LAT Sports Review - Friday, April 16, 2010

Bill Plaschke continues to insist that his man-crush, Phil Jackson, has played a brilliant mind game and has turned Oklahoma City star Kevin Durant into a quivering mass of insecurity before the Thunder and Lakers have even played a single game. I continue to insist that Jackson may have been playing a mind game by saying that Durant get all the calls from the referees, but he was also being the crabby old man he usually is this time of year.

Plaschke goes on to imply that Jackson single-handedly defeated the Sacramento Kings a few years back when he called Sacramento a “cow town”. Perhaps the Lakers won the series because Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant got all of the calls from the referees. Now that is ironic. And who is Phil Jackson to call the capitol of California a cow town? He’s from Deer Lodge, Montana … an actual cow town.

Jerry Crowe was good today. It was nice to see any writer from Los Angeles giving Durant some credit without tethering Jackson’s whiny comments to the compliment. Crowe brought up Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game, which was awesome, but how come nobody ever calls out Jalen Rose, who was “defending” Bryant that night? It has to be one of the worst performances in NBA history. I really liked that he referenced Max Zaslofsky, a former scoring champ and rare Jewish player in the NBA. Nice! Crowe also wonders what Jerry Jones has against Tim Tebow. Maybe I missed part of the secret tape, but I didn’t think what Jones said about Tebow was so bad. He doesn’t think the kid will make it in the NFL. That’s not mean, and that is very likely the truth. My guess is that Tebow will be an assistant coach at the University of Florida three years from now.

The wonderful Diane Pucin writes about the blabbermouths covering the NBA for TNT and ESPN. She quotes Kevin Harlan as saying – “Dallas has played great after its trades. It could be a tough matchup [Steve] Nash versus [Derek] Fisher.” Doesn’t Steve Nash play for Phoenix?

Lisa Dillman tells us that the Clippers have fired interim head coach Kim Hughes. Yeah, that should fix all of their problems. As an NBA fan in Los Angeles that doesn’t particularly care for the Lakers, I hold out hope before each season that the Clippers will finally become competitive. You would think that a team that has a lottery pick every single year would eventually get good, but they never do. They are NOT going to land LeBron James this summer, so I suggest they focus on signing Chris Bosh instead. Also, they need a legitimate coach with the personality to lead a quick turnaround, maybe Avery Johnson?  Then, they should get rid of the moody Baron Davis, either make Eric Gordon the point guard or find one in the draft, change their uniform colors to separate themselves from their awful past, and replace everyone in the front offices. There are a bunch of good teams in the NBA that were once bad teams. The Clippers aren’t cursed, they are incompetent and that can be fixed.

Mark Heisler made his NBA first round playoff picks and I agree with all of them except that I think Miami will upset Boston. The Celtics are not focused and they have too many conflicting agendas to get them through a real challenge at this time.