April 21, 2025

How concerned should we be as Laker fans after losing Game 1 against the T-Wolves at home? Maybe not ready to jump off the Santa Monica pier concerned, but concerned. The Timberwolves were shooting from 3 like they had a bunch of Reggie Millers and Ray Allen’s on their team. That might not be repeatable, but the Lakers still have to defend it better and not give up the corner 3 pointer, or else those opportunities are repeatable. What is going to be a problem though is the Wolves defense. They are an excellent defensive team, and a very physical one too. That proved to be a problem for Lebron and Austin, who were ineffective for long stretches in the first game. The Lakers had the intensity of a team that was just getting some cardio at LA Fitness on a Saturday morning pick up game. One thing I will say though if it makes us feel any better: Lebron and Luka have a history of losing game 1 of a series, and making adjustments later on to win that series. We can only hope that is the case here, but we’ll find out soon enough.

On a different Laker note, I can’t believe that Austin Reaves nor JJ Redick were finalists for Most Improved Player, and Coach of the Year, respectively. At minimum, there should be in the top 3 for those awards, and Redick should really be a strong contender to win it. There’s still enough people that vote on these things that just don’t like the Lakers. You may also not have noticed that Rob Pelinka received an extension and promotion from the Lakers last week. Say what you will him accepting a trade for Luka Doncic, which was presented to him, he still did a great job keeping the negotiations quiet. It’s pretty tough to be the Lakers President and GM in this day and age when most people hate your organization, are jealous of you because of your job, and are looking to screw you in every transaction just because of who you are and represent. Somehow, Rob Pelinka manages to work through all that on a daily basis, and acquire franchise changing players, while building championship contending teams. In case you forgot, he also won a championship as well. The extension is well deserved.

As for the Clippers, they really played very well in long stretches against the Nuggets in game 1, but some careless mistakes did them in and gave them a loss. They had 20 turnovers, including 4 critical ones in the 4th quarter. 11 of them were totally unforced. James Harden might actually be the Clips most consistent player this year, yet he got very careless at times with the ball, including critical moments of game 1. That seems extremely correctable for the Clippers, but they definitely don’t want to come back to LA down 0-2 in the series. Even Kawhi was sloppy with 7 turnovers, despite making a lot of clutch shots with his 22 points. I still like them in this series, but we’ll see if they can clean things up tonight.

Listen guys, of course I want the Kings to beat the Oilers in this best of seven series that starts tonight, but I can’t tell you I’m convinced they can finally do it this year. I know you’re all trying to convince yourself this is the year, but why? The Kings are still of the pack offensive team with a terrible power play. It’s actually even worse than last year statistically. Sure they are great defensively, and so is their goaltending, but the Oilers have always seemed to dismantle that part of their game annually. The Kings are going to need to get some out of this world performances from Quinton Byfield or Andre Kuzmenko to beat Edmonton. To me, the Kings personal is more or less the same, and so is the Oilers. In the last three years, the Oilers have simply met the moment at the critical points in the series, like when the Kings should have taken a 3-1 lead in the series two years ago when they blew a big lead in game 4. If the Kings are going to win the series, they have to come up big when it matters. The Oilers still have the two best players in the world, so it’s hard to see anything changing in that regard. Plus this is probably the year Canada finally wins the Cup because they are going to stick it to us because of the tariffs.

The Dodgers took 2 out of 3 against the Rangers, and really should be feeling pretty good about themselves all things considered. They are tied for the most wins in baseball, are just a 1/2 game back of the Padres for the best record in baseball. That’s pretty good considering that their offensive has had some ups and downs, and we haven’t seen the best from their starting pitching yet. In other words, this team has a much higher ceiling than they’ve shown, yet they are right there where we expect them to be. Speaking of pitching, Yoshinobu Yamamoto is looking like a sure fire Cy Young candidate right now. Every time he gets the ball, he’s lights out. He’s emerging as one of the best pitchers in baseball. Roki Sasaki is also improving every start he makes, which is a great sign. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are some injury question marks right now, but reinforcements are likely on the way with Tony Gonsolin and Clayton Kershaw soon after that. This team needs 6 healthy and effective starters at one time. Right now they only have 3. Still, lots to feel good about.

The Dodgers will likely be sending the Angels an Easter Basket, after they took 2 of 3 from the Giants over the weekend. The Halos are tough to figure out right now. They got trounced by the Astros and Rangers, before bouncing back against a Giants team that was playing very well. They are hovering around .500. It would really help them if Mike Trout could figure things out. His power numbers are there with 8 home runs, but he’s hitting just .184 right now and striking out more than Steve Urkel on Prom Night. The Halos are going to play the next 6 games against the struggling Pirates and Twins, which they have to take advantage of before life gets more difficult for them again.

Lots of news around UCLA Football and Basketball this past week! The Football team landed a big fish at quarterback in the transfer portal –
Nico Iamaleava. Iamaleava led the Vols to the College Football Playoff last season, but will not be trying to improve a Bruins team that was just 5-7 in its first year in the Big Ten. How much better does he make them? You would hope that they would at least be a bowl eligible team with him being a signal caller for them. This is great for UCLA, but incredibly fortunate for them. Iamaleava wanted $4 million, but there was no market for him in the portal. He claimed to have wanted a better O-Line and better Wide Receivers, but you can’t possibly look at me with a straight face and tell me that UCLA is better in those areas than the Vols. Nevertheless, the Bruins are the beneficiaries of a situation that landed in their lap, but they will take it and have to be excited!

On the other hand though, they probably aren’t as excited with the basketball news that Aday Mara is leaving the program for Michigan. This is extremely disappointing. There’s a lot of vagueness around his departure though. Mara was showing some real promise as a big man for the Bruins, despite his single digit stats. Much of that had to do with limited playing time, which may be due to conditioning, but also could be due to the fact that him and Mick Cronin just didn’t see eye-to-eye, and didn’t think he was ready. At the end of the day he wanted to play more, but at the same time he admitted his conditioning wasn’t completely there. Cronin didn’t see him as ready to play more. It wasn’t a money issue. Is he really going to play more at Michigan? They play at a faster tempo, so if it’s really conditioning that’s not going to help him. I just don’t see this as a great fit for Mara, and UCLA was probably a better place for his development. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the real lack of fit was between him and Cronin. Stylistically, they just don’t mesh with each other, and that is the only real conclusion we can draw from his departure.