Spring Loaded

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?