Spring Loaded

No one will ever accuse me of being a great athlete.

Or even an athlete, for that matter.

But the one thing I do pretty well is play ping-pong. Okay, not exactly a sport in the minds of some, but those are small minds. Hey, there’s a ball. What more do you need to qualify?

Anyway, back in my days as a Laker beat writer, I got into a battle of the paddles with Bob McAdoo in a rec room at the Cleveland hotel where we were staying.

McAdoo may have been a three-time NBA scoring champion and the league’s MVP in 1975, but on the ping-pong table he was mine.

I beat him, giving me bragging rights that certainly impressed my friends.

McAdoo didn’t mention our game again for year. Then, we found ourselves back in the same Cleveland hotel.

McAdoo casually asked if I wanted to play again, I obliged, looking for the back-to-back. Instead, McAdoo solidly whipped me.

When we were done, he admitted that he had gone out and bought a ping-pong table after losing to me, He spent a year honing his game, waiting for the return trip to Cleveland.

Imagine that, an NBA player on the Showtime Lakers in the midst of their championship years obsessing about losing a ping-pong match.

McAdoo validated the old cliché about athletes being so competitive that they hate to lose at anything, even if its tiddlywinks.

Nice cliché, but not always true. Many athletes, lugging around those big egos, won’t play another sport if they don’t think they can win.

I bring that up because of the new ABC sports/reality show, "Shaq Vs." Each week, Shaquille O’Neal takes on a star athlete in the sport that athlete excels.

Okay, “takes on” might be stretching it a bit.

In the first episode, he squared off against the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger in a battle of quarterbacks.

Sort of.

Each of them got three possessions in a seven-on-seven format with no kicking allowed. Either get the ball in the end zone or get a big, fat zero on the scoreboard. There was no rushing allowed by the



defense and Shaq started from the opponents’ 20-yard line while Roethlisberger began from the 40.

Given enough time to run out a 24-second clock, Shaq was eventually going to find an open receiver. Especially if the defenders had read the script.

Still, he showed a good arm, throwing one bomb for a TD, and hung in there until losing on the last possession.

In the coming weeks, Shaq will take on champions in everything from beach volleyball to boxing.

Sure, it’s just entertainment. Yes, the rules will be bent and the opponents will flow with the story line. But, as Roethlisberger demonstrated at the end, he wasn’t about to lose at his own sport, entertainment or no entertainment.

When they had the old Superstars competition, all the athletes competed in sports other than their own. But none of them were competing in their own sport.

Shaq has put his ego aside, no small feat, and allowed himself to enter arenas where he can’t possibly win in order to bask in the glow of his own show.

He even allowed footage of his loss to Roethlisberger in a game of HORSE to be shown.

What’s the big deal, you say. It’s only dancing with the stars in cleats. Who cares?

Many athletes would care, would not want to be seen losing to anybody in anything.

But Shaq, the man who has long referred to himself as the best basketball player on the planet, the man who resorted to bitter rips at Kobe Bryant after leaving the Lakers, seems to be genuinely enjoying his new status as an elder statesman of his sport, anxious to leave the bitter image behind and dispel the idea that he’s not a good sport.

For the sequel, I’d love to see Shaq Vs. Mac as in McAdoo.

Or, how about Shaq Vs. Kobe?

Think that might get some good numbers?

There wasn’t even a hint of doubt in the voice on the other end of the line.

“It’s a little late for this season,” said the NFL executive, “but there is no question you’ll have a team by next season. No question.”

It was June of 1995. I was sitting in an Oakland hotel room doing a story on the return of the Raiders after 13 seasons in Los Angeles.

The second shoe had dropped. Earlier that year, the Rams had deserted Orange County for St. Louis.

The reaction of fans to the loss of two teams? A collective shrug of the shoulders. We’re L.A. The NFL needs us more than we need it.

Fourteen years later, with yet another NFL season looming, I am still waiting to see if that is true.

It’s been 14 years of false starts, bad rumors, proposed stadium sites, planned environmental reports, empty promises and broken dreams.

There was even an attempt by the Seattle Seahawks to force the issue by simply packing up moving vans with equipment and heading on down to Southern California.

Once the NFL got involved, however, those vans headed right back up the road where they came from.

The barrier to an NFL return to L.A. is double-barreled: Who will play and where they will play?

All the teams who have threatened to move in recent seasons seemed to have stopped thinking the grass is greener in Hollywood. And there are no expansion plans being drawn up.

Nor are there any stadium blueprints ready for serious consideration. From Irwindale to the City of Commerce to Carson to Dodger Stadium to Inglewood, proposals have been floated, bloated and busted.

Inglewood was the most viable. Raider owner Al Davis had a solid offer from the NFL for a stadium adjacent to Hollywood Park racetrack, but Davis turned his back on it and headed north.

The NFL still refuses to consider the Coliseum even though the USC Trojans pack it on Saturdays without a problem.

And so, as we head into the 2009 season, I’m sending this status report to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

“Dear Roger,

We’ve got the Lakers and the Dodgers, the Trojans and the Bruins, the Angels and the Ducks. And yes, even the Clippers and the Kings. We’ve got Kobe and Manny. We’ve got the sun and the sand, the mountains and the ocean.

And we’ve got every NFL game we want beamed into our homes. We’ve got our fantasy leagues and our Super Bowl parties.

You want to enrich our sports experience even further, Roger, you know where to find us. But as you well know, we don’t pay the freight. We don’t pay for expansion teams. We don’t pay for new stadiums.

That was true back in the days when we actually had public funds to disburse. It’s even more so now that our state is bankrupt and our city’s unemployment lines are long.

Your organization has the billionaires. You’re the ones with the TV money and the gate receipts and enough merchandise to fill Jerry Jones’ new billion-plus stadium.

When Staples Center was going up, an attempt was made to subsidize part of the cost with public funds.

The Staples folks pleading poverty? Ple-e-e-ase.

We weren’t moved.

They built it anyway and, somehow, some way, with the Lakers and the Clippers and the Kings and the concerts and the awards shows and the political convention, they have eked out a living.

We think you could probably do the same, Roger. So give us a call if you’re interested, but we don’t expect it to happen. With the No. 1 sport in the country, you are doing just fine without us, and with the No. 1 sports market in the country, we are doing just fine without you.

You know what they say: "You can’t beat L.A.”

Vacations are supposed to clear your head and sharpen your focus, ultimately giving you all the answers you were looking for. For me, the time away from sports has just left me with more questions, such as:

-- Did the Lakers really trade Scottie Pippen for Dennis Rodman?

If Trevor Ariza grows as much in the next few seasons – and we’re not talking height here – as he did this past season, he has a chance to become a Pippen-like player. Remember, Ariza is only 24, leaving plenty of time for development.

Ron Artest, on the other hand, could just as easily regress. Every time you think he has put the ugly days behind him, doused the trigger fuse that exploded so memorably in the seats at Auburn Hills, he snaps again and gets himself ejected at a crucial moment in a crucial game as he did against the Lakers in this year’s playoffs.

-- How long until word leaks out of a Laker practice that Artest got back into Kobe’s face?

-- Will I be furiously trying to de-Google this blog a year from now when Artest is standing arm in arm with Kobe atop the lead bus in next year’s victory parade.

Much higher rollers than I have gone broke betting against Jerry Buss, with or without a full house in their hands. The guy is only working on his third dynasty, three more than 99 percent of sports owners ever see. He was criticized almost 30 years ago for giving a two-year veteran named Magic Johnson a 25-year, $25-million contract, unheard of at the time, questioned for getting rid of his center, Vlade Divac, before he had secured the desired replacement, Shaquille O’Neal, and then blasted for trading Shaq for a trio that included Lamar Odom, best known then for his disappearing act.

-- Now that we’ve seen the Staples Center hardwood floor on the Coliseum grass surrounded by 80,000 to 90,000 fans, how long until the Lakers stage a game there?

-- Can we all chill out on the LeBron James criticism?

So the guy didn’t shake hands with Orlando Magic or face the media after losing in the conference finals? Big deal. He’s competitive.

Maybe he ought to get a prescription for a female fertility drug. That might bring back the cheers.

-- How long before Shaq balks at playing second fiddle to LeBron? And you thought the Shaq-Kobe feud was nasty.

-- Has Blake Griffin asked to be traded yet?

-- Has T.O. asked to be traded yet?

-- Aren’t we overdue for an Al Davis threat to leave town?

-- Could we do away with the baseball All-Star Game and just stage the Home Run Derby?

-- Could we do away with the NFL Pro Bowl?

You think a lot of players asked out when the game was in Hawaii. Wait until you see how many come up with pulled hamstrings now that it has been moved back to the mainland.

-- Are you allowed to buy a ticket to an MMA event without showing your tattoo?

-- What turns the paying customers off more, a boxing match without Manny Pacquiao or a golf tournament without Tiger?

-- Oscar, care to reconsider your retirement decision?

-- Isn’t it sad that people got more excited over Mike Tyson’s punch in The Hangover than any punch thrown by a heavyweight in recent years?

-- Is Tiger golf’s best ever? He may keep pace with good friend Roger Federer by winning his 15th grand slam event, but until he matches Jack Nicklaus’ 18, Tiger is only No. 2 on the links.

-- Anybody notice that David Beckham has returned to these shores? Will anybody care when he leaves again?

-- Is it a bad sign for the Minnesota Vikings if Brett Favre uses his left hand to sign a contract with them?

Questions, questions, questions.

Let’s start with a basic fact.

Michael Jordan is not the greatest basketball player of all time. Never was. Never will be.

ESPN’s choice of him for Athlete of the Century back in 2000 was a joke. There were only three possibilities for that designation: Babe Ruth, who opened the door to sports for the general public like nobody else in the first half of the 20th century, Jackie Robinson, who opened the floodgates for African-Americans and, indeed, all minorities in the middle of the century, and Muhammad Ali, who put sports on the world stage like nobody else in the latter half of the century.

Michael Jordan? He didn’t win his first NBA title until 1991. And he ruled all ten decades? I don’t think so.

Which brings us to Kobe Bryant, who will soon be fitted for his fourth championship ring, an accomplishment being touted as another rung on his climb to catch or surpass Jordan.

After all, say those making the comparison, Jordan had six NBA titles, Bryant four, as if they alone exist in the basketball pantheon.

At age 30, with the best supporting cast in the game, Bryant certainly figures to move further up the ladder of greatness, but Jordan is hardly the only rung above him.

For starters, how about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? He also had six NBA titles. But he also won three championships in college at UCLA, while Jordan won only one NCAA title in his three seasons at North Carolina.

Kareem had such a big impact on the college game that the dunk was briefly outlawed during his reign because he was such a dominant force.

I know, I know, we’re supposed to be discussing NBA greats. But we’re also discussing basketball greats and the collegiate years should figure in that equation as well.

And finally, Kareem is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, another distinction that should put him higher on the ladder than Jordan.

But ultimately, there are two other giants who will settle this argument, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.

If it’s statistics you want, the argument ends with Chamberlain.

There has never been a force in the game like the 7-1, 275-pounder. He had 100 points in a single game, 55 rebounds in one game and a single-season scoring average of 50.4 points, records that will be probably never be broken.

But the standard for greatness in sports usually comes down to championships. And in that department, Russell dwarfs Chamberlain and everyone else who ever dribbled a ball.

Russell won 11 titles in 13 seasons, including eight in a row.

An eight-peat.

End of discussion.

While the roster of the Boston Celtics changed over that period, Russell was the constant. He changed the game by elevating defense to the same level of excellence as the offenses of his day.

And, he won his last two championships as player/coach, a status none of his rivals for greatest player ever attempted.

But, the argument goes, there were only eight teams in the NBA for the early part of Russell’s era.

Exactly. All the more reason to praise him. With the best talent concentrated on only eight teams, that made each of those squads tougher than many of the watered-down teams in existence today.

Fortunately, the NBA has finally recognized Russell’s greatness, 40 years after he left the game, by naming it’s NBA Finals MVP trophy after him.

Jordan may have been the greatest shoe salesman the game has ever known, but greatest player? I don’t think so.

For Bryant, the target is much higher.

Bill Russell was the greatest of all time.

Case closed.

He’s too intense.

He’s too serious.

He’s too arrogant.

He doesn’t show his opponents enough respect.

He’s taking all the joy out of winning.

Is that about it for Kobe Bryant or can we find something else to complain about?

Good thing he didn’t snub the media and opponents a la LeBron James. In Kobe’s case, that might have raised calls for his banishment.

All the nitpicking is about as damaging as throwing paper airplanes at a tank. Kobe just rolls over it the way he has rolled over the Orlando Magic in the NBA Finals.

He’s less than a week away from solidifying his place as the best basketball player on the planet and among a handful considered the best of all time. In the last year, Kobe has won an MVP award, an Olympic gold medal and will add his fourth NBA title this week, his first without Shaquille O’Neal.

“I want it so bad,” Kobe said after Game 1, as if he had to explain his intensity.

He’ll even make his critics happy next week after his mission is accomplished and the pressure is off. He’ll crack a huge smile when he raises the championship trophy over his head, embrace Dwight Howard, hug his own wife and kids and even joke with the media.

To be sure, Kobe was deserving of criticism in the past.

He was immature when he first turned pro, a teen-ager firing up those ill-advised airballs against Utah in the postseason of his rookie year.

But he was 17 when he was drafted and never had the benefit of college. Andrew Bynum has gotten more understanding about his immaturity and he’s in his fourth season.

Kobe got criticized for his share of the Kobe-Shaq feud.

Both men should have put the best interests of the team ahead of their own egos, but what did Kobe ever really demand of Shaq? That he stay in shape. Wow, what a radical idea.

Kobe was criticized for his give-me-the-ball-and-get-out-of-my-way or you-take-the-ball-and-leave-me-alone attitude and those detractors were justified.

Kobe seemed to struggle for a long time with the intricacies of integrating himself into the offense Feeling he could score any time he had the ball in his hands, he figured, why not?

Kobe, when he was on one of those tears, never threw a premeditated pass.

When he bowed to pressure and tried to share the ball with teammates, his method was to give it to them and get out of the way.

And certainly he received criticism when he was charged with sexual assault in Colorado. But, as we all know, those charges were dropped.

So now, what’s the beef?

Kobe has matured. He has become the consummate teammate, both on and off the court, sharing the ball and his advice, serving as Phil Jackson’s surrogate when necessary, equal parts cheerleader, disciplinarian, strategist and intermediary with the guys in the striped shirts. It is Kobe who makes sure the ball is evenly distributed and the scoring column as well when possible.

And when a sure-handed touch is needed in the scoring department, when the clock is running down, when the closer is needed out of the bullpen, Kobe is there as well, scoring at a pace and in a variety of ways that matches anyone who has ever stepped on the hardwood.

Even at the international level, it was Kobe who set the tone for the defensive mode that smoothed the path for the U.S. to Olympic gold in Beijing.

Last year, it was Chris Paul who was supposedly challenging Kobe’s place as the game’s best player. This season, it was LeBron. Next year, it’ll be another hot gunslinger.

Kobe is 30. He’s not going anywhere. The only people he should be compared with are Kareem, MJ, Wilt and Bill Russell.

To say that Michael Jordan is automatically the best who ever played is ludicrous. Russell had far more championships (11 in 13 seasons, including eight in a row). Kareem had six, the same number as Jordan, and is the league’s all-time leading scorer. You like numbers? Wilt was the greatest offensive force the game has ever known.

And now, Kobe has entered the conversation, clenched teeth and all.

The weekend in the rear view mirror:

The only thing missing from Sunday’s demolition of the L.A. Lakers by the Houston Rockets was Yao Ming pulling a Willis Reed, limping onto the court and taking a few shots to inspire his teammates…

Turns out, the Rockets didn’t need added inspiration. And it certainly helped that the Lakers didn’t have any of their own…

Maybe Yao is saving his Reed impersonation for a possible Game 7…

Imagine where this series would stand if both Yao and Tracy McGrady were at full strength and on the court…

Think Houston coach Rick Adelman sees purple and gold in his nightmares? He has previously been knocked out of the playoffs five times by the Lakers, twice with the Portland Trail Blazers and three times with the Sacramento Kings. Two of those five eliminations were sweeps. But the most traumatic series for him had to be in 2002 when his Kings fell short in the overtime of Game 7. That was the series which produced two games guaranteed to keep any coach awake for months: Robert Horry’s game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer in Game 4 and the suspicious cloud over the officiating in Game 6. Now Adelman is again looking at purple and gold with his top two players, Yao and McGrady, missing from the lineup. The Houston coach must have at least slept well Sunday night…

More than just this season’s title hopes are on the line for Kobe Bryant. There were the Jerry West-Elgin Baylor-Wilt Chamberlain Lakers, the Magic Johnson-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Lakers and the Shaquille O’Neal-Bryant Lakers. But, if Bryant wants to be up there with MJ, his role model, he needs to create a Kobe dynasty of his own. If not now, when?..

Enough already with flagrant fouls, both 1 and 2. Let’s make it real simple. If a defender is going for the ball, it’s a hard foul. Period. If he’s going for the player, it’s a flagrant foul. What Derek Fisher did to Luis Scola was a flagrant foul. What Ron Artest did to Pau Gasol was not…

Does the NBA really need to clamp down so much on hard fouls in general? The classic was the flying headlock by Kevin McHale on Kurt Rambis in the 1984 NBA Finals between the Lakers and Boston Celtics. It didn’t result in a riot or a brawl or even a fight between Rambis and McHale. Both understood it was a rough moment in a tough series and that was the end of it. David Stern, what are you afraid of? Let the players play…

Speaking of Rambis-McHale, where’s the consistency by the league? On the one hand, the NBA frowned on the Trail Blazers, in the moments leading up to a game against the Lakers in The Rose Garden, showing a hard foul by Trevor Ariza from a previous game. Yet league officials ignored the Celtics replaying the McHale-Rambis incident ad nauseam before each Celtic home game against the Lakers in last season’s NBA Finals…

Saturday’s Denver Nuggets-Dallas Mavericks playoff game may have been the first time in NBA history that a team stalked off the court in furious anger because it didn’t get a foul called against it…

Why didn’t someone stick a mike in Mark Cuban’s face after the game. Afraid of FCC ramifications?..

So Dodger owner Frank McCourt wants Manny Ramirez to apologize to his teammates. Why would they believe anything he had to say since he has already betrayed them…

McCourt also wants Manny to address the media. Maybe Manny can borrow A-Rod’s script which sounded good at the time. Of course, according to a new book by Selena Roberts, A-Rod wasn’t exactly telling the truth, hard as that might be to believe…

Manny or no Manny, the Dodgers will live or die with their pitching…

Why is it athletes look into the camera and mouth the words “Hi, Mom” on Mother’s Day but never seem to respond with the same sentiment on Father’s Day? Too much of a threat to their macho image?

On the set of Wednesday night’s TNT postgame show, Charles Barkley ducked out of sight while a discussion of the just-completed L.A. Lakers-Houston Rockets playoff game was going on.

What are you looking for? asked co-host Ernie Johnson.

“Andrew Bynum,” replied Barkley.

Good luck.

Oh there’s no question where Bynum is. It’s not hard to find a 7-foot, 285-pounder. He’s sitting on the Laker bench, moving further and further down the pine. At this point, he’s about to slip past Kurt Rambis in the rotation. It’s been 14 years since Kurt last played, but he could at least still put his body between an opposing player and the basket without automatically triggering a referee’s whistle.

Bynum, it seems, cannot. In this postseason, he has become a foul machine, hacking and banging and stumbling his way through a thicket of Rocket and Utah Jazz players. In the Lakers’ first-round playoff series against the Jazz, Bynum had 16 fouls in 77 minutes. Against the Rockets, he had three in 15 minutes in Game 1 and picked up his pace with three more in only eight minutes in Game 2.

But it’s more than just fouls. It’s not Barkley in search of Bynum so much as it is Bynum in search of his game. He’s totally lost out there.

Bynum keeps fouling because he’s trying to make up for the fact that he’s slow to react on defense.

And he’s no better on offense. When the ball goes into Pau Gasol, the offense clicks, the cutting and rolling functioning as smoothly as Tex Winter designed it. When the ball goes into Bynum, forget it.

The worst part is Bynum’s attitude. When he’s called for a foul or otherwise screws up, he pouts, his shoulders drooping, his usefulness to the team lost.

I know, I know. He’s:

-- still young.

-- still inexperienced.

-- still rusty from missing 32 games because of a knee injury.

-- still not fully recovered from the injury.

-- still bothered by the knee brace he is forced to wear.

That may all be true, but it doesn’t answer the still lingering question of when -- and even if -- he will reach his potential. There’s no question the potential is there. He’s not Shaquille O’Neal, but he’s not Benoit Benjamin, either.

The one-word answer to all his problems is: Maturity.

Not only is this a 21-year-old who didn’t go to college, but he played sparingly in high school. When Kobe Bryant made the leap from preps to the pros, he was out of control. Jermaine O’Neal, who also skipped college, struggled with the culture shock as well. By his fourth season in the NBA, he was playing only around 12 minutes a game, averaging 3.9 points and 3.3 rebounds.

That’s what made LeBron James so unique. He hit the NBA hardwood out of high school running and has never looked back.

The level of Bynum’s maturity, or lack thereof, was clearly demonstrated one day in his rookie season when he disappeared -- there’s that word again -- from practice at the team’s El Segundo training facility.

No one could find him. Sound familiar?

Coach Phil Jackson dispatched Rambis to look for the wayward center.

Rambis indeed found Bynum, sitting in the trainer’s room, eating sugar-soaked cold cereal.

What are you doing, Rambis asked. You just can’t leave practice without telling anyone.

I don’t have any energy and I thought this might give me some, Bynum replied.

It turned out Bynum, on his own for the first time 3,000 miles from home, was living on fast food and depleting his body.

Although he’d never admit it, nobody on the Lakers could be more frustrated than Bynum’s mentor, Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He has constantly been by Bynum’s side, tutoring him in all aspects of the game.

Abdul-Jabbar himself knows about growing up fast. No pun intended. He was already in the national spotlight as a New York high school star named Lew Alcindor. By the time he was Bynum’s age, Abdul-Jabbar was leading UCLA to its third consecutive NCAA title.

Bynum says he has the ultimate respect for Abdul-Jabbar. How does he show it? When the NBA’s all-time leading scorer first started working with Bynum, Bynum stiffed him, showing up late for a practice session.

Nobody is suggesting Bynum doesn’t have a future with the Lakers. Look how long it has taken Lamar Odom to realize his potential. And there are still nights when he is lost out there.

Nobody is saying Bynum won’t be a productive center in the NBA.

The agonizing question is: When?