At halftime of last night's game (Lakers at Nuggets), I got up to turn off the television and my wife asked, "What are you doing?"

"The Lakers are going to get creamed," I explained.

"How can you say that? They are just down by two points!" she answered.

"I can say that because they gave up 58 points in the first half, and Carmelo Anthony hardly played."

She said nothing so I continued.

"The Lakers have fallen back into bad habits. They are casual about defense, and they are on the road playing against a team that feels they have something to prove against them. They're not getting the ball into Bynum, their advantage, or into the paint for that matter, and Kobe is obsessed with posting up his smaller defender which is what the Nuggets want instead of him driving and putting their

--- Who is to blame for Yao's injuries?

I can't speak for the other planets, but Ballerblogger.com is the best 1-stop place for NBA basketball on our world's world wide web, and today they posted an interesting quote from China's state-run media:

"A commentary in the Communist Party-run People’s Daily dismissed the widely-held view in the United States that Yao’s repeated injuries stemmed from training with China’s national team during the NBA off-season.

“It can only be said that the NBA game has worn Yao Ming out,” the paper fired back.

“The physical beating taken by every player due to the long season, the high level of match play and the endless travel cannot be overlooked.

“The NBA should consider changing its match scheduling from

On June 16, 2009, in a blog entitled "Dynasty for Sale or Rent," I wrote, "Maybe beating Orlando was the easy part. The hard part might be bringing the band back together next year."

I may have jinxed the Lakers because since then Trevor Ariza left the Lakers for the most incomprehensible of reasons, and now, things seem to have fallen apart with Lamar Odom.

It's amazing how many parrots accuse Kobe Bryant of being selfish while completely overlooking Lamar Odom's LONG history of self-serving and very bad judgment -- a history of bad decisions that goes very far beyond candy bing eating.

--- HIGH SCHOOL

Lamar Odom played for 3 different high schools, not because his family was moving, but he dumped teams in perceived furtherance of his basketball career.

--- COLLEGE

Lamar Odom started

Okay, this is my first time ever "publishing to" a group (Lakers Fans), we'll see how that works.

Also, it seems as if Foxsports has worked out my difficulties for me and that Tom7 will be my I.D. here.

Phil Jackson often uses the metaphor of a journey when he talks about winning a championship. Using his metaphor, the road back to an NBA Championship next season looks like it may be a bit harder than it was this last.

A few days ago I wrote a blog I called, "The Rich Get Richer." In it, I looked at this last season's title contenders and one by one talked about what they had done to get better (or worse) from where they were this last season. It contained draft information, trades, and people who, due to healing from injuries, would be more of a factor this coming season than they were

What does Phil Jackson think of the Ariza / Artest situation?

"I wasn't given the either or [the choice between Ariza and Artest]. I know Ron has been on our wish list for what, 3 years now? We needed a defender besides -- I mean somebody that was a lock down defender besides Kobe Bryant that could take on the chores, and, you know, Trevor turned out to be that guy this year.

"And so I was quite surprised, as was most of our fans I think, that, you know, negotiations did not go well with Trevor and his people. "

"And uh, you know, we think we have a player [in Ron Artest] that has probably a little more dimensions than Trevor, but still Trevor has that youth and that speed that we'll miss."

-- Phil Jackson to FSR's Myers and Hartman

Far more interesting, however...

Prior to the