Nba Championship

Lakers Coach Phil Jackson delivered an ominous message about his future with the team after L.A. was blown out by the Thunder, 91-75, on Friday night. Jackson sat in his office after a game in which the Lakers trailed by as much as 33 points, his legs crossed. Before the game, Jackson said he made "no decision" on whether he would coach the Lakers next season. After the game, Jackson seemed to be pushed in a direction by his team's horrible play. "After tonight, asking me that question when the team doesn't respond to your coaching, you're setting yourself up for a hypothetical like, ‘If they're not going to respond to your coaching, why do you want to come back and coach them?

Less than a month from now, the playoffs will start and the Lakers will brace themselves to try to defend their NBA championship. But the road they must travel to a repeat will be difficult. That was a topic Lakers owner Jerry Buss and Coach Phil Jackson discussed Monday while the team picture was taken at the practice facility in El Segundo. Buss and Jackson recalled the challenge the Lakers faced when they were trying to win their third consecutive NBA championship in 2002.

The Toronto Raptors challenged the Lakers, doing a lot of talking in the process. The Raptors dared the Lakers, strutting around Staples Center on Tuesday night as if they owned the arena, as if they owned the Lakers. The Raptors mouthed-off to the Lakers, clearly not intimidated by the defending NBA champions. All of that bothered Lakers forward Lamar Odom to no end, even though the Lakers defeated Toronto, 109-107, on a 17-foot jump shot by Kobe Bryant with 1.9 seconds left.

Sunday's big game at Staples Center, Lakers versus Denver Nuggets, presents a different challenge for fans in attendance: clapping with your fingers crossed. The clapping will be for good basketball, great plays, outstanding athletic performance. Also, for a Lakers victory. The crossed fingers will be for George Karl. Assuming he feels well enough, Karl will be the squat, 58-year-old guy prowling the Nuggets' sideline. He will yell sometimes, but mostly, he will have his hands crossed over his chest, watching, plotting and trying to figure out Phil Jackson's next move before Jackson makes it. He will probably be a bit less active than in the past.

It happens every day: A young life is snuffed out in an automobile accident. It's always an incomprehensible tragedy. How could someone so strong and vibrant -- so alive -- be gone in an instant? And sometimes the story of a life and death touches us almost as if the victim had been a neighbor, a friend, even a relative. Most of the people who contributed to the memorial in front of Angel Stadium for 22-year-old pitcher Nick Adenhart had never spoken to him. But they felt they somehow knew him, and their sense of loss was real.

Broderick Turner covers the Lakers for the Times. Readers' questions about the Lakers will be answered every week. Question: I would like to see the Lakers acquire a veteran point guard to share the clutch minutes with Derek Fisher. Then Shannon Brown can provide the spark off the bench. I think they should be able to get something decent (in a trade) for Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic (he might be harder to move because he's getting paid so much to sit on the bench). I mentioned those two because I'm finished with them as Lakers.

Imagine a Lakers' backcourt of Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. Close your eyes for a few seconds and envision the Magic Man pounding the rock on the fast break, his eyes darting, options all over the place and on the wing is Bryant, out-running everyone to make sure he's in Johnson's line of sight for one of those beautiful passes. Yeah, it's just a dream, but as we celebrate the Lakers' 50th anniversary of producing magical moments in Los Angeles, of producing some of the best basketball players the NBA has ever seen, the best Lakers' guard duo would have to be Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant.

The Lakers won 65 games in the regular season, followed it up with their 15th NBA championship and then took part in a day-long party downtown before scattering for three months, going their separate ways with a lifetime's worth of memories rolled into a nine-month period. What next? As they begin a new season tonight against the Clippers, with a wealth of talent and an abundance of expectations, there's a question being bandied about quietly. Can the Lakers beat the almost mythical regular-season record for victories in a season, set by the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan in 1995-96 on the way to an NBA championship?

Less than a month after the Lakers won the NBA championship, after he made two momentous three-point shots in Game 4 of the NBA Finals and after the parade down Figueroa and the celebration at the Coliseum, Derek Fisher was back at work in the gym. He refused to rest on the team's accomplishment of winning the franchise's 15th title. Fisher wanted to get his body in the right shape to help the Lakers repeat and, equally important, to show that he is fit to play beyond this season.

Two teams of deputies fanned out across Los Angeles County early Thursday morning, hoping to find a reputed gang member involved in the violence that broke out in June after the Lakers won the NBA championship. In the end, three alleged gang members were arrested on suspicion of parole violations unrelated to the nighttime unrest outside Staples Center, where crowds looted several stores, smashed car windows and vandalized police cars and MTA buses, authorities said. But the gang member whom deputies were seeking was not at the Porter Ranch halfway house to which he was assigned as part of his parole, said Lt. Erik Ruble of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's transit services bureau.