Thursday, April 15, 2010

LAT Sports Review - Wednesday, April 13, 2010

T.J. Simers is relatively subdued today, writing a vanilla article about what a good baseball player Matt Kemp is. He usually only puts about 50% effort into his writing, today he gave about 25%. Maybe he was distracted by all of Phil Jackson’s whining.

Mike Bresnahan writes about how Jackson is playing “mind games” by announcing that Kevin Durant, who will give the Lakers headaches in their first round match-up, gets favorable calls from the referees. I have two problems with this idea that Jackson is a genius manipulator who is already changing the series by griping through the media. First, it is hilariously hypocritical for Jackson to complain that a star gets beneficial calls considering that he coached Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal. Both were virtually unguardable during their primes because defenders would get called for a foul if they even looked at them wrong. In fact, some people outside of Los Angeles would say that the game was briefly ruined during the time that O’Neal was allowed to bowl over people without getting called for an offensive foul. Also, is it possible that everyone is assuming that Jackson is playing this brilliant mind game when he may just be preemptively griping in case things go poorly for his team, which is heavily favored? With the exception of a brief period when Jordan played baseball, Jackson has never coached a team that didn’t have the best player in the NBA, he has received unwavering man-love from the media (mostly by Bill Plaschke), and he has gotten a pass for being such a constant complainer for so very long. Why would he play a mind game against a player from a team the Lakers could probably sweep even without Kobe Bryant? Maybe it’s not strategy. Maybe it’s just Jackson being a dick again.

Oh, and I wish everyone would stop using the word “Zen” to refer to Jackson. He’s not Zen in any way, at least not in public. Zen refers to a sense of calm and contemplation. Jackson is cantankerous, spoiled, and intimidating. This is another case of sports writers being entirely unoriginal. Somebody started calling him Zen Master a long time ago, when perhaps it was a more accurate nickname, and all of the fat, coffee-stained reporters adopted it and never let it go.

Sometimes I feel sorry for Lisa Dillman. She is a very talented writer, but she is stuck having to write about the stinking Clippers. Today, she covered the stinking Kings of hockey. It could be worse, Lisa. At least you work for the gigantic Los Angeles Times. You could be a blogger with no readers. :-)

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