Los Angeles Lakers Basketball Team

Trevor Ariza is a tough guy to slow down, but it happened Tuesday, during the first moments of our chat, when I told him what I thought about him before he became a Laker. I thought he was a bust. I thought five years ago, when he left UCLA after just one season there, it was too early, he was not ready, and we would never hear from him again. I thought when he played for three coaches in New York, then became stuck on the bench in Orlando, he would soon disappear altogether.

Luke Walton is out indefinitely because of a partially torn ligament in his left ankle, an injury that sometimes takes several weeks to fully heal, though the Lakers reserve forward said he planned to return sooner than that. Walton was hurt after stopping to pivot on a third-quarter play Saturday in Game 4 against the Utah Jazz. An MRI exam Monday morning showed the extent of the damage to Walton's deltoid ligament.

His pressed sweatsuit was white, his rumpled mood was black. Kobe Bryant met the media Wednesday as if he were playing defense against them, shoulders tight, eyes darting, snarl fixed. First question? Four-word answer. Question from beat reporter who has been following him for five years? Thirteen-word answer. Follow-up? Six-word answer. In this situation, a day before the NBA Finals, the world at the sneakers of the basketball's gods, LeBron James would have been charming.

The banner will never be hung at Staples Center, not even the slimmest of chances, making the Lakers' clinching of the Pacific Division a mere sidebar to the bigger event Thursday night. They entered one of the more feverish NBA milieus and beat back the San Antonio Spurs, more than salvaging a three-game trip against playoff-worthy teams in the Western Conference.

Lakers Coach Phil Jackson has never shied away from zinging players. Friday was no different. He picked at the play of Sasha Vujacic and Vladimir Radmanovic, reserves who have had to take on larger roles because of a spate of injuries. Jackson's unhappiness with Vujacic began when the fifth-year pro picked up a late technical foul Tuesday during a loss to New Orleans.

A little over a week after leaving the team in New York, Lakers center Andrew Bynum appeared at practice Monday and gave Lakers Coach Phil Jackson an update on his injury. Bynum suffered a torn medial collateral ligament in his right knee Jan. 31 against the Memphis Grizzlies and after getting an exam in New York the next day, he was told he would be out eight to 12 weeks. Jackson said Bynum informed him that he had flexibility in the knee and he showed off a brace he was wearing.

The Lakers will officially close the books on their championship season with Wednesday's victory parade and a few days' worth of individual exit meetings, but one question won't be answered amid all the confetti and congratulations. What's next? The Lakers will experience a flurry of activity between now and mid-July, starting with the draft June 25, in which they have the 29th, 42nd and 59th picks. Then the real decisions begin with free agency.

Phil Jackson was immersed in a two-month trek that included stops in Bora Bora, New Zealand and Australia, where he caught lobsters and cooked them under the stars with one of his former players, Luc Longley. Never in the early stages of 2005 did he envision returning to the Lakers, who had signed Rudy Tomjanovich to a five-year, $30-million deal as Jackson's successor in the summer of 2004. But Tomjanovich quit abruptly in February 2005, and Jackson returned to the Lakers four months later.

Andrew Bynum wasn't the only member of the Lakers reduced to a spectator last season. Trevor Ariza practically was too. A broken foot kept him out of the first two playoff rounds, and he was mainly an afterthought in the Western Conference finals (10 minutes) and NBA Finals (13 points in 35 minutes). Ariza, however, wasn't a no-show Sunday against Utah.

Staff writer Mike Bresnahan ties up some loose ends on days of Lakers playoff games: That didn't take long. The Orlando Magic lost the first two games of the Finals, enough for Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi to publicly question Magic center Dwight Howard. "The fact is, Dwight is too predictable in the paint," Bianchi wrote. "Because his moves are so basic, Lakers defenders seem to know what he's going to do when he catches the ball.