The Lakers head out on the road for the first time this season and travel to one of their least favorite places to play - US Airways Center in Phoenix. It’ll be a tough test this early in the season.
“They’re expecting to win a championship… and they’re a team that really gets under our skin in terms of knocking us out of the playoffs the last two years,” Bryant said. “We’re going to go in there ready to play with a chip on our shoulder and see if we can’t do some damage.”
It’ll be the Suns home opener so expect the sellout crowd to be going berzerk and getting on Kobe at every opportunity. This along with Lamar Odom being sidelined would seem to spell doom for the Lakers, but Phoenix opened their season last night in a hard fought win over the Sonics and could be a little slow out of the blocks in the second night of a back-to-back.
You can get the game preview, scouting report, probable starters, game notes, injury report, and everything else you need to know for tonight’s game on the Lakers Gameday page.
Tip-Off is set for 7:30pm on KCAL/9 with the LTV pregame show starting at 7:00pm.
The referees for tonight’s game are E. Rush, P. Fraher, W. Kennedy
In The Media
With Bulls GM John Paxson saying that his team won’t be pursuing Kobe Bryant trade talks anymore, Phil Jackson was moved to asses the Lakers situation as “Maybe with our cake and eating it, too.”
Add Paxson to the list with Wizards GM Ernie Grunfeld and Mavs owner Mark Cuban of people that have said through the media that they have no interest in acquiring the services of #24 this season. Yahoo!’s Adrian Wojnarowski thinks the Lakers need to follow the Bulls lead and squash the rumors.
Kobe has been listening to the rumors in the media, but says the team has remained focused throughout because he’s been filling them in on the proceedings.
