Lakers 103, Washington Wizards 91 - The game wasn’t as close as the final score indicates. The Lakers led by 22 at halftime, and led by as much as 25 points in the third quarter. Kobe Bryant, who outscored the Wizards in the first quarter 19-15, ended up with 30 points on 10-15 shooting with eight free throws. Vladamir Radmanovic, Lamar Odom and Ronny Turiaf rounded out the starters with double-figure scoring, and Sasha Vujacic......

After years of pressure from stats geeks thoughtful mathematicians, the NBA has started keeping a new official statistic — the old plus/minus. It’s a simple idea that hockey has used for decades: How much does a team outscore its opponent (or get outscored) when a specific player is on the floor. It’s pretty simple. Off the top of your head, who leads the Lakers in this new stat (if averaged per game)? Kobe Bryant?......

Like rewatching “The Year Without a Santa Claus” or drinking eggnog, ABC has decided that the Lakers playing the Miami Heat is a holiday tradition. That’s seriously how they’ve been promoting today’s Christmas Day match up (11:30 on ABC 7) for the past couple of weeks — “a game that has become a holiday tradition.” What this match up really seems is sad — more than three years after Shaquille O’Neal left the Los Angeles......

How much has Lamar Odom meant to the Lakers this season? Look at it this way, he was playing more minutes per game than Kobe Bryant. If one guy deserved an injury-free season after everything he’s been through it is Odom. But the Lakers are going to have to get by without his minutes for at least the next four weeks as he suffered a “moderate” sprain of the MCL in his right knee. It’s......

While most of the city’s sports fans were either celebrating or mourning, a few looked up from their beers last night to watch another cross-town rivalry played out at Staples Center, albeit one with a lot less on the line (at least this time around). And the game — a 97-88 Laker win over the Clippers — was pretty indicative of how the two teams have progressed this young season. The Lakers have evolved from......

Turns out it’s fitting that the Lakers and Phoenix Suns are opening their seasons on Halloween: Both are dragging battered limbs and other body parts into the Staples Center. And it’s going to be dark. The start of the season brings optimism for most sports fans, but Laker fans’ hopes are tinged with worry. Foremost on the list of concern is Kobe Bryant’s knee — he had “minor” surgery back in July and is......