Kurt Helin

It's a holiday tradition at this blogger's house (long before I had kids, which says a lot about me) -- sitting down and watching the 1964 classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. What's not to love about a quirky cast of characters teaching a lesson about acceptance? Well, I suppose the lesson of incessant marketing of the show is not a great lesson, but like many things around Christmas I choose to blatantly ignore what...

Three losses in a row. A close loss in Milwaukee. A thrashing at the hands of the Boston. Then losing a 14-point lead and the game to New Jersey. That's what last week brought the Lakers, pain and misery. And now a 7-6 record after a promising start. But like all things in Lakerdom, it all gets blown out of proportion. Some Lakers fans are running around like Chicken Little after these losses saying it's...

He was a dominant force at Westchester High School. He was part of the first year of Ben Howland's turnaround at UCLA. And now he is a Laker. Trevor Ariza has come home, bringing with him some amazing dunks, good defense and a high-energy game that should fit in well with the young core of the Lakers. He was traded for veterans Brian Cook and Mo Evans. Call us crazy, but this is the rare...

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?...

Los Angeles seems to have a love/hate relationship with the Lakers right now. The games still sell out (and at the ">highest prices in the league) and there are more people walking around wearing Lakers gear than there are writers picketing out in front of Fox. But in every sports bar in the city there are loudmouths saying to nobody in particular, "Kobe is selfish and ruining this team." The loudmouth sports columnists in...

The crashing and burning relationship between Kobe Bryant and the Laker front office hit a new low this morning -- Kobe asked to be traded. For a couple of days now, Kobe has talked to every media outlet that called him and said, basically, that he was told the Lakers were going to build a contender as fast as they could after Shaq was traded. Instead, he learns from Phil Jackson that the Lakers have...

"Do something and do it now. Personally for me, it's beyond frustration -- three years and still being at ground zero. This summer's a big summer. We have to see what direction we want to take as an organization and make those steps and make them now." --Kobe Bryant Wednesday night Kobe Bryant is frustrated. He should be. When the Kobe/Shaq feud reached the point that one of them had to go three years ago...

The Lakers head into a must win game tonight in Phoenix (7:30 on KCAL 9 or TNT) with many fans and pundits thinking this is more a nationally televised execution than a playoff game. Look at the reports from yesterday's Laker practice and the same feeling seems to have washed over the team. Not to worry though Laker fans, you've got Phil Jackson's amazing motivational tools: "I did tell them that they had the brainpower...

Right around the start of the second quarter of game three between the Suns and Lakers last night, a wave of desperation washed over Laker fans -- lose this game and it's over, and the good guys were down by 17. But that same wave seemed to wash up some hustle -- not to mention the sudden ability to defend the pick-and-roll -- on the Lakers' players. Seemingly out of the blue, the fun-to-watch Laker...

Kobe Bryant has always seemed to me like a character out of Greek mythology or a classic novel -- his greatest strength is also the cause of his undoing. Sunday in game one against the Suns, it was part of the Lakers undoing. Kobe could not be Kobe without his supreme self-confidence, without his unshakable belief that the next shot is going to fall regardless of if he made the last one, regardless of where...