Lucas

It was minutes after the Lakers' victory over the Golden State Warriors on Sunday night, and the crowd streaming out of Staples Center was ebullient. In a luxury suite high above the basketball floor, the Tang family lingered to take pictures. Two-year-old Lucas Anthony Tang posed with his parents and his 11-year-old sister in front of a glass barrier meant to protect fans from the steep drop below. But as the family reviewed the pictures on their digital camera, they lost track of Lucas.

Maurice Lucas, the menacing NBA power forward who was dreaded on the floor and beloved off it, died Sunday of bladder cancer in Portland, Ore. He was 58. An icon in Portland, Lucas was a four-time NBA All-Star, playing 12 seasons with six teams, including one with the Lakers in 1985-86. Arriving in Portland from the American Basketball Assn., Lucas formed a menacing tandem with Bill Walton as the Trail Blazers caught lightning in a bottle, winning the 1977 NBA title in their first season together.

About 150 family members, friends and surf enthusiasts gathered here Thursday for what was called a celebration of the life of Lucas Ransom, the UC Santa Barbara student killed by a shark last week. Some wore T-shirts with the slogan "Ask me about Luke. " Several dozen paddled into the ocean to drop flowers and say prayers for the 19-year-old. Others released green balloons, which carried messages of love and support. "He was the platonic ideal ? he just happened to be here in form," said his cousin Bob Brigham, 32, an Internet consultant from Chico.

Six-foot waves were breaking when Lucas Ransom and his longtime buddy Matthew Garcia arrived at Surf Beach west of Lompoc on Friday morning. No wind, glassy conditions ? they agreed it was going to be a great session for Garcia on his surfboard and Lucas on his beat-up red bodyboard. Before they plunged into the chilly waters, Ransom pulled out his cellphone. "You wouldn't believe these waves, Mom. I can't wait to get to them," he told Candace Ransom, who said have fun, call afterward.

"You have served me camel. " "No, no, it's goat. " "It's camel," said Lucas, the driver. "Goat," said the waiter. Unconvinced, but with limited dining options, Lucas spooned meat and gristle from a silver bowl onto his rice. He ate quickly. This wasn't his kind of place, this outpost of herders, mechanics, butchers and a few Lutheran missionaries scattered at the fringe of a refugee camp. He would be here one night, then back to Nairobi. The guesthouse, where he parked his SUV behind a metal gate, seemed safe enough and the manager, a tall man with a short broom in his hands, had a reassuring, timeless face, one you could count on when darkness fell.

The Ducks hadn't played their first exhibition game yet but the pungent aroma of sweaty hockey equipment had unmistakably spread throughout their locker room Tuesday morning. To Luca Sbisa, it was sweet perfume. "It feels great to be back in this dressing room. I certainly missed it," he said. The 20-year-old defenseman, acquired from Philadelphia in the Chris Pronger trade, started last season with the Ducks but was returned to his junior team after eight games. He wasn't happy, but he used the time to refine his game in the Western Hockey League and with the Swiss Olympic team at the Vancouver Games, where he was thrust into a defensive role and thrived.

Parents, beware! The children of America are sneaking onto your laptops and borrowing your iPhones to watch an addictive, viral video campaign. Fortunately, the purveyor of these videos is neither a political extremist nor a sexual predator, but instead a cheerful, ambitious teenager from the Midwest named Lucas Cruikshank. A 17-year-old high school junior, Cruikshank lives with his large, happy family in Nebraska. For the last few years, he has been posting homemade videos to YouTube as his alter ego, an insane 6-year-old named Fred Figglehorn.

"Star Wars" was born a long time ago, but not all that far, far away. In 1972, filmmakers George Lucas and Gary Kurtz were toiling on "American Graffiti" in their San Rafael office when they began daydreaming about a throwback sci-fi adventure that channeled the old "Flash Gordon" serials as opposed to the bleak "message" movies that had taken over the genre. "We had no idea what we were starting," says Kurtz, who was the producer of the first two "Star Wars" films and also a second-unit director.

Gary Lucas cracked open the door. Donnie Moore and Dave Henderson pushed their way through it to the Angels' shame and Boston Red Sox fame, but neither would have made it without Lucas' help. And Lucas knows it. "If I do my job that night, perhaps he's still with us," the former Angels reliever says of Moore, his troubled former teammate, who later shot himself. "I don't know if that's even relative, but it's certainly something I've thought about." Angels fans remember the situation: Oct. 12, 1986, top of the ninth inning at Anaheim Stadium, Game 5 of the American League Championship Series.

As employees finalized the placement of ads and not quite 50 fans looked on at the stadium at Hermosa Beach, Lucas Black dived for a ball and didn't get back up. In the third match he and partner Mike Nelson played Friday at the AVP Hermosa Beach Open, Black dislocated his left shoulder. After medics taped up the shoulder, Black returned to the court and finished the match, which the pair won in two games. "I could still move," Black said. "I had one good arm." As play opened Friday, 94 men's teams and 68 women's teams competed for 16 spots in main draw play, which begins Saturday.