as the best ever.