s_knight8

http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=56929&section=SPORTS&subsection=SPORTS_COLUMNS&year=2003&month=9&day=13

EL SEGUNDO – It was August before Phil Jackson could watch the
Lakers lose Game 6 and all the ambitions therein.

What he saw confirmed his distaste. "I'm glad," he said Friday, "that
I didn't see it before we did our exit interviews."

Collapsible defense. Do-it-yourself offense. A general lack of rigor
and discipline, corroded by the assumptions built up during three
years of championships.

Yes, and injuries, too. Assistant coach Tex Winter watched the tape
with Jackson and pointed out that Jannero Pargo and Slava Medvedenko
were playing featured minutes against San Antonio's Tony Parker and
Tim Duncan. Rick Fox was gone, Devean George was limping, Kobe Bryant
was fighting his shoulder and knee, and Shaquille O'Neal was more a
maypole than a tornado.

This Lakers season will be too different to imagine.

"It'll be more like a campaign, a military campaign," Jackson said,
revisiting Lakers HQ and beginning to plan training camp in Hawaii.

"It's going to be an intense training camp," Jackson said. "I'm going
to change the way I coach on the sideline. You won't see me going from
the baseline to the midcourt line, but I will be on the court.

brink

i do believe we'll be seeing a much more focused and intense lakers team
this time out. that's one of the "intangibles" (though it's not really
intangible) that malone and payton bring... these are intense players and
i think shaq being somewhat humiliated by duncan's success last year will
bring him back to that intensity he had in 99-00.

alson wong

I anticipated as much back in December:

Search Result 4
From: Alson Wong (alsonwong@earthlink.net.block)
Subject: Re: What psychological ploy do they need?
View: Complete Thread (7 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: alt.sports.basketball.nba.la-lakers
Date: 2002-12-15 15:08:59 PST
"Bad Laker Seasonologist" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote in message news:MPG.1865864ccee5480198968e@news.west.cox.net. ..


Could be. If the Lakers miss the playoffs or get knocked out early, I could
foresee that leading to a few changes:

Jerry Buss realizes that he needs to open up his wallet and add more talent
to the roster.

Phil Jackson realizes that he can't coach so passively and let his team
coast for the first four months of the season.

Shaq realizes that he needs to be more serious about off-season
conditioning.

brink

your predictions are eerily accurate.

although, to be fair, buss didn't *have* to open up his wallet to add a lot
of talent, it just kind of fell in his lap.

neil cerutti

Sort of. They seem like they may turn out to be accurate. We
won't know anything until the Lakers actually hit the court.
So far, all we have to go on is talk.

--
Neil Cerutti

x-man

Ha!

Stupid excuses!

Did anyone even notice that the Spurs and other teams had injuries in 2000,
2001 and 2002?

2000....Duncan's knee
2001...Anderson's shoulder
2002...Robinson's back and knee

It's OK for the fakers to have injuries and make excuses but is not ok for
the other teams?

Stupid!

greg brown

I think it has to do with credibility. The Lakers, having won three
championships in a row, were expected to win, or at least compete, for a
fourth. It seems more logical to me to accept that except for injuries, the
Lakers would have won their fourth in a row.

If the Spurs ever win three in a row--if they ever win two in a row--they
will be due the same type of respect.

Greg

charlie board

I dunno, I think they're both due about equal respect. Consider this way
of looking it....the Spurs have won the title every season in the last
five years in which they didn't have a whopping major injury. The Lakers
are 3 of 5 by the same criteria. Winning % of 1.000 vs .667. That
pretty much balances out the in-a-row criterium.

vicxnews

Say what? That sounds like Bush logic/fuzzy math. The lakers,after
winning 3 in a row got little respect from most reporters and then they
did so reluctantly.

isaac

I don't buy your argument, but I think its moot anyway. Anytime a team
wins convincingly enough to be next years favorite a major injury is a
probably going to be credible reason for not winning. The exception
might be if the competion makes significant upgrades over the off season.

In any event it's a much more credible than simply asserting that you're
the uncrowned champ the way the Kings do.

Isaac