Monday, January 21, 2008

Trevor Ariza breaks, basketball cries, Kwame burns and burns

Trevor Ariza breaks, basketball cries, Kwame burns and burns

It's hard, as a pro hoops fan, not to be a little ticked about Trevor Ariza's potential broken foot.

The 6-9 jumping jack was a fun watch during New York's disastrous 2004-05 run and the organization's desultory 2005-06 campaign. Traded to Orlando in February of 2006, the sound defender and high-riser floundered a bit due to inconsistent minutes before finding new life as Los Angeles's do-it-all wing after being traded to the Lakers last month.

Apparently, on Sunday and in the midst of a typical practice, Ariza came down on teammate Derek Fisher's foot. A broken right foot is the diagnosis, at least it isn't his left (jumping) foot, and we've yet to hear how long Trevor is out for. Either way, with Andrew Bynum already out until late March, this isn't welcome news for a Laker team that traded two rotation players to (smartly) acquire Ariza's services over a month ago.

And yet, that doesn't mean we're above having a little fun at Phil Jackson's expense.

Phil's a blinkin' basketball genius, and his outlook on the non-basketball aspects of life are one of the reasons we do what we do, for however long people are going to let "us" do it.

That said, his combination of hyperbole and stark candidness never fails to entertain. Here he is talking about Los Angeles' matchup with Denver's Marcus Camby, who is averaging a league-leading 3.95 blocked shots while "falling" second with a 21.9 rebound rate and a 14.3 rebounds per game average:

"It's not about his one-on-one defense. It's his team defense that Camby's renowned for," Jackson said. "We're definitely going to go in to Kwame against Camby. His size and his power against him is obviously a strength that we have."

Yikes. It makes sense, you'd like to have a center that someone like Marcus Camby would have to guard one on one, but those things don't really exist much these days, and it's a bit odd to hear Phil borderline-trumpeting Los Angeles' hope that their center's "power against [Camby]" will be enough to mitigate Marcus' other advantages over the Lake Show.

Ah, crap. I forgot that Kwame Brown is the "Kwame" in that quote, which is my bad, even though I've never met or heard of another "Kwame" in my 27 years.� Kwame Brown is the only real big that Jackson is left with in this instance, his legion of 6-8 backup power forwards really don't count, and I still feel like acting so adult now.

For a spell, at least. You know what? Forget it:

If you've ever met a "Kwame" in your life that doesn't hate/love cake as much as a certain "Kwame Brown," then let us know.

Here it is: let me know at kdonhoops (at) yahoo dot com

If you've ever heard of another man named "Kwame," and Google searches don't count (there needs to be some anecdotal evidence here), then we'll include Kwame's last name in any post we put together from here on out.

Until then, he's "Kwame." He might as well be a pretentious blankety-blank that plays bass for the Police. Let's change that.



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