Posts Tagged ‘Lakers’

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The Physicality of Kendrick Perkins

May 26, 2012  ·  9:44AM





HANG TIME WEST – There is nothing hidden about Kendrick Perkins. He was a first-round draft pick. He won a championship with the Celtics. His 2011 acquisition was widely viewed as one of the final moves to the Thunder becoming title contenders.

But Perkins plays on the same team with a pair of stars who dominate the spotlight, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, and James Harden is on a path to a similar level. Perkins isn’t even the most acclaimed of the Oklahoma City big men – power forward Serge Ibaka led the league in blocks despite playing  just 27.2 minutes a game and finished second to Tyson Chandler of the Knicks for Defensive Player of the Year. There is a certain anonymity to the Thunder’s starting center.

Not to Mike Brown, though. The Lakers coach exited the playoffs with nothing short of raves after Perkins and the Thunder finished off Los Angeles on Monday to advance to the Western Conference against the Spurs, opening Sunday in San Antonio.

“One of the things, in my opinion, that kind of goes unnoticed is they get a toughness, a physicalityness, from having Kendrick Perkins,” Brown said. “You do look at a Westbrook and you do look at Durant and Ibaka’s ability to block shots and Harden coming off the bench. But to me, this is a completely different team if you take Perk out of the equation.

“He’s almost like the heart and soul, and he does a great job of bringing it for as long as he’s on the floor, especially down the stretch. They feed off of that. That’s what makes them, in my opinion, a playoff team.”

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Kupchak: Lakers Will Pursue Trades

May 23, 2012  ·  9:33PM





EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – General manager Mitch Kupchak, signaling his agreement that the Lakers need significant changes after a decisive loss in the Western Conference semifinals for the second time in as many years, said Wednesday the front office will pursue trades more aggressively than in past years.

“Why not?” he said. “Sure. We went through it last year. Other than at the trade deadline, we didn’t do anything last year. But when you lose before you think you should have lost, you have to open up all opportunities.”

Speaking at his annual post-season press conference at team headquarters following two days of exit interviews with players, Kupchak made no attempt to gloss over the fact that the Lakers need to make adjustments and that being one of the better teams in the league is not acceptable.

“There’ll be some change,” he said less than two full days after the season ended with a 4-1 loss to the Thunder, nearly one year after being swept by the Mavericks in the same second round. “We’ve got a group of players that are free agents. As you know, Ramon (Sessions) has an option in his contract that he signed with Cleveland. He can extend it a year or he can opt out. I have no idea what he’s going to do. That could be an additional free agent. There will be quite a bit of activity July 1, looking at who we can bring back and dealing with the marketplace.”

Other frank comments from Kupchak as the Lakers head into the offseason after the jump:

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Fisher Gains A Measure Of Revenge

May 23, 2012  ·  1:06AM





OKLAHOMA CITY – In the quiet of the near-empty Thunder locker room, as the last player to leave after the Monday victory that sent Oklahoma City to the Western Conference final, Derek Fisher passed on the chance to make noise. He would help beat the Lakers, but he would not bash them.

“It obviously feels good to advance and beat anybody we face,” he said.

Except that it wasn’t anybody this time. It was the team that dealt him at the trade deadline in a shock to Fisher and most around the Lakers. It was the organization that felt it needed to replace him for an upgrade at point guard and then needed to move him to clear a wide berth for Ramon Sessions to be the successor.

Surely this was not just another victory for a player who has known many.

“If I came here just to beat the Lakers, then maybe so,” Fisher said. “But the idea was to come here and have an opportunity to win a championship. That journey is still in front of us. We’ll keep working at it.”

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Lakers Have No One Else To Blame But Themselves For Latest Playoff Ouster

May 22, 2012  ·  10:14AM





HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – Before anyone else in Los Angeles points another finger at Pau Gasol, Mike Brown, Ramon Sessions or any of the other convenient scapegoats in the wake of a second straight second-round playoff exit, look in the mirror.

Stare long and hard and ask yourself if you didn’t see this coming. Didn’t you realize last season, when Andrew Bynum was heading to visitor’s locker room in Dallas without his jersey, that this team was fatally flawed and had no chance of overcoming its own internal obstacles?

Like an aging heavyweight champ who gets K.O.’d in his last bout and then comes back into the ring the next time without truly understanding what went wrong, the Lakers got popped against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals. This time, it came by believing in their ability to overcome any obstacle with sheer talent alone.

Avoiding the sweep this time around shouldn’t ease the sting for Lakers fans, either. They knew (better than most) what they saw from this group during last season’s semifinal flame-out against the Mavericks exposed the team’s flaws.

Why would anyone, Kobe Bryant included, be surprised at Gasol’s struggles against the Thunder when you saw him crumble against the Mavericks?

You replaced a living legend in Phil Jackson with a good coach in Brown, but if Jackson couldn’t get this team over the proverbial hump in his final season, why would anyone assume Brown would be capable of pulling it off now? And Sessions was supposed to be the anti-Derek Fisher — a younger, more athletically gifted point guard capable of matching up better against the league’s younger and more athletic guards. He proved to be just as ill-equipped to handle Russell Westbrook as Fisher would have been.

This is a mess of the Lakers’ own making, whether they admit it or not. They are the ones that tossed Jackson’s hand-picked successor, Brian Shaw, aside in favor of Brown. They saw the cracks in their foundation and opted for some instant sealant instead of legit fixes.

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Bryant: ‘We’re Going To Be There Again’

May 22, 2012  ·  2:11AM




OKLAHOMA CITY – A determined Kobe Bryant vowed early Tuesday that the window has not closed on his chances to win another championship with the Lakers, saying in the aftermath of a second consecutive second-round elimination that “Come hell or high water, we’re going to be there again.”

“It’s kind of unfamiliar territory,” Bryant said after midnight and after the Thunder beat the Lakers 106-90 on Monday night at Chesapeake Energy Arena and 4-1 in the series. “I’m really not used to it. It’s pretty odd for me. I’m not the most patient of people and the organization’s not extremely patient either. We want to win and win now. I’m sure we’ll figure it out. We always have and I’m sure we will again.”

Pressed about being a veteran team that had just been knocked out of the playoffs by the youthful Thunder, Bryant said: “I’m not fading into the shadows, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not going anywhere.”

“The entire team…” a reporter began the follow-up question.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Bryant interrupted. “It’s not one of those things where the Bulls beat the Pistons and the Pistons disappeared forever. I’m not going for that (stuff).”

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Thunder Again Crush Laker Hopes

May 20, 2012  ·  9:23AM





LOS ANGELES – The last time, Wednesday in Oklahoma City, was a shot right through the Lakers’ heart, an agonizing missed chance to win the game on the road and perhaps change the course of the entire series. This, though, was the legs.

It wasn’t just another Los Angeles loss Sunday night at Staples Center. It was stopping the momentum and cutting any comeback hopes out from under the Lakers. And it was the second fourth-quarter falter – the last three tries in the real sign of trouble for a veteran club with championship experience,  yet suddenly with a pattern of being unable to close out games.

The Lakers got outscored by the Thunder 32-20 in the final period while L.A. shot 31.8 percent and Oklahoma City was 66.7 percent from the field, with a critical bad pass by Pau Gasol tossed in as the underlining moment of offensive inefficiency that led to the visitors winning 103-100 to take a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.

“I wish I could sit up here and say how that happened,” Thunder coach Scott Brooks said. “But it just happened. Our guys really did a good job of fighting and not giving up and just making basketball-winning plays.”

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Quick Turnaround For Thunder, Lakers

May 19, 2012  ·  4:35PM





LOS ANGELES – The Lakers and Thunder, after playing 2 hours 43 minutes without overtime Friday night, return to Staples Center tonight for Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals and the rarity of a postseason back-to-back.

It is a particular challenge for the older Lakers at a time they need a win to avoid what would be a seemingly insurmountable 3-1 deficit as the series shifts back to Oklahoma City.

“It’s going to take a mental commitment on our part in order to fight through the fatigue we might feel (Saturday),” Pau Gasol said after the Lakers grinded out a victory in Game 3. “It’s going to be all will and desire and effort. Just pushing ourselves through everything and anything that we might be feeling or going on out there.”

The Lakers are playing on consecutive days in the playoffs for the first time since May 22-23, 1999, in the second round against the Spurs.

“It’ll be a little different,” Steve Blake said of a back-to-back in the regular season compared to the playoffs. “The intensity. A back-to-back during the regular season, sometimes the first quarter can be a little bit lull. But I don’t think it’ll be that way tomorrow night.”

Other topics heading into Game 4:

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Lakers Get the Win, and the Redemption

May 19, 2012  ·  3:17AM





LOS ANGELES – No, this was not sound offensive efficiency either, not while shooting 35.3 percent in the fourth quarter Friday. But two nights after the late collapse in Oklahoma City grounded them in self-inflicted wounds, the Lakers came home to Staples Center and won a game because they won the final period.

The Lakers did not commit a turnover the final 2:56, a key in the 12-6 closing run that produced the 99-96 victory and cut the Thunder lead in the best-of-seven series to 2-1. Game 4 is here Saturday night in a rare playoff back-to-back, before the series shifts back to Oklahoma City for Game 5 on Monday.

Just as importantly, the Lakers were 17 of 18 from the line in the fourth. Of course they were. They were nearly perfect the entire night, converting 41 of 42 free throws, and finished the game in appropriate fashion.

“We fouled too many times,” Thunder coach Scott Brooks said. “That’s the bottom line. Forty-two is a high number. It’s more than they average. A lot more than they average.”

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Best Big Man … Where’s Bynum?

May 18, 2012  ·  12:19PM





HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – Is anyone else still waiting for the recently crowned (at least by some) “best big man” in basketball to show himself in the Thunder-Lakers Western Conference semifinals?

We’ve yet to see the dominant force that Andrew Bynum was billed to be heading into this postseason. You remember the arguments for him overtaking Dwight Howard as the most dominant low-post force in the league. All of that bluster has faded with each minute of decent-but-far-from-dominant outing from the largest man still working in these playoffs.

No one is denying that Bynum has the potential to be whatever it is he wants to be. The talent, skill and behemoth size package remain in place. But this notion that Bynum was going to use this postseason to cement his place atop the totem pole of the league’s best big men has turned out to be little more than an urban myth.

He’s not even the big man having the biggest impact in this Thunder-Lakers series. That honor belongs to Thunder power forward and the league’s shot blocking king Serge Ibaka. In fact, Bynum doesn’t even rank in the top four of big men in this postseason, not with Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett dominating like it’s 1999 and Pacers All-Star center Roy Hibbert making life miserable for the Heat in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

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Lakers Back-To-Back Against The Wall

May 18, 2012  ·  10:07AM





HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – If the Los Angeles Lakers are nervous at all about the task ahead — fighting off elimination in the Western Conference semifinals in a back-to-back set tonight and tomorrow at home — they’re doing a splendid job of faking it.

From Kobe Bryant to Andrew Bynum to Pau Gasol to Jack Nicholson (sorry, we threw him in there for effect), there seems to be no worry about anything going wrong in Game 3 tonight at Staples Center (10:30 ET, ESPN). After outplaying the Thunder for 46 of the 48 minutes in Game 2, the Lakers act as if they’ve solved the Rubik’s Cube that is Oklahoma City.

“We know exactly how to defend them,” Bynum said. “We’re actually confident.”

Maybe someone forgot to tell Bynum that the Lakers are facing more than just a survival game tonight; no team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a series. They’re facing that game with their backs firmly against the wall, on back-to-back nights.

The last time they were in this position was during 1999 Western Conference semifinals — the last lockout-shortened season. L.A. lost Games 3 and 4 to the San Antonio Spurs as Tim Duncan and David Robinson kicked off that franchise’s championship era.

Bryant was a part of that series, but feels one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. In fact, he’s not particularly concerned with the back-to-back set.

“I prefer not to have it” he said, “but I feel well rested. Everybody else feels well rested. We’ll be ready for it.”

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