Yeah,every year they're worse and worse! New player and probably starthig-reserve PG is Javaris Crittenton!!! Kobe is sure pissed of but LA won't let him go. Remember they had J-Kidd,Bynum-Brown trade and they threw it away. Bynum is talented but sure he isn't superstar caliber.
Jackson is classless. I really believe he took that shot at Bynum in order to force the Lakers to trade him to Jermaine O'Neal. The rumor is that O'Neal would be a Laker right now if the Lakers didn't balk at Send Bynum to the Pacers in a package that included Lamar Odom.
The rumor is false. As bad as Bird has been, he wants nothing to do with Odom's contract. If the deal ever goes through, and I doubt it will (February is another issue), then it will be the Bynum + spare parts grouping. And I'd really like to hear what "shot" he took at Bynum. I'm a big Bynum fan, understand where I'm coming from, and I'm having a hard time understanding what Jackson said about Bynum that was either unfair or untrue or both.
PJ was a cranky old lady last season and sniped at several Lakers, including Bynum. These were the mind games. After starting the season off strong and playing pretty good defense, the Lakers disintegrated. Obviously injuries hurt them but the effort they showed was lacking, especially on D. This coincided with PJ nattering about individual players and some of them just got sick and tired of it. In particular, Bynum isn't the most mature guy out there and it shows. He is also very sensitive. He also gets down on himself when things don't go well. The last thing he needed was public mind games from his coach. If you just take PJ's latest comment and isolate them, it maybe doesn't seem like much. But in context, it's his latest snipe, he questions Bynum's value to the Lakers and is saying the Lakers should have traded him. I watched a bunch of Laker games last year (not nearly as many as you did I'm sure) and they did a tank job. If Kobe hadn't gone ballistic and carried the team on his back people would be talking about it more but Kobe's scoring became the issue more than the team. I know good and well their talent lacked, but PJ lost control of what went on and didn't get maximum effort from his players. He owes Kobe for hiding that. I know you have limited time to visit the forum during the season, but I've been calling PJ out since mid-season, when he started publicly calling the players out. Next season, I'll start and maintain a thread with PJ's public rantings if people here are interested.
I question Bynum's value to the Lakers. In fact, he comes across as a very whiney player to me. He is a decent prospect, but you don't pair him up with the best player in the NBA in his prime... then proceed to pass up on deals that would of improved the team dramatically. The whole Laker's organization is a mess, and despite Kobe's misgivings, I do feel bad for him in that position.
Come on, man. Look at that schedule. No team played anywhere close the amount of games at home than the Lakers did over the season's first seven weeks. They played 17 of their first 24 games at home, and were 16 and 8. From there, things fell apart mainly because the Lakers are not a team that should be winning 16 of every 24 games -- or anything close to that. I just don't know who Phil isn't getting "maximum effort" from. If anything, he isn't getting max effort from Kobe defensively, but that's a needed oversight mainly because Bryant has to score so much to keep this team afloat. Brown hurts the team on both ends, no coach is squeezing anything out of him. Odom is NOT good for this offense (as everyone assumed he would be; he's a penetrator, and can't work it out of the post), Luke is playing at max capacity, Cook and Vladi are the same players (check the stats), Parker was awful, and will continue to be awful (especially defensively). You're right about the defense, but again, I think that was more a function of a that schedule. The Lakers were 13th in defensive efficiency following the home run, but finished the season 25th. This team is NOT, on paper or in reality, a team that should even sniff the top half of overall defensive efficiency. And part of that game was skewed by a Bulls game that saw Chicago score 72 points in about 117 possessions. That alone will allow you to vault more than a few spots. Take away that game, and they're probably 16th or 17th. And that's STILL too high for a backcourt that gives a lick and a promise to D, plus Walton who can't guard anyone, plus Brown who can't guard anyone and puts his team in the penalty, plus Odom, plus Vladi, plus Cook ... need I go on? "But in context, it's his latest snipe, he questions Bynum's value to the Lakers and is saying the Lakers should have traded him." That's just too much. All he said was that Bynum had a ways to go before he could fulfill the expectations of a media that knows his name. If JVG had said this about Yao before 2003-04 or 2004-05, nobody would have blinked. Bynum has a ways to go to meet the unfair hype that has been placed on him by national columnists and guesswork traders.
I'm just having a hard time taking issue with these quotes: "You can't change a person's character," Jackson said. "You have to develop what's there. Andrew's shown us he wants to get better and that's an important part of it. Yao's dedicated to what he does and he does it his way. Andrew's got to do it his way. "There are times when I think Andrew is really motivated and there are times when I think he hasn't got the energy to do that. He's like a young colt. He just doesn't have enough energy to put into the game. "We're trying to get him to a place where he can maintain the kind of energy it takes to play this basketball game. He's worked on nutrition, his eating habits, his sleep pattern. Those are all things that have gone into it." Another (all I found in 12 pages going back on the BBS) ... "There's some things that we're pleased with what Andrew does, and there are a lot of things that we want him to improve on," Jackson said. "Until that improvement comes along, you have to wait and see. Initiative is one of the things. Correctable mistakes is another thing. Discipline is a third thing. "You've got guys in this league that are symbolic and emblematic of that kind of effort, like Tim Duncan and Yao Ming, guys that are centers that are ahead of you, that show great discipline. They go out on the court before games, they're working hard on their games, they're showing improvement year by year. They're at a point where they're correcting mistakes and getting better, even as they age in this league. You really have to push yourself as a player." That's two, in an 82-game season that stretches into the first round of the playoffs. No documentation of the pablum and usual "everything be aiight" cliches he meets the media with the other 98% percent of the time. And remember, right before Phil's second quote about Duncan and Ming, was the game where Bynum shot a corner three, and went back to the bench smirking and giggling as Phil sat there. What some never seem to get is that boasting the league's most talented player or two players does not always mean the league's most talented team follows behind. Jackson's teams won in '93, '98, 2000, 2002 were hardly the most talented teams in the NBA -- sometimes they were 3rd or 4th; and yet, he pulled in the ring. It just seems to me that personal dislike is clouding judgment here. I don't see how anyone could take issue with a coach that had to coach this roster: http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/LAL/2007.html ... playing as few healthy games as it did, and winning half its games. And I don't want to hear about how "having the most talented player alone should guarantee you X amount of wins." It never does. There are 65-70 other points to score, and a whole other team to stop. That's too easy, too simple.
