March 4th, 2024
The Lakers have a Darvin Ham problem, and it reared it’s ugly head again on Saturday night. Finally, the Lakers get a great performance from D’Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura against the Nuggets, yet Ham can’t get out of his own way and benches them both in the 4th quarter. Instead he went with Cam Reddish and Spencer Dinwiddie, neither of which stood a chance guarding a Nuggets player. This team is definitely not as bad as it’s played under Ham with all his weird lineups, but it certainly will never reach it’s ceiling with him making the lineup decisions. I wish Rob Pelinka would go full on Andrew Friedman on him and tell him the lineups he needs to play. Somehow, despite these continuously dumb decisions by Ham, the Lakers are just 2.5 games out of 7th place, and 3.5 games out of 5th place in the West. Their schedule is tough as hell, but if they can lock Ham out of the building for the next few weeks, maybe they have a chance to move up.
There’s good news for the Clippers. Yesterday, they won a tough, physical battle with the Minnesota Timberwolves. It was low scoring, and it was the type of game they haven’t been able to win recently, with that exact length and physicality causing them problems. The bad news however, is that history is suddenly not on their side. Phil Jackson always said there was a rule that you had to win 40 before you lose 20 to be considered an elite team. In fact, 27 of the last 30 NBA Champions have won 40 before they lost 20 games in that season. This season, only the Celtics, Nuggets, Timberwolves, and Thunder have won 40 before they lost 20 this year, which means the NBA Champion will most likely come from that group of teams.
To baseball where the Dodgers have been rolling in Spring Training. winning 9 of their first 11 games. As I’ve mentioned before, nobody cares about the spring training record because it’s meaningless. However, there’s a few key takeaways here. First of all Gavin Lux and Max Muncy are looking like very capable defensive players on the left side of the infield. It’s early, but they appear to be in excellent shape, and been putting the work in for improving defensively there. I’m confident their offense will be there. To nobody’s surprise Shohei Ohtani is already putting on a show, and looks like he will fit in perfectly with Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Now hear me out on this one. I realize that the Dodgers do not need Blake Snell, but they should seriously consider signing him given that his price tag is coming way down. I really want this to happen, mostly because I’m just dying to see everyone complain again that the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Still, they really could use him since Yoshinobu Yammamoto is used to a 6-man rotation, Tyler Glasnow has injury history, while Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw, and Dustin May will not be available for a while since they are rehabbing from injury. I am completely aware how ridiculous this is, but if the guy is taking $25 million a year with a few opt outs, you have to consider it.
On the other hand, I have no idea what the Angels are doing not signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery. Their price is way down, and either one of them would instantly slide into their rotation as the #1 starter. On the bright side though, Anthony Rendon hasn’t said anything stupid in the past week though, which is always nice to see for the PR department. It’s really hard for me to imagine this team winning more than 70 games this season, unless of course they sign one of those front line starters.
What a completely pathetic showing by UCLA Basketball over the weekend. They lost a couple of more games to Washington and Washington State. Their only hope to get in the NCAA Tournament remains to win the Pac-12 Tournament, but your chances of winning the Powerball are higher than that. At this point the season has gone so badly, even Adem Bona might not even be drafted in the 2nd round of the upcoming NBA draft. He may very well need to stay in school for another year, which probably wouldn’t be bad for the Bruins. Ultimately though, other than Bona and Dylan Andrews, I think Mick Cronin can safely try and clean house and recruit heavily in the transfer portal. Unfortunately though, they don’t currently have a class of 2024 recruit that is ranked in the top 100 of the class. I’m not sure the transfer portal can fix this in one year.
It’s very cool, but also kind of surprising to see how much interest Caitlin Clark has created in women’s basketball, and women’s college basketball in particular. The hype around her is real, and not to take away anything from her, but in terms of accomplishments, even Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, and Cheryl Miller accomplished equally as much if not more in college. In Stewart’s case, she even played in the era of social media. However, Clark has created buzz because she is the Steph Curry of women’s basketball, or even the Taylor Swift of the game. She’s more approachable, exciting, and easy to get behind for the average person because she feels relatable. In any case, she’s going to have a great finish to her college career, and I’m sure do great things in the pros as well.
It’s super sad to hear about the passing of NFL Reporter Chris Mortensen. Mortensen was 72 years old, and diagnosed with throat cancer in 2016. He was truly someone that I would almost consider part of my childhood knowing how respected he was covering the NFL for ESPN, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution before that. He was an award-winning journalist and actually a native of Torrance, CA. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family including his wife, Micki, and son, Alex.
