Bynum Jackson Crush Crush Into Season

Basketball Betting Lines

Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - For the first time you can make a very strong argument that the red-headed stepchild across the hall at Staples Center has more star power than the mighty Lakers. Adding Chris Paul to Blake Griffin has officially made Clippers basketball a happening in Hollywood for the first time.

 

It's far too early to crown the Clippers in the Pacific but we are now past the one-third mark of the season and it's the Clips standing atop the division, not the Lakers.

 

He passed Shaq midway through the second quarter making shot after shot with a degree of difficultly that would make an Olympic gymnast blush before Doug Collins decided to challenge his entire supporting cast in what turned out to be a 95-90 Sixers win.

 

Collins ran the Army, Navy and Marines at Kobe every time he touched the basketball and to his credit, Bryant did what you are supposed to do -- move the ball. The Lakers got a ton of open looks and made some but missed more than their share.

 

Talk about a lack of foresight -- remember as impressive as the milestone that Bryant passed tonight is, it's also a stark reminder that he is a lot closer to the end than the beginning.

 

He's obviously still one of the top players in the game, averaging a league- best 29.4 ppg coming into tonight's contest despite playing with a torn lunotriquetral ligament in his right wrist. But something is missing with these Lakers -- even with Bryant. The same air of invincibility is simply not there.

 

"I think we just need to relax," Metta World Peace said. "When you've got guys like Fish [Derek Fisher] and Kobe, we need to get on their level and not worry. Late in the fourth quarter we need to stay consistent and relax, and everything will be alright."

 

With no Phil Jackson on the bench and no Lamar Odom coming off it, it's become payback time for a lot of routs that are still fresh in the minds of quite a few rivals.

 

Brown has only been able to count on three players this season as he implements a more defensive-minded system, Bryant and his two 7-footers, Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol. The rest of the team including battle-tested veterans Fisher and World Peace, has lacked consistency and offered little production.

 

The only young player that has stepped forward for LA this season is rookie guard Andrew Goudelock, a College of Charleston product that has flashed at times but has a very limited ceiling as a player.

 

They showed that by opening their current six-game Grammy trip but beating a far-deeper Denver Nuggets team in the Rockies. A day later, however, Utah was waiting to take advantage and did exactly that, topping the Lakers 96-87 despite 26 points Bryant, 24 points and 16 rebounds from Gasol and 21 points and 12 boards from Bynum. The rest of the Lakers' team scored a paltry 16 points in Salt Lake City on 6-of-24 shooting.

comments

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