first game is in the bag

The Lakers' new season started tonight, but not before getting their championship rings for winning it all last season.







There was also the small matter of raising the championship banner.


And then came the next task at hand. The score was closer than I had expected, but fittingly, the Lakers won their first game of the season, beating the Clippers.

L.A. is purple today

Today is the day of the parade to celebrate the Los Angeles Lakers winning the 2009 NBA championship. The parade will start at Staples Center and travel to the Coliseum, where there will then be some sort of rally/celebration thing. Here's the parade route and more information about the Coliseum celebration. I'm a Lakers fan but not enough so to actually attend parades and such. (OK, I'll admit that multiple years ago, during another of the Lakers' NBA wins, a friend at the time was a Lakers fan too, but she was mostly starstruck, and she heard about some celebration party thing where it was rumoured that some of the players might show up. Ummm, yeah. But she wanted to go, and she didn't want to go alone, and she BEGGED me to go with her, so I agreed. It was mostly a bust, as I expected. I think we saw one player, though I can't remember who it was - I just remember he was black and very tall. Does that narrow it down? But I digress...) But I have a good friend who is a huge fan, so I'm looking forward to reading/hearing about her adventures today.

As you'd expect, the marquees for the Staples Center are displaying congratulations to the Lakers on their win. On Monday, the congrats were on screen round-the-clock. On Tuesday, they'd gone back to rotating through their schedule of upcoming shows, with the congratulations inserted in the rotation. I managed to get a couple of pictures, and I couldn't decide which one I like better, so I'm just putting up both of them.

good day

Today technically started with a trip on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. We had dinner with friends at Downtown Disney last night, and then some of us went into Disneyland after dinner. We rode Peter Pan and then Big Thunder, with some interesting but unexpected fun in between, and then we got in line for Indy just before midnight. By the time we were done with the ride, it was after midnight, so the day started right in the middle of the ride.

This afternoon, I got to see Rockapella, and then this evening, I saw a second show of Rockapella. Both were great and fun and funny and just hysterical.

And then, to top it off, the Los Angeles Lakers won game five of the NBA finals, beating the Orlando Magic fairly handily, it seemed, to win the NBA championship.

Then, we had a late dinner with a couple of friends.

A very good day indeed.

identity crisis

There's a part of me that feels sorry for Anaheim. They have no idea who they are. They're trying to be so many different things.

First, they have a baseball team that doesn't want to be associated with them so much that they'd rather change their name from the Anaheim Angels to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and they have "Anaheim" in their name only because there's some kind of contractual requirement. But the Angels don't play in Los Angeles. They don't even play in the same county as Los Angeles. But the Angels would rather be associated with Los Angeles.

And now, we're in the midst of the NBA finals. (Yeah, the Lakers beat the Orlando Magic, handily, in game one by a score of 100 to 75. Everyone seems to be celebrating and thinking it's a done deal. It's fine that everyone else is, but I hope the Lakers teammates themselves are not. They've gotten 25% of the job done, but it doesn't count until you do all 100%. Tonight's game is probably not going to be indicative of the other games. They need to stay focussed and not take anything for granted and continue to show the same fight they did tonight.) And because the Lakers are playing the Orlando Magic, there's this whole fake Disney connection because Orlando has Walt Disney World and Southern California has Disneyland. And now, Disneyland is on some Lakers kick, and WDW and Disneyland are making this friendly wager, like you'd see with the mayors of the opposing cities.

But there's one problem. They're not the Anaheim Lakers. And they're not the Southern California Lakers. They're the LOS ANGELES LAKERS. Who play in Los Angeles. Not Anaheim. Who play in Los Angeles County. Not Orange County. Who really have nothing whatsoever to do with the Walt Disney Company except that Disneyland might have some kind of parade with the Lakers if they win, but then, Disneyland does little parades with all kinds of people, and if the Lakers win, they're going to have their own spectacular, much larger kick-ass parade to attend. And it will be held in LOS ANGELES.

So Anaheim has one team that wants nothing to do with them, and now, they want to co-opt a Los Angeles team that has no association with them.

Huh?


So I follow various Disney feeds on Twitter. And when I read a particular tweet, I really didn't understand. Here's the information from one of the Disney sites.





I'm having a hard time making it past "Disneyland ... Lakers pride" because that concept just doesn't compute for me. That's not to say someone from Orange County or San Bernardino County or wherever can't be a Lakers fan, and that's not to say some random company in another city, county or state couldn't have some affiliation with the Lakers, but this whole association comes out of nowhere. It's like the ultimate bandwagon-jumping.

And, I happen to like Sleeping Beauty Castle. I think it's beautiful, especially when it's lit at night. I don't want it to be purple and gold. I will, however, reserve final judgement until I've seen it for myself, which I'll be doing this weekend.


Hmmm, the French Open has been going on for a couple of weeks, and Disney has a park in France. Wonder why they're not jumping all over that co-promotion?

Lakers head to the NBA finals

The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Denver Nuggets in game 6 of the Western Conference finals, winning the series 4-2 and moving on to the NBA finals which start Thursday, June 4. They don't know who their opponent is yet. Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals is tomorrow, with the Orlando Magic leading the Cleveland Cavaliers 3 games to 2. If the Magic win on their home court, they move on to the finals and the Cavs are done. If the Cavs win, then it's back to Cleveland for game 7.

I was at the movies tonight so didn't hear most of the game. When I stopped listening, it was barely into the first quarter, and the Lakers were up by a few and seemed to be playing well. When I got out of the movie, I checked the score and was surprised that the Lakers had won by a score of 119 to 92. Many analysts expected the Nuggets to win and then for the Lakers to win game 7, but I was really surprised at the huge margin of victory for the Lakers. The Lakers outscored the Nuggets in every single quarter and even scored 36 points in the fourth quarter. From the box scores, it looks like a lot of players contributed, which is always the best way to win.

Today was Carmelo Anthony's birthday. Sorry dude.

neither one of them even comes close to being Chick Hearn

OK, so the Lakers lost tonight to the Houston Rockets in game one of the second round of the basketball playoffs.

I started listening to the game with about 8 minutes left in the fourth quarter. The Rockets were doing a good job, and the Lakers, not so much. The Rockets went on a 7-0 run and never really looked back. The Lakers had their chance at shots - and they missed horribly. And they didn't stop the Rockets.

I used to love listening to Lakers games on the radio. Even if the Lakers were losing, the games were enjoyable to listen to because of Chick Hearn. I didn't really lose most of my interest in the Lakers until Chick passed away because he was the one that was the consistent voice of the Lakers, no matter who was coaching or playing on the team.

So, it's the closing minutes of the game, and yeah, the Lakers were "supposed" to win, so their impending loss was coming as a bit of a surprise, at least to some people. And then dude who calls the play-by-play (don't know his name, don't care) said, "The Rockets are two minutes away from stealing this game." WHISKEY.TANGO.FOXTROT. S*T*E*A*L*I*N*G? Really. Seriously? What, did the refs hand them the game? Yeah, I heard that the Lakers weren't happy about the officiating, but that happens a lot with a lot of teams, and I didn't hear repeated examples of the refs blatantly making bad calls just so the Rockets could undeservedly beat the Lakers. From what I could tell based on the comments, the Rockets led most of the way through the game, with the Lakers only having the lead a couple of times, and they were no more than a couple point leads that vanished fairly quickly. It sounded like the Rockets had the game in hand most of the way through. To steal something means that it doesn't belong to you, that it belongs to someone else and that you have wrongly appropriated it. That is not what happened tonight. The Rockets beat the Lakers because the Rockets played better. The Lakers at no time were the rightful owners of the win. What an insult to the Rockets to say that their team "stole" the game.

And then, Mr. Color Commentary Guy (again, don't know his name, don't care) chimes in with less than a minute to go that it'll be interesting to see what effect this win has on the Rockets when it comes to game two. To paraphrase, "Will the Rockets be fat cats content to have won one game, or will they be greedy and try to take game two as well?" WHISKEY.TANGO.FOXTROT. G*R*E*E*D*Y? Really. Seriously? I don't remember his exact sentence, but "fat cats" and "greedy" were definitely his terminology. Isn't the point of the games to win, no matter where you are? Are the Rockets somehow supposed to make up for "stealing" game one by simply conceding game two to the Lakers, because after all, they wouldn't want to appear greedy by winning BOTH games, oh no, that would not be becoming of a guest in someone else's home. Give me a frickin' break. The Rockets want to take both games at Staples Center and then win both games in Houston and then be done with the second round and wait for the next round. That's not being greedy. That's called playing the game.

So much of this stems from the assumption that so many of the sports folks have that the finals will be between the Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers, because they want a showdown between Kobe Bryant and just-named-season-MVP-today LeBron James. I've heard more than one sports guy say that's what's going to happen, so let's just cut to the chase and get to it. Ummm, yeah, maybe on paper, those are the two teams who would be in the finals. But they don't go by paper - they go by actually playing the games. Because it doesn't always matter what the paper says. Some sports guys say that if the Lakers play at their best, they are unstoppable. Ummm, yeah, but that presumes they will be able to play their best at all times. And anyone who's followed the Lakers at any given time knows that them playing their best can turn on a dime. It's not about who's going to win if everyone plays their best. It's about who actually plays better than the other team. And tonight, it was the Rockets.

So both Lakers broadcasters seemed to come from the position that the Lakers are entitled to be in the finals, and anyone who gets in their way is just being wrong and not nice. If the Lakers screwed up during a game, Chick Hearn would have been the first person to point it out. He was definitely exciting to listen to when the Lakers were doing their thing, but when they weren't, he would tell you that as well, in no uncertain terms and holding back nothing. He never thought the Lakers were entitled to anything - they had to earn it, and if they couldn't be bothered to earn it, they didn't deserve it. He would have had a number of choice words for the Lakers tonight, and using the words "stealing" and "greedy" in reference to the Rockets wouldn't have been among them.

I've not missed Chick so much as I did tonight.

Lakers and Ducks

The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Utah Jazz today in game five to advance to the next round. The 107 to 96 winning score doesn't quite tell the whole story, though. At one point in the fourth quarter, the Lakers were leading the Jazz by 22 points, but with most of the Lakers' starting lineup on the bench, the Jazz made a run, cutting the lead to 11 before the starters were back on the court to play, and the Jazz got as close as 6 points before the Lakers pulled away again, thanks in part to some missed layups by the Jazz. The Lakers are going to need to learn how to hold a score if they're going to try to win the championship. They'll get some time to rest before their next round, where they'll be up against the winner of the Portland/Houston series. The Houston Rockets currently lead the Portland Trailblazers 3 games to 1. Game five in their series is tomorrow night.


And in a stunner, the eight seeded Anaheim Ducks upset the first seeded San Jose Sharks by winning game six and taking the series 4 games to 2 to advance to the next round. I have no idea who the Ducks are supposed to play next, and really, I don't much care about hockey, but even I know the significance of this win.

flopping - they're going to have to pay the price

I have previously touched on the concept of "flopping" in the National Basketball Association. Well, coincidentally enough, the NBA has apparently been thinking about it a lot as well. This week, they announced that starting next season, the NBA will start levying fines against those who are obviously flopping. They haven't made a determination of what the fines will be yet, and apparently, the fines are going to be assigned much after the fact, upon review of tapes and such, rather than at the time that the offense happens. They may also consider more serious punishments, like a one-day suspension, for players who accrue a certain number of flopping violations.

I think it's a good thing in theory, but I'm wondering how they're going to implement it in practice. What I might consider flopping isn't necessarily going to be what someone else considers flopping. It's a completely subjective thing. But they're going to have to try to impose some kind of consistency to this subjectivity. It will be interesting to see what the first couple cases of this are like.

The only people who can still flop for free this year are players for the Lakers and Celtics.

nature shaped by nurture

There's been a long-standing argument about whether a person's behaviour/actions is dictated by nature, what they're born with, or nurture, the environment they're in. There are arguments and "proof" in support of both, but I've always thought it was odd that it's always posed as an either/or proposition. Oh, sure, they give lip service to how the other side has some effect but it eventually boils down to one side being in total control.

I think I've come to the conclusion that it really is a balance between the two, but in the sense that nature controls what you're capable of doing whereas nurture can control what you actually do. I think people are wired with the possibility of doing a certain variety of things, but what gets developed and what gets released is dependent upon what their environment encourages and trains and frowns upon.

Some people will use the excuse that "that wasn't me" when they do something totally against their character. Nope, don't buy it. I think there are some things people are totally incapable of doing, no matter the situation or circumstance. There may, however, be the littlest inclination for something, and given the right cultivation or happenstance, that inclination shows itself. So it might only be a fraction of a part of someone's personality, perhaps one that has never seen the light of day, but it's in them nonetheless.

I think the control that nurture has over our nature manifests itself constantly in our everyday lives. We generally have modifications in our behaviour depending on what we're doing at the time - we adjust ourselves if we're at work or at the movies or with our parents or at a concert. We exhibit the behaviours in each of those situations that have been fostered, but that's not to say that we exhibit only the behaviours that are encouraged in a particular environment. Sometimes, an aspect that's natural in one setting can be so developed that it breaks through in an environment where it's not natural, and the unexpected reaction in that case may or may not curb any such breakthrough in the future. For instance, whereas my blurting out "PAINTED?" to a certain group of friends will dissolve them into peals of laughter, my doing the same thing to another group of friends or at work will simply elicit glazed-over stares. The second reaction would probably teach me not to blurt that word out to the second group of people again because it didn't have the reaction I was looking for. Or, because I'm a freak of nature, I might just keep doing it for oddness value.

So why did this analysis arise? It stems from a story that I heard about yesterday that made me think of other related issues. And the big story that caused this elaborate pondering? Game Six of the Western Conference Semifinals in the NBA between the San Antonio Spurs and the New Orleans Hornets.

I used to be a big NBA fan, but in the past several years, I haven't been paying that much attention. Even with the Los Angeles Lakers doing well this year and still being in the playoffs, I've not been watching their games, mostly just interested enough to find out the score after the game is over. I'm barely paying attention to the other playoffs and most of what I hear is simply in passing on the news or when I'm listening to ESPN.com streaming. That's how I found out about this story.

The San Antonio Spurs were in a must-win situation in game six. Losing meant their season was over. Winning meant they'd force a tie-breaking game seven. San Antonio did in fact win, but there's some speculation that the outcome of the game could have changed had the Hornets' David West not been forced to leave the game early in the fourth quarter because of an injury. He had played game five with back pain, and the injury was aggravated when he was fouled hard by the Spurs' Robert Horry. Some people say it was a legitimate foul, but many more are calling it a cheap shot because Horry blindsided West. (OK, this would help if I could describe the exact foul but while I understood what was described to me, I can't begin to repeat that now.)

It was hard for me to listen to Horry being bashed for this foul, and I remembered hearing similar comments about him last year, when he had made a similarly cheap-shot move against another guy with a bad back. That's not to say that anyone with a bad back is off-limits to hard play. But there's a difference between hard play and "accidentally" stomping on someone's fractured foot.

I remember Robert Horry from his time with the Lakers in the late 90s and early 2000s. He was a great player, clutch guy, classy. He was a part of the 3-peat when the Lakers won the NBA championships in 2000, 2001 and 2002. So I had a hard time reconciling what I was hearing about Robert Horry now. The Robert Horry that I remembered would never have done what the current Robert Horry has done this year and last. So how did he go from being the player I remembered to being the player he is now? The only thing I can come up with is that such behaviour would not have been tolerated with the Lakers. They don't play cheap to win. That might mean they lose, but to me, better to lose than to win at the expense of playing dirty. It disappoints me to think that he was capable of this kind of behaviour all the time, but it just never manifested itself while he was a Laker, but he apparently feels comfortable to behave that way now, and he's not even playing for the Pistons!

The last time I had this sort of confusion was when it came to Vlade Divac. I remembered him with the Lakers as being a good guy. And then I kept hearing about him with the Sacramento Kings, and he had turned into a crybaby, faking fouls enough that he was nicknamed "Floppy" by a lot of people. I found this page and I *love* it. Pay particular attention to entries 2 and 3, especially the examples in italics. And at the time, I had the same "but he never did anything like that with the Lakers" ponderings, and I could not reconcile that kind of play with being on the Lakers. But that's because again, that kind of behaviour would never have been tolerated by the Lakers.

The other instance of this sort of behaviour that comes to mind for me is Terrell Owens ("TO"), formerly of the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles, currently of the Dallas Cowboys. TO had a history of mouthing off about his teammates and causing dissension on the team, and the Cowboys were looked at askance for taking him on, though the Cowboys also have a history of having and taking in troubled players (Pacman Jones, anyone?). When TO first arrived at the Cowboys, his rep didn't change that much as he butted heads with then-head coach Bill Parcells. Parcells' departure from the Cowboys was largely attributed to his on-going friction with TO. Since the arrivals of new Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips and quarterback Tony Romo, TO is making fewer headlines with his mouth. In his case, it wasn't just the change of venue that caused the seeming change in him, but rather, the change in personnel.


Yeah, I think it's kind of weird too that a basketball playoff game led me down this path.