“Yeah, I had problems. I was immature, but thats all behind me now.”

Yeah right….

Take a look at his teammates. The guys around him (Rashard Lewis, Turkoglu, etc.) completely sucked on other teams. The second best player was Jameer Nelson, who at his best barely cracks the top-15 PGs in the NBA. Orlando was completely dependent on Howard on both ends of the court, or they’d be a lottery team.

7 shots/game is not even close to being enough. Even if they’re not straight-up post touches, why not run more pick and rolls with him, or more high-low sequences with Gasol? Those high-low plays worked well with Bynum when the Lakers were winning championships; why wouldn’t it work with Howard?

The Lakers seem completey disoriented on offense.

I say forget the system, just start running pick and rolls with Kobe/Gasol or Nash/Howard all day, or give Gasol the ball in the post and run some action with Howard and Kobe to get easy looks.

I’ve never seen such a sissy before. Would Kobe have left the game with a bad shoulder? Not a chance. Kobe has to be near death’s door before he doesn’t play.

Howard has been a big disappointment this season. He just refuses to fit in with the team and show Kobe that he has the proper desire to win a championship. Howard wants to play around and smile too much. He doesn’t even have a game face to bring to the big games.

It’s sad that Howard, or Dumbtoni, don’t understand how awesome a Twin Towers Dwight and Pau could be if Howard and Dumbtoni embraced teamwork between the two. I see flashes of brilliance once in a long while as Pau does such a great job setting up Howard with excellent passes.

Grow up Lame Duck Howard!!!

what is D12 doing to earn more shots? oh wait, i’m talking to a mad man with his distorted hatred for the kobster. nevermind, progress. carry on…

That is what you saw in the Lakers’ exit from the playoffs in the Oklahoma series. Role players like Robert Horry and Derek Fisher who were not afraid to take the big shot as beneficiaries of the surprise possession down the stretch where Kobe was used as an unexpected decoy, were used strategically and effectively by Phil Jackson during the championship years (yes, even when Hack-a-Shaq was the other focus of opposing coaches).

By now, my parakeet knows that how you beat the Lakers is to call for a zone trap on Kobe during clutch. Very tough to beat anyone when they know what to expect and get to see that game after game after game during the death spiral.

Kobe’s shot attempts go up, his shooting percentage goes down, and the clincher is that his assists dwindle at a time when that is the key to getting these rottweiler defensive schemes to eventually begin to play him and rest of his teammates honestly, as though other’s on the court besides Kobe are would-be legitimate threats to beat you. Run the tape back on the games that were close and in contention during latter periods of the skid, and the devil is in the details there.

Too late to get Howard to feel good about learning the beauty of the pick and roll, and equally too late to get Kobe to feel like the bigger person were he to pass out of the double and triple team, and kick to ball to swung opposite court to an open shooter.

Recall also how MJ won a few of his rings by kicking the ball in clutch to Steve Kerr and John Paxson. Okay the Lakers don’t have spot up shooters like either, but the Laker role players have been thrice as open and twice as close to the basket based upon how opposing coaches have banked on platooning against Kobe in the clutch!

D12 is managing his PR image.

He’s trying to say the right things / politically correctness to avoid any additional distractions that would add to his bad PR from last year.

The guy made it clear, he NEVER wanted to play with FAKE MJ…especially after dude told D12, he would be the 3rd OPTION !!!

So, let me get this strait, I’m at the top of my career, franchise player in Orlando, All Star, I’m young -strong and ready to become the most dominant center in the league while breaking some of Shaqs records…etc, etc. etc….

BUT

I got some WEASEL lookin dude telling me, I’m gonna be the 3rd OPTION……REALLY !!!!

I’d tank the season too !!! Get me OUTTA HERE !!!

Then he goes out and re-injures his responsibilities (shoulder).

Can’t make this stuff up.

Karma is real, no matter how much Laker “fans” want to deny it.

Howard is/was NEVER LA material, he’s not built like that.

Believe it, and deal with it.

Yes, Boston won the first year they put it together, but the Laker starting five is a full 5 years older than that team was, and they had a bit more serviceable bench.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t that five years a lot when measured in 82 game NBA seasons, I mean, especially when the most of your key players are approaching their mid-thirties?

So before training camp even began, not just I, but lots of non-experts of the non-hater variety abound in this space with skepticism regarding two key issues: the experience they had was too old, and their bench lacked any experience. And many experts stated that their window might just be this year, based on the age issue.

Yet, here are all the experts still, continuing to ignore these issues, pretending like it’s all about players being selfish, or the coach(es) running too complex an offense or not being flexible enough and not about their never having been in a position to make good on the check the front office promised the fans a title with in the first place?

Yes, the coaching change was added to the haphazard flow down the toilet this season, but it all started with the personnel choices since the disaster in Dallas. Not even if they had had Phil Jackson since the beginning of camp this year would they have done better than a disappointing first round exit from the playoffs. No coach could have made this team a contender because they quite simply were not one.

This is not Laker hate. My perspective as a basketball fan is that everybody on every team in this league is in the top 500 current players on the planet. That’s pretty impressive by any reasonable standard. But to expect “Rings this year of bust” with your two most important players each being in their 17th season, and knowing full well that your defensive anchor was still recovering from major back surgery, and expecting them to log 100 games with the result that they’d be parading a trophy around for the fans in June was just utter nuttiness.

One need look no further than ownership and management for this fiasco (and by fiasco I mean the absurd expectations, not the actual result–which should have been expected). This sharing blame crap brings to mind the 700 billion dollar to-big-to-fail bailout and the utter “surprise” that homeowners still got robo-evicted while the bankster management reaped windfalls. At least, in this case, the players get paid. But don’t be screeching your rage at them, Lakers’ fans, because they never had a chance, no matter what the experts told you.

Unless he gets the ball right under the basket, he can’t do much with the ball. It would be foolish for the Lakers to consistently feed him the ball just to placate his ego. Furthermore, he’s never averaged more than 13 shots per game in his career, so I don’t know why he’s so adamant about getting the ball now.

Howard’s main value to the Lakers or any team he is on is his defensive presence. He should always be the most dominant rebounder and defender when he’s on the court. Anything he gives you offensively is gravy.

I don’t think Howard can do his job with a light-hearted attitude.