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I remember that. One thing I will admit is the Celts while an elite team, have so many arrogant y pricks on that team. Especially after winning the le, they really picked up that reputation.
I think they are waiting for someone to sign him to an offer sheet. How much the offer is will determine if they match it or not. Celts management wants to keep him. I will say this. Celts need to resign Davis. They cant afford to lose him.
I saw it too, Luva. They had no respect for us and we deserved none. They knew they could intimidate us and that was their strategy from the start. I still question what they saw, what they sensed about us that gave them that license to attempt that. They didn't do it to anybody else in the playoffs, just us.
Luva, c'mon, don't talk about that now. Let's rejoice this night.
Yeah their front court is good as is, but Davis would add depth and another quality defender.
Remember all those people who said LO was leaving cause he doesn't want to play with Kobe? lol. He even took less money.
fourpeat? i think you guys are gonna win the next 25 years consecutively, in a row, one after another.
Samaki Walker and Medvedenko couldnt stay in the league after playing for LA, just like Smush Parker. Which proves my point. Players who play for the Lakers always look better than they really are, or get better than they used to be.
Richmond was 80 when he came to LA. So was Murray.
Radman was decent for us. , he was a starter. Is he starting on the Bobcats? Not even close.
Every one of the players you listed looks/looked worse on the team they played for after LA then they did during their time with the Lakers. In addition to that, you listed players that sucked anyway. Artest is already a proven good player.
Relax. Have faith in the laker magic.
Personally, I'd rather cheer for a team full of assholes that win championships than cheer for a bunch of choir boys who are too nice to go the distance.
At least if we go again, they'll be no Powe. Maybe Perkins will break parole and he'll be gone by then as well.
This too. Some franchises just have a way of doing this, a kind of 'magic' about them. LA is one of them. You come here and good things happen for you. Every single year I hear the same complaints on every message board I go to. "How does [insert player] all of a sudden look like a world-beater with LA when they were a scrub last season? [insert expletive cursing Lakers for being lucky/bullsh--/etc]. I'm used to it.
And Artest is actually a GOOD player to begin with.
I'm not worried.
Western Conference executive opines on Lamar Odom remaining with the Lakers
LA Times
Granting candor in exchange for anonymity, one Western Conference executive shared the significance of Lamar Odom agreeing to remain with the Lakers.
On Odom staying with the Lakers: “Neither the Lakers nor Lamar Odom had any choice in this matter. Lamar Odom was not going to leave millions on the table to move to Miami. Los Angeles wasn’t going to allow one of their key pieces to walk away this summer when the San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks, Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic made moves to get better this summer. The Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t allow themselves to get worse, which would happen if they lost Lamar Odom and his versatility.”
What would’ve happened had Odom not agreed to return to the Lakers: “They’d no longer be the favorite to win the NBA le and the Western Conference championship. The Spurs would. Kobe Bryant can sprain an ankle and be out for the year. But they’d be a playoff team in the West with [Pau] Gasol, [Andrew] Bynum, [Ron] Artest and Odom. Without Lamar Odom, the Lakers would be one Kobe Bryant sprained ankle away from being a bottom-seeded team and not making the playoffs.”
On Odom’s versatility: “In the way they play, it’s a match-up nightmare. He can post small, take bigs off the dribble, rebounds like five a game and pushes the ball in transition. He’s a unique player coming off the bench in this league.”
On whether Odom's presence will help Artest, given their relationship: “I think having someone close to him [Artest] will help indoctrinate him in the culture and shorten the learning curve. If the Lakers have the impression Artest will follow other than what he chooses to do, they’re mistaken. They have great leadership in other places, but Ron is Ron. As long as they allow Ron to be Ron, they’ll be fine. The minute they try to put him in a vacuum, it’ll be over. Having someone like Lamar in that help shorten the learning curve on how to handle things. It will avoid certain land mines, but other ones will pop up.”
-- Mark Medina
Wow. You might be the coolest celtics fan i've ever encountered.
Honestly I have little problem with Pierce or Allen. But I hate the rest of your team. Every one of them. And I used to be a huge Garnett fan.
Eddie House is a huge bag.
He pops his jersey after every basket he makes. That pisses me off. It's like big ing deal you made a 3. Get back on D and STFU.
I cant think of anyone i'd rather see get punched in the face than Eddie House.
Maybe Perkins. Maybe.
Loved seeing Rafer slap his kufi off. Hit one 3 pointer and its like you won the nba finals.
I stand by KG due to him being a Celt and how much better he makes our team. That being said, his antics annoy me. The son of a running his mouth with "MOTHER ER" 1000000 TIMES while in a suit during the playoffs pissed me off. His talking to pg's who dont fight back was sad and embarrassing to watch. He does this knowing he doesnt have to carry the team in crunch time. Pierce is our go to guy in the 4th and KG can get away with the sidekick role. I love what KG brings to our team in terms of the D and being a 2nd-3rd option. I dont like his style of talking as I feel it reached a new low this past season.Wow. You might be the coolest celtics fan i've ever encountered.
Honestly I have little problem with Pierce or Allen. But I hate the rest of your team. Every one of them. And I used to be a huge Garnett fan.
I think 2009 RJ is better than Ray Allen.
He'll miss 7 straight threes, then he'll make one and dance around like he's MJ and he just hit the game winning shot over Bryan Russell.
gotta love those Lakers fans(sarcasm of course).couple days ago they throw every obscenity at him and now they welcome him back with open arms.bunch of two faced a-holes.
and after all Wade went through to convince this guy to sign with the heat. he be on Miami& wade's hate list from now on...
gotta love those Lakers fans(sarcasm of course).couple days ago they throw every obscenity at him and now they welcome him back with open arms.bunch of two faced a-holes.
and after all Wade went through to convince this guy to sign with the heat. he be on Miami& wade's hate list from now on...U mad? Go ahead and take out those frustrations son.
Pppppffffftttttt.....Odom is soooo overrated just because they won the championship year(with the benefit of incredible luck with injuries to S.A. and Boston)
Just watch. L.A. will be compe ive, but they won't represent the west this year, that much is obvious to non-homers and the media who hang on Kobe's tiny balls.
I am going to get drunk tonight.
Odom finally ends his L.A. drama
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Hollinger By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
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From New Orleans all the way to Portland, basketball fans in the Western Conference are feeling a whole lot less optimistic than they were just 24 hours ago.
Except the ones in L.A., that is. They're breathing a huge sigh of relief. After a month-long drama where Lamar Odom's seemingly certain return to the world champions somehow became a 50-50 proposition, he relented and agreed to rejoin the team Thursday on a four-year deal worth $33 million.
The Lakers will have a team option on the final year, potentially making it a lucrative trade chip should Odom break down between now and then. (I won't repeat myself here, but for more on the increasing use of funny money at the end of contracts to sidestep the cap, read the end of my missive on the Andre Miller signing).
Of course, it never should have come to this. Odom was a vital cog in L.A.'s championship machine, a chameleon of sorts who could score, rebound or set up others depending on what the situation required. He was vital in another sense too -- any team with championship-caliber talent needs at least a few players who are willing to accept fewer shots and/or minutes for the greater good. Odom did that by agreeing to come off the bench in a contract year, and as a result the Lakers' had the league's most potent frontcourt rotation.
Add in the fact that everyone thinks he's a swell guy, and that he's one of the few people alive who might be able to get into the head of new teammate Ron Artest, and that the Lakers were offering more money per year than anyone else, and that Odom has spent most of his adult life in L.A. and clearly didn't want to go anywhere lese, and it seems a foregone conclusion that Odom would stay. Why was the Miami option ever in play?
Yet it was. Unfortunately for the rest of the West, cooler heads prevailed after emotions became heated enough that the Lakers were tempted to walk away and Odom considered taking a five-year deal from the Heat that would likely have returned less money over the life of the deal (this calculation depends on what he might earn four and five years from now when his Laker contract expires, so we don't know for sure).
Though they weren't direct participants, the Odom saga was a big, big deal to all those second-tier Western teams aspiring to make a run to the Finals. Every last one of them was praying that Odom would head to Miami and leave the Lakers at the altar.
It wasn't just that L.A. would have lost Odom, it was that they weren't going to be able to come up with a replacement. The Lakers already used their full midlevel exception on Artest and had no room under the salary cap, so the absolute best they could have done would be to offer the veteran's minimum to a ring-hungry vet or use their $2.5 million trade exception from last year's Chris Mihm giveaway to acquire an unwanted scrub from somebody else.
Basically, L.A. would have been left using Josh Powell as its primary frontcourt reserve, and while they could have papered over the shortcoming by using Artest and Luke Walton at power forward when either Gasol or Bynum was out of the game, it was still removing a source of strength from the Laker arsenal.
This was the opening teams like San Antonio and Portland hoped to exploit with their own huge frontcourts, feeling they could wear down L.A. with their size rather than the other way around. This was the match-up issue that teams like Denver wanted to go away, with Odom frequently creating dilemmas for the Nugget bench. This was the depth New Orleans hoped wouldn't be a factor, removing the frontcourt game of 3-against-2 they faced every time last year. This was the guy Dallas hoped wouldn't be on the floor when they unleashed their five-greyhound lineup in fourth quarters and could run Gasol and Bynum into submission. And this was the ball-handling perimeter player that nobody in Utah's macho frontcourt trio could cover.
Odom's not an All-Star, and he's only the fourth-best player on the team. But the combination of his unique skill set and the restrictions of the salary cap combined to make him the league's most important free agent this summer.
With Odom, the Lakers are the clear favorites to win the West, and more or less a 50-50 shot to repeat as champions in a presumed final against Cleveland, Orlando or Boston.
Without Odom? That opened the door for everybody else to get into the fray, offering a in the armor just large enough that the other contenders all felt they had a realistic shot at breaking through.
Now? Now teams are depending on some other stroke of good fortune for them (or a bad one for the Lakers) to get in the race. It may yet come -- we haven't played any games yet and seasons take all kinds of crazy twists and turns. But from this moment forward, the Lakers are overwhelming favorites to win the West & just like we'd assumed they'd be before all this drama started.
RJ is not and never has been as good as Ginobili or Allen. Not even close.
Allen was the premier playmaker/ballhandler/scorer on Seattle before he got traded. The only reason he does less on Boston is because they have an allstar team. Ginobili is Ginobili.
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