Coaches

Phil Jackson never liked to compare Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Believe me, I tried everything. Sometimes I'd ask him after random Lakers practices or before games against Charlotte, the team Jordan owned. Or after games in Chicago, where nostalgia hopefully would add to the mix. There would be a little nugget here, a tiny nibble there, but nothing that mattered. It's coming out now, though, in Jackson's 339-page memoir co-written with Hugh Delehanty and available Tuesday: "Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success.

Phil Jackson never liked to compare Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Believe me, I tried everything. Sometimes I'd ask him after random Lakers practices or before games against Charlotte, the team Jordan owned. Or after games in Chicago, where nostalgia hopefully would add to the mix. There would be a little nugget here, a tiny nibble there, but nothing that mattered. It's coming out now, though, in Jackson's 339-page memoir co-written with Hugh Delehanty and available Tuesday: "Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success.

It's back. Megabus , which offered low-cost bus service to Las Vegas from L.A. in 2007 and then withdrew from the market, will begin service between the two cities on Dec. 12, it announced Wednesday. Like Greyhound , which also has recently introduced low-cost service to Las Vegas from L.A., Megabus hopes to lure Vegas-bound Angelenos out of their cars and onto modern coaches with one-way fares starting at just $1. “We've seen impressive growth throughout North America and are confident that our 21st century double-decker buses with Wi-Fi and power outlets combined with our outstanding prices will be a success among California and Nevada residents,” said Mike Alvich, Megabus.com's vice president of marketing and public relations.

GALAXY AT PHILADELPHIA When: 4:30 p.m. PDT. Where: PPL Park. On the air: TWC SportsNet, TWC Deportes; Radio: 1330. Records: Galaxy 4-3-2, Union 4-3-3. Record vs. Union (2012): 0-1-0. Update: "There will be changes in Philadelphia," Galaxy Coach Bruce Arena said after his team suffered its second consecutive loss Saturday, a 3-1 defeat to the Whitecaps in Vancouver. Arena was particularly annoyed that the Galaxy gave up all the goals in the last half hour of the game, which he partly blamed on his players' lack of concentration.

He was once the face of college basketball, Hoosiers personified, a small-town kid who this spring brought a smile, a swagger and a national championship resume to the UCLA program. Yet before he even coached one practice, someone had created a Facebook page titled "Fire Steve Alford. " He was once baseball's best manager, the steady force who brought the Angels their first and only world championship, the creator of what many now consider halo heaven. Yet recently, a blog called "Halos Heaven" conducted a Mike Scioscia poll that asked: "Is he toast?"

Central Michigan's basketball coach was suspended without pay for using a racially derogatory term in front of his players. Keith Dambrot began serving the four-day suspension Thursday, university spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith said Friday. Dambrot allegedly used racial slurs in front of his team late in the season in reference to assistant coach Derrick McDowell, who is black. In a statement released Wednesday, Dambrot said the term was "not used in any racially offensive manner.

Win one for the fat man? Win one for the Holtzer? Could anyone have dreamed, even a month ago, that the 1996 college football season would come down to this? To a USC team turned upside-down by three consecutive defeats and speculation that its coach is about to be turned loose? To a Notre Dame team whose coach is walking away, virtually without explanation, from the sport's best job? Yet that's exactly how the script reads when Notre Dame (8-2) plays USC (5-6) tonight at a sold-out Coliseum.

Words like "legend," "icon" and "mythical figure" don't get tossed around easily, especially for someone still very much among the living. But those are the words being used in the halls of Westminster High School to describe Bill Boswell. Coach Boswell, 63, spent nearly four decades mentoring the high school's young athletes, first as head football coach for 19 years and then as district athletic director. Many of his students went on to become coaches, citing his influence.

The children at the junior high in Carson listened carefully as Frank Lubin, a former U.S. Olympic basketball player, spoke during a recent career day. Lubin told the youngsters to stay in school and to avoid drugs and alcohol because they had the potential to be Olympic athletes. When Lubin was finished, they pestered him for autographs. It was the repeat of a scene from the early part of the century.

Seattle Mariners' scout Myron Pines has a different perspective when it comes to evaluating potential major league players. While most scouts are content to sit in the stands and watch, Pines gets a closer look--from the dugout. Pines is in his seventh season as baseball coach at Santiago High School, where he helped turn around a struggling program. Last year, he led the Cavaliers to their first outright league championship since 1969.

There's nothing easy or predictable about the 40-team Southern Section Division 1 baseball playoffs that begin Tuesday with eight wild-card games. "The Division 1 games are a juggernaut," Coach Matt LaCour of No. 3-seeded Studio City Harvard-Westlake said. "Single-elimination playoffs are about a team getting hot at the right time and having a little luck. " Santa Ana Mater Dei (24-2) ended the regular season as the best team in Southern California and received the No. 1 seeding for the Division 1 playoffs.

A shutout victory might look dominant on the scoreboard, but the Kings' players and coaches saw room for improvement after Tuesday night's 2-0 win over the San Jose Sharks. Mike Richards, who scored midway through the second period, did not like the way his team started out, with San Jose forcing most of the action in the first 10 minutes. "They had a lot of time to make plays," Richards said. "At the beginning of a series, it sometimes feels like you're trying to feel out people, but luckily it didn't cost us. " The Kings not only managed to score at the end of the first period, they also found a rhythm in the second and shut down a Sharks power play that has been very effective in this postseason.

Bob Bradley wasn't looking for an adventure as much as he was looking for a job after being fired as coach of the U.S. soccer team two years ago. But in Egypt he found both. When Bradley arrived in the fall of 2011 to take over Egypt's national soccer program, the country was teetering between revolution and rebellion. The Arab Spring uprising had already unseated longtime leader Hosni Mubarak, and five months after Bradley began work a deadly riot broke out at an Egyptian Premier League match, killing 74. It probably wasn't the best time to take any soccer job in Egypt.

The manager was rushing directly to practice from work, so she jogged onto the infield carrying a plastic bucket of baseballs while wearing a skirt. '"You can't play baseball in a dress!" shrieked one of her players. "Just watch me," Claudia Chiovare said. One of the coaches was once challenged by a player who didn't want to wear his required protective cup. "How are you going to know if we have it on?" he taunted. "You've got to knock on it, and we've got to hear it," Tracy Chiovare said.

George Karl led the Denver Nuggets to a team-record 57 wins without a big name on his roster. For that endeavor, Karl earned the NBA's Coach of the Year award on Wednesday. He received 62 first-place votes, followed by Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat with 24 votes from a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. New York's Mike Woodson finished third and San Antonio's Gregg Popovich , who won the award last season, was fourth. The Nuggets were 57-25 -- the league's fourth-best record -- and captured the No. 3 seeding in the Western Conference.

Gary Sacks, the Clippers' vice president of basketball operations, said Monday he feels "very confident" that Chris Paul will sign a five-year, $107.3-million contract extension this summer to remain with the team. Not surprisingly, Vinny Del Negro also said Monday he wants to remain as coach of the Clippers. But does owner Donald Sterling, who will make the ultimate decision on who will coach the team, want Del Negro back after the Clippers' first-round playoff exit? Do Clippers President Andy Roeser and Sacks want Del Negro back?

Michael Abraham fidgets on a steel bunk, unable to sleep because of the chain-saw snoring and suffocating flatulence of three fellow inmates sharing a tiny cubicle with him in federal prison. His wife and two small children are biding time at his parents' home 80 miles away in Portland. His once-promising career as a women's college basketball coach is in ruins. But Abraham, 41, knows it could be much worse.

It appeared a case of school property defacement, likely the work of a prankster. Years ago, an assistant coach at Claremont McKenna College came upon an old desk while cleaning out a weight room in the athletic department. The culprit had carved into the wood, the way lovebirds might scrawl a heart into a tree. Except this inscription was curious: it read "I Love This College" and was signed "John Zinda." The assistant reported what he thought was an act of mockery to the football coach.

Matt Barkley gets his first real taste of the NFL when the Philadelphia Eagles' rookie mini-camp opens Friday. Many fans and NFL draft prognosticators were shocked when new Eagles Coach Chip Kelly drafted the former USC quarterback. But USC Coach Lane Kiffin was not. Kiffin said Monday that Kelly spoke with him about Barkley "early on" in the evaluation process and later sent the Eagles' quarterbacks coach to Southern California to work out the Trojans' four-year starter.

In these tense times, with the Kings having scored one goal in each of their first three playoff games against the St. Louis Blues and needing a win Monday at Staples Center to tie the series, it somehow made perfect sense that defenseman Alec Martinez wore a huge sombrero onto the ice for practice Sunday along with one white sock, one red sock and a green jersey. As much sense, maybe, as a low-scoring team deploying seven defensemen Saturday. But that worked out pretty well: Martinez, playing for the first time since April 2, used his mobility to jump into the craziness around the net and earn an assist on the Slava Voynov goal that lifted the Kings to a 1-0 victory.