Kurt Helin

For the next two weeks, daydreaming will be the favorite pastime of NBA fans. They will try hard picture what Kevin Garnett would look like in a Laker uniform, or what Jason Kidd would look like running the Clippers offense. Two weeks from today (Feb. 22) is the NBA trading deadline, so for the next fortnight fans on Web sites and sports talk radio hosts will dream up ways the Lakers could trade for Dwyane...

The Lakers are halfway through the "Coldest places in North America during the dead of winter" road trip to the Midwest and East. So far: four games, two wins. Not a stellar outcome, but not bad considering they have two starters (Luke Walton and Kwame Brown) watching games in street clothes, plus had to play one without Kobe Bryant (for an infraction far less serious than what LeBron James got away with without a suspension,...

If one thing could have brought late Boston Celtics legend Red Auerbach back from the great beyond, it was what happened Wednesday night in the house he built. Near the end of a Laker win where Kobe Bryant dropped 43 on Boston, Celtics fans started chanting "M-V-P, M-V-P" for Kobe. Somewhere in Indiana Larry Bird must have gotten a chill up his spine. A Laker winning over the fans of their most hated rival, the...

When the curtains come up near Broadway for the Lakers and New York Knicks tonight, the role of Kobe Bryant will be played by Maurice Evans. Nobody likes to pay Broadway ticket prices to see the understudy, but the NBA has suspended Kobe for tonight's game in New York because of his "intentional" elbowing of Manu Ginobli of the San Antonio Spurs with 2.7 seconds left in Sunday's game. Watch the video for yourself --...

The Lakers go up against the best franchise of the last decade in San Antonio, win one of the most exciting and best-played games of their season last night -- despite 2/5ths of the starting lineup watching from home -- and what is the Lakers reward? A plane ride in an ice storm to face the hottest (and maybe best) team in the NBA. Welcome to the fun of the NBA in Texas these days....

No Shaq (bum knee). No Pat Riley (bum hip). No personal connections to the past on display tonight. Still, the budding rivalry of Kobe vs. Dwyane Wade is more than plenty when the Lakers and Heat play. The two best shooting-guards in the basketball face off tonight at Staples Center (7 on TNT) in a game with enough juice to make you turn away from the drunken acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes, at...

In early December, the Indiana Pacers were in town to face the Los Angeles Lakers. As NBA teams do, they stayed in a posh hotel -- this one in the Bel Air area. But as we Angelenos could have told them, that's a lot of time in the car (or bus, in this case) if you want to drive out to Staples Center for a morning shoot-around, go back to the hotel for the...

Disgruntled Laker fans, it's time to come back home. I know a lot of you went astray in the frustrating aftermath of the Shaq/Kobe split, when there wasn't enough money to keep their enormous egos on the same court. The Kobe vs. The World teams for a couple years provided some cheap thrills but didn't win your heart. Then many of you had a little affair with the Clippers last spring, but you are forgiven...

Like blockbuster movies, the NBA is marketed around its superstars -- it was Magic and Bird more than the Lakers and Celtics 20 years ago. Then it was Jordan vs. the world. Kobe and Shaq. The LeBrons. Tonight two of the games superstars collide at Staples Center -- Kobe Bryant and Alan Iverson (Fox Sports at 7:30). Kobe comes in off an overtime win last night in Sacramento where he didn't score in the first...

Long Beach's "World Famous" VIP record store is a West Coast rap landmark -- the back room is where Snoop Dogg, Warren G and Nate Dogg were smoking and honing their styles, trying to top each other as part of the group 213, years before they all went solo (and big-time). It's the first place you could have heard Snoop's demo -- and that's Snoop on top of VIP in the breakout "Who am...