A treatise on the history of the Lakers

The Lakers have been an exceptionally successful franchise. The team has failed to reach the playoffs only five times in 60 years. They have won 14 NBA titles and 21 conference championships during that time.

In the last 30 years, the Lakers have won 8 titles and missed the playoffs just twice, in addition to winning the WCF 14 times. 16 times they've made it to the conference finals.

That means that over half the time over the last three decades L.A. is one of the four best teams in the league, and often the best.

Any time the Lakers look like they're about to take a downturn, something saves the franchise from being mediocre. In 1975, the Lakers traded Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman to the Bucks for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

In 1979, it'd been almost a decade since the Lakers' last title. Somehow the team acquired the number one pick (they won 47 games in the 78-79 season) and got Magic Johnson.

In 1983, they again had the first pick overall in the draft (despite winning 58 games the season prior) and acquired James Worthy.

In 1996, the Lakers had not won a championship for five years. Things were not looking good, and then the Hornets traded the rights to Kobe Bryant to L.A for Vlade Divac, who left Charlotte after two seasons to sign with the Kings as a free agent.

In 1999, the Kobe and Shaq Lakers had the talent to win it all but could not get it done. Suddenly, Phil Jackson wanders into town and they immediately win three straight championships.

And then in 2008, five years removed from the last of those three championship runs, they trade Kwame Brown for Pau Gasol and are right back in the thick of things.

It's interesting to me that the Lakers somehow manage to attain first overall draft picks and extremely favorable trades on a consistent basis. Teams would kill to be the beneficiaries of just one trade like those listed above.

Can someone please explain how the Jazz can manage the same thing? I'd like to receive first overall picks after winning 50 games the season prior. I'd like to trade Andrei for Dwight Howard. I'd like to move Jarron Collins, Matt Harpring and Brevin Knight for Dwyane Wade. How can I realize this dream?

Regression

Congratulations on a spectacularly underwhelming 2008-2009 NBA season, the Utah Jazz. Sure, the plethora of injuries had a major impact on the first half of the season, but then to throw up stink bomb after stink bomb even after your star players were all healthy... that took some skill.

We all enjoyed your historically bad road record, which wouldn't be so troubling if you were merely a horrible team, but you consistently won at home, showing us glimpses of what you could do if only you would.

And the crowning jewel of the season has to be the trend of going down by 20+ points to your opponent, then rallying back to make it close in the final minutes, only to ultimately fail. I must've seen that movie 20 times this year, and you even capped off your season by going through these same motions yet again in last night's loss to the Lakers.

The Jazz organization needs to make changes. When you go from the Conference Finals to a second-round exit to a first-round exit in succeeding years with the exact same players, something is wrong. I'd like to see Boozer and Okur leave, but that's not likely.

Bottom line, if Utah fields essentially the same team for 2009-2010, I think I'll be taking a break from them. No living and dying with the team, no watching every game I can. Sure, I'll root for them to win, but I'll be investing a lot less into the venture.

Prove me wrong, guys.

Jazz-Lakers, Game 2

(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

I was playing pickup basketball for most of the game last night, but managed to catch the last five minutes or so after I got home.

I think this sums up my experience with the Jazz this season: with Utah down 3 points with 3:16 to go, I had zero confidence that the Jazz would win this winnable game. Zero.

With that said, here are the reactions of some bloggers and sportswriters, compiled by Ball Don't Lie.

Talk Hoops: "Somewhere, I like to think that John Stockton, Karl Malone, Jeff Foster, Greg Ostertag, and Adam Keefe are sitting in a bar somewhere in Park City, Utah and I can imagine them all knee-deep in a pitcher of Harp beer with nothing but silence and a single tear running down each man's face. Because this defensive effort by the Utah Jazz has just been atrocious. It's been really bad all season long but in the first two games of the playoffs, it's bad enough to make Alex English think to himself, "Jesus Christ guys! Let's try moving our feet a little bit out there." The only time that the Utah Jazz looked semi-competent on defense was when the Lakers got sloppy with their outlet passes and seemed to not be very sure where the double team was coming from. Other than that, it was the Harlem Globetrotters played by the Lakers and the Washington Generals on quailudes played by the Jazz."

Lakers Blog: "Say what you want about the Jazz not being as good as the Lakers (and they're not), but Jerry Sloan teams are as likely to lay down in surrender as a Monty Python knight. A continual fight is guaranteed, especially in the playoffs. But nothing witnessed convinced me that Utah has the slightest prayer of taking this series. I'm not even convinced they can play much better, and they never truly threatened to snatch victory from the Lakers' mitts. I imagine balling in Salt Lake will recharge the Jazz's batteries, and probably enough to help avoid a sweep. But that's about the extent of the success, because save a total Laker collapse, they're just not good enough. End of story."

Tim Buckley, Deseret News: 'They shot lights out,' [Deron] Williams said. 'This is a team that tries to blow you away early.' And often does. The Lakers opened 15-of-17 from the field, and finished those first 12 minutes 18-for-21 with just three turnovers. Denver once scored 43 against Utah in the first quarter of a 1985 postseason game. But that 85.7 shooting percentage is the highest ever in a quarter by a Jazz opponent in the playoffs, eclipsing 82.4 percent that Seattle once shot back in 1993."

True Blue Jazz: "I think we can officially declare that the Jazz suck at defense. 86% for the 1st quarter? 60% for the game? I mean, there's no way you win playing like that. I don't know if it is Sloan's system ('hack away and give up the trey') or just the fact that the players aren't buying whatever he's selling, but something needs to change. It cannot be that easy for the Lakers, I don't care if their bigs are going up against guys that have no advantage at all against them. Either change the system or (in the off-season) change the players. Sloan needs to get it too ... if guys aren't buying in, play guys that will (or at least might ... we don't know because they haven't played in forever). And if it's just that this team doesn't fit the system ... change the system. Anything. I don't know how, but change it. This past month has shown us some horrible defense by the Jazz ... and while the team might've 'flipped the switch' offensively, it certainly hasn't flipped on the defensive end."

Yep. If the Jazz management doesn't blow this team up over the summer, I'm done investing my time and energy in them. There are some major flaws that need to be addressed. Keep Deron, Millsap, maybe Brewer, get rid of the rest.

Something has to be done.

In honor of today's game

From the Garbage Time All-Stars blog:

"Hey! People respected us as recently as February!" sums up the 2008/2009 Utah Jazz season quite well, in my opinion.

What kills me is that the only problems that exist here are mental. Okay, so Boozer isn't 100% healthy, but he's around 90%, right? The problems here are about team chemistry, effort, hustle and heart. 

This means that the Jazz are capable of hanging with the Lakers, if they can get over the issues they're dealing with. 

Let's just say I'm not holding my breath.

BYU Football, 2009 edition

ESPN.com's Graham Watson feature on BYU, posted today.

Ask any BYU fan, player, coach, or even opponent, and they probably have a theory as to why BYU, the highest-ranked non-BCS team to start 2008, imploded in every big game it played last season.

The Cougars were too tense, too overconfident, too absorbed with all the hype that surrounded the program, too insert-a-theory-here. The team has heard it all.

I like the angle. After all the hype the Cougars were getting last summer, the approach of investigating what went wrong a few months after the fact seems like a good idea.

Give it a read.

Jazz fall-apartitude

Remember back when the Jazz were on an 11-game winning streak, and only 2 games out of second place in the West?

Yeah, good times.

Then Utah decided to go on a tear, winning 8 of their next 18 games, and here we are. The Jazz sit in the eight spot in the conference, with the possibility to move up to as high as the 6-seed, depending entirely on the play of other teams.

Utah will be seeded:

#6 if Jazz win and Hornets and Mavericks lose.

#7 if Jazz win and either the Hornets or Mavericks win (but not both).

#8 if Jazz lose OR Hornets and Mavericks win.

So bottom line, if the Lakers want to play Utah in the first round, they just have to beat them tonight. 

Or, if they'd rather face someone else, they can up their chances to do so by letting the Jazz win, most likely by resting their starters. 

Of course, as the Jazz have shown recently against Golden State, playing scrubs against Utah is no guarantee of failure. 

What a difference a month makes.

The most popular video on Youtube

Okay, so technically it's the most popular video on the most popular channel on Youtube. But still, holy cow.