The Lakers in all their glory continue to stun, defy, and excite. Led by a scintillating backcourt featuring Lou Williams, D’Angelo Russell, Jordan Clarkson and, at times, the assassin from USC, Nick Young, the latest version of The Lake Show has won some big games and is over .500 for the season.
The Lakers’ franchise shows how important it is to have a ferocious commitment to winning and experts running the show. Too many other franchises, in particular the 76ers and the Pelicans, continue to find ways to lose games. With them it’s hollow words like “trust the process” and “we’re building a solid base for the future”, or, as pathetically, “we have too many injuries”. With the Lakers it’s “we will find ways to win”. Of course the travesty that was Kobe’s final three seasons is something many Lakers’ fans want to forget but those teams made more than enough money while losing and that didn’t upset ownership even a little bit.
In other parts of the world, San Antonio beat Houston and the Warriors are winning. Hard to lose with that roster. The Clippers continue to impress but how long until Blake Griffin gets hurt or goes on a technical fouls spree? When will Chris Paul find yet another way to get hurt? Head coach Doc Rivers has made all kinds of money. How hungry is he?
Nice to see Joakim Noah begin to play well. The Knicks, led by the management neophyte who gets paid way too much Phil Jackson, haven’t impressed and have mostly depressed. Carmelo takes up a lot of cap space and is ancient. But that’s James Dolan’s problem and he has gotten what he asked for.
The Timberwolves have a few great players for fantasy purposes but can’t win. They destroyed the Lakers but that’s not very hard, especially at the end of a short road trip and after the Lakers had won the other games on that trip. Maybe their new coach who had success at Chicago will turn things around. He’ll be making a ton of money, wearing expensive suits, and missing no meals while we find out.
This piece was written by Jim Swigart. Jim has been seriously writing for at least eight years and previously wrote about music for a now defunct online magazine for about two years. Jim briefly blogged about sports for an online site and currently blogs weekly about sports on his own site.
His academic background is in business and math. He has done numerous work tasks besides writing. My interests include exercise, sports, music, and politics.
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