Stay up to day with the latest news, updates, and press conferences from your Los Angeles Lakers.
The Lakers know the Utah Jazz better than perhaps any other team … but not as well as Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Ross Siler, who joined us on the phone to preview Saturday evening’s rematch between the two Western squads.
A former Lakers beat writer for the L.A. Daily News, Siler offered his perspective on this year’s group of Lakers, detailed the Carlos Boozer situation and went through the 101-77 Lakers victory on Wednesday that came as L.A. held the Jazz to just six fourth quarter points.
In 1957, the Cincinnati Royals selected a star basketball player named Rod Hundley out of the University of West Virginia, and promptly traded his rights to the Minneapolis Lakers.
Hundley, who played for the Lakers in Minneapolis and Los Angeles from 1957 until 1963, averaged 8.4 points per game, recorded over 1,400 assists and played in two All Star games.
Known as “Hot Rod,” Hundley boasts a career as long as it’s been outstanding as a basketball analyst, working not only with Chick Hearn in Los Angeles but most notably serving as the voice of the Jazz (both in New Orleans and Utah) since 1974.
Hundley retired after last season, but is happy to be filling in for Stu Lantz for the next six Lakers games, starting Friday night against Minnesota.
We spoke to Hundley a few hours prior to the game to discuss his time with Hearn, his present-day pairing with Joel Meyers, some memories of his favorite city (L.A., of course) and his thoughts about Kobe Bryant, who to him is without question the NBA’s best player.
Over on Yahoo.com’s popular “Ball Don’t Lie” blog, basketball scribe Kelly Dwyer has been dissecting the NBA for years, and boasts a particularly well-developed understanding of how the Lakers play the game.*
*Triangles are his favorite shape.
We dialed Dwyer from his Indiana home to try and find flaws in a long, loaded squad (not easy), to discuss the all-time merits of Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson (easy), to chat about what’s likely the best frontcourt since the 1986 Celtics (look it up) and to opine on why Pau Gasol might be the league’s best power forward (yup).
Following Friday’s practice, Phil Jackson spoke to assembled media members about L.A.’s coming matchup with the Golden State Warriors, set for 7:30 p.m. in Oakland.
“There is a style they play, they’re going to play it whether it’s the preseason or the regular season,” he said of the team L.A. saw an inordinate number of times in the preseason. “The style is difficult to adjust to in the course of a season. You have to make adjustments and pick up people on the fly. Transition defense becomes ultimately important.”
Jackson made particular note of guard Monta Ellis, who’s averaging 23.4 points per game (seven spots behind league-leader Kobe Bryant) and talked about the importance of getting the ball in the paint against Golden State, even though the Warriors make that difficult to do.
Here’s the audio:
Prior to L.A.’s final preseason game at the San Diego Sports Arena, I was having a chat with longtime Lakers PA announcer Lawrence Tanter (he of the golden voice).
LT quickly brought up a memory of Magic Johnson’s first game right here in this arena back in 1979, and we turned on the audio recorder as Tanter reflected.
You can listen by clicking below:
Prior to L.A.’s final game of the Las Vegas Summer League, we sat down with assistant coach/advance scout Rasheed Hazzard, who was charged with implementing the triangle offense and coaching up L.A.’s roster along with SL head coach Chucky Brown.
Hazzard detailed Adam Morrison’s week as the primary offensive option and looked ahead to his possible impact on the 2009-10 regular season, evaluated second round draft pick Chinemelu Elonu and went through the rest of L.A.’s Vegas crew.
You can listen by clicking below:
We sat down with Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak on Thursday afternoon primarily to discuss the signing of Shannon Brown, and also to touch on the Ron Artest deal … plus the team’s continued hope to retain the services of Lamar Odom.
Clearly, Kupchak is still pretty busy.
He detailed what the Lakers like about Brown’s game, explained why the 23-year-old was acquired in the first place, and opined on why signing Artest put the team in a better position to ink Brown and Odom. Kupchak also said that while L.A. would like to expedite the Lamar talks, the organization has “way too much” respect for the versatile swingman to rush the process: “We’re hopeful that a day goes by, two days or maybe the weekend and we’ll have more clarity,” he concluded.
You can listen to the audio (9:53) by clicking below:
When you watch “Forrest Gump,” it takes just a few seconds to realize that Tom Hanks can do a bit of acting.
Observe President Obama give a speech, tune in to see Albert Pujos hit a baseball or listen to Jay-Z perform one of his songs, and your conclusion makes itself in a flash.
That’s about how long it takes to notice that Shannon Brown is some kind of a freakish athlete, and upon further consideration, literally one of the world’s best.
Surely if you observe the raw, explosive nature of Brown’s body movements going up and down the basketball floor, it’s easy to imagine an extensive weight lifting and training program that’s been followed for years and maximized in the NBA. After all, this is the guy you saw raise up to destroy a Mario West layup attempt in February and climb over the outstretched arms of Chris Andersen for a hammer dunk in the Western Conference Finals.
His 44.5-inch vertical - measured prior to his rookie season at the Lakers’ predraft camp - was in part of gift of genetics, but it would be assumed that Brown’s well-muscled arms didn’t just appear from nowhere. We assume he lifts some serious weights. Right?
Not really.
In fact, late in the season, Brown explained to us that while he did do some lifting in high school and at Michigan State, he has basically stayed away from weight training since entering the NBA.
Huh?
“Whatever Shannon accomplishes or doesn’t accomplish in the NBA is not going to be for lack of athleticism, and the risks involved with trying to be too clever with him would be ridiculous,” explained Lakers Director of Athletic Performance, Chip Schaefer. “We’re very open ended and we like to listen to the athletes, so when Shannon came … I had no problem with him sticking to (his program).”
Schaefer, who’s in charge of the team’s strength and conditioning, instead worked to supplement Brown’s routine with some fine tuning. Accordingly, to get a better understanding of why Brown sticks mostly to push ups and does little to nothing with his legs, we sat down with Schaefer for a podcast:
For a perspective that only a father could have, we dialed up Shannon Brown’s dad Chris to talk about his son’s journey from Maywood, Illinois to the NBA Championship, including a nugget about Shannon breaking the glass after a freshman-year-of-high-school dunk.
We sat down with Mitch Kupchak - in the middle of his ongoing draft meetings with assembled scouts at L.A.’s practice facility - to touch base on the June 25 draft, the Lakers’ free agency situation and the luxury tax.
While summing up L.A.’s roster situation, Kupchak explained why this year’s draft is unique:
“It’s a little dicey because we have three free agents (Lamar Odom, Trevor Ariza and Shannon Brown), and I don’t anticipate carrying more than 13 players next year. So if we’re lucky enough to resign (those players), we’d have 13 assuming we exercise options for D.J. Mbenga and Josh Powell. Right now we’re assuming (Mbenga and Powell) are on our team next year. It would be something unusual where we wouldn’t exercise their options, we think they’re both valued players. If that’s the case, we’re at 13, and I don’t anticipate we’d go above 13.
Essentially, unless one of those free agents isn’t resigned, it’s not likely L.A. will look to fill out its 2009-10 roster through the draft.
“The best solution may be to look for a player that would stay in Europe or in Asia, or maybe exchange picks when you may have more roster space,” said Kupchak.
To listen to the podcast, click below.
FROM LAKERS.com
