Showtime!

The LA Lakers look dominant this season

By Mark Fisher

y favourite time of the year
when it comes to sports is
April to June, when the

NHL and NBA playoffs are both in full
swing. The long regular season drags on
for seemingly forever, but we’re finally

about to get to the exciting part. And the

most exciting team to watch—in either
of those leagues—is the LA Lakers.

The Lakers have torn through the
rest of the league this season, and will
finish the regular season with the best
record in the Western Conference for
the second year in a row. The Lakers,
up until recently known as the Kobe
Bryant Show, featuring a bunch of
people whose job it is to give Kobe
the ball, has turned into the most well-
balanced team in the league. Any other
squad that is matched up against them
in the playoffs will have a hell of a time
trying to stop them, but it will be fun to
watch them try.

Kobe Bryant has been a changed
player over these past two seasons. It’s
hard to believe that this is the same
guy who two years ago who threw a fit
and demanded to be traded because he
thought the Lakers would never be able
to compete for another championship.
The Lakers have made some key trades
since that time to improve their line-up,
but the most important trade they made
was getting rid of the old ball-hogging,
teammate-hating, hissy-fit-throwing, bi-
polar, immature Kobe, and in exchange
getting the polite, unselfish, spotlight-
sharing, ball-passing, coach-respecting,
play-making, behaving-like-an-adult
Kobe. That exchange would have been
worth at least a first round draft pick,
but it didn’t cost the Lakers a cent.

The LA Lakers are so much more
than just Kobe’s team, however. Even
if you took away Bryant, the rest of the
Lakers would still be one of the NBA’s
better teams. Derek Fisher, Trevor
Ariza, Lamar Odom, and Pau Gasol are
a first rate starting line-up. The Lakers’
bench includes solid players like Sasha
Vujacic, Jordan Farmar, and Luke
Walton, each of whom can each light
it up and have a huge impact on the
game. And there’s also Andrew Bynum,
the seven foot tall centre who has been
injured for a significant portion of the
season, but is expected to return to the
line-up just before the first round of the
postseason. With so many good players,
other teams have hard time matching
the Lakers talent. Kobe himself can
score enough to put a team away, and
double teaming Kobe just leaves open
players like Derek Fisher, who is one
of the best three-point shooters in the
league right now (and Vujacic isn’t

   

far behind). The Lakers can be one of
the fastest teams in the league when
Farmar and Vujacic are on the floor.
With Gasol and Bynum they’ Il have a
size advantage over most teams, and
won't be at a disadvantage against other
teams with big line-ups, like Boston
and Cleveland. When Kobe is having
an off-night, any number of players can
step up. Gasol in particular has been

on a roll lately, having had two 30-
points-plus games when Kobe was hurt.
Finally, the Lakers are coached by Phil
Jackson, one of the greatest coaches in
the history of the NBA (he’s tied for
most championships ever at nine, will
this be the year he becomes the only
coach ever to win ten?)

Overall, this year’s Lakers seem
to be a better team than the one last
year that made it to the NBA finals and
lost to the Boston Celtics in six games.
Many are already predicting them
to go all the way this year, but there
is one weakness that may still haunt
them. Despite how great they are, their
confidence might be shattered. After
Boston won the first two games of last
year’s finals, the Lakers were never
able to put up much of a fight. Despite
all of their advancements this season,
if any team can win the first two games
against the Lakers, or even two out of
the first three, they will likely be able
to win the rest of the series without too
much difficulty. In last year’s finals the
Lakers lost every road game, which is
why home-court advantage in the finals
this year will be supremely important.
If Eastern Conference powerhouses
Boston, Cleveland and Orlando want
to win the Championship this year,
they would be well advised to play the
remaining regular season games like the
championship depended on it, because
in a possible finals match-up with the
Lakers it probably will.

 

&

   

al Sots,

Meltdown in Montreal

By Garth McLennan
Sports Editor

2008-09 marks the 100" year that

the Montreal Canadiens have been

in existence, and at the outset of the
season, everyone was looking to
make their centennial a huge success.
On and off the ice, the results have
been mixed to say the least.

On the positive side, Montreal
was awarded this year’s all-star game
to commemorate their anniversary,
and it was the best run and most
professional game of its kind in
years. A number of Canadiens were
nominated by fans to start the game
and Montreal’s Alexei Kovalev
was named captain of the Eastern
Conference team and by the end of
the night had picked up all-star game
MVP honours. Back in November.
they pulled off the very classy jersey
retirement of the best goalie they’ ve
ever known, Patrick Roy.

They kicked off the season on a
high note as well with a red hot 8-1-2
beginning to the campaign. Basically,
around the New Year, everything
seemed to be in perfect shape and
was unfolding smoothly, as planned.

However, since then, things have

only gone downhill with a nose-
diving on ice record and a string of
controversial and very public off-ice
occurrences.

The team’s ongoing issues with
Kovalev, whose play had dropped
off the map since the all-star game,
culminated in mid-February when
GM Bob Gainey sent him home
for two games to pull his lacklustre
game back together. Shortly after,
the Kostitsyn brothers, Andrei and
Sergei, were linked to a Montreal-
area mobster involved in drugs,
gambling and weapons offenses. Not
too long after that report came out,
Sergei was demoted to the minors,
although he has since been recalled.

Fragile captain Saku Koivu went
down yet again with what must be
his 1000" career injury by now while
second line center Robert Lang, who
was expected to carry a portion of

the offensive load this season, went
down with a severe, season-ending
ankle injury. Goaltender Carrey Price,
who has been hailed as the next Ken
Dryden for the Canadiens, suffered

a debilitating ankle injury and a
prolonged slump that he has still not
emerged from and has cost him the
starting goalie’s job.

All of this has combined with
Montreal tanking in the Eastern
Conference standings while clubs
such as Florida and Buffalo have
surged. Gainey failed to land Mats
Sundin throughout a long process and
wasn’t able to pull the trigger on a
blockbuster deal at the March trade
deadline. On March 9", with just
16 regular season games remaining
and the Canadiens sliding perilously
close to outside the top eight, Gainey
axed highly touted head coach Guy
Carbonneau and replaced him with
himself. Matters were made worse
when Carbonneau went to the media
and publicly questioned the decision.

The coaching switch did little do
change the team’s on-ice performance
however, and Montreal currently
sits eighth in the conference, with
a narrow one point lead on the
Panthers. While they’ve struggled

 

just to keep their heads above water,
Philadelphia, Carolina, Pittsburgh
and the New York Rangers have all
passed them.

Now, another bombshell was
dropped when team owner George
Gillett announced that he was
strongly considering selling the
Canadiens due to the floundering
economy. If Gillett is being forced to
sell off the franchise then things must
be bad for him, running the Montreal
Canadiens is practically a license to
print money.

Of course, if the Canadiens
qualify for the playoffs and manage
to do some post-season damage then
all of the above headaches will be
quickly forgotten. It’s just a bit of a
shame that things are falling apart so
fast for such a historic club during
such a historic year.

7