The Lakers Celebrate Byron Scott’s Birthday With a 123-75 Loss
Photo by Kelvin Kuo/AP
The Los Angeles Lakers made a deal with the devil to devote this season to Kobe’s departure, and unfortunately, they haven’t got much in return during the process.
Last night they tied their largest franchise loss, a 123-75 drubbing by the Utah Jazz – a crappy way to help Byron Scott celebrate his 55th birthday.
A lot of the blame for this disastrous season has been put upon their beleaguered coach, but the front office of Jim Buss, Mitch Kupchak, and company are as culpable as Scott.
D’Angelo Russell has butt heads with his head coach since becoming a Laker, and in between flashes of franchise performances, his pouty behavior is not helping the perception that he does not care about the privileged job he is paid a lot of money to do.
Scott has criticized Russell every chance he gets; like a disappointed father whose anger over his son’s unrealized potential never wanes. It’s a broken relationship that couple’s therapy might fix, but these two will not be on the same team long enough for that to make a dent.
Hopefully in years to come they’ll look back and realize that they were thrown together on the wrong team at the wrong time and forgive each other for the mistakes they both have made.
This year of rebuilding turned out to be a bad game of Jenga because the centerpiece is an aging player past his prime that was given the keys to the position that he could no longer effectively play.
So for now the Lakers only hope of redeeming something positive from this year of discontent would be to win by losing the rest of their games, grab a first round draft pick, and pray that the likes of Luke Walton is available and willing to clean up this mess for a fresh start next season.
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suekolinsky
Sue Kolinsky is a writer/producer whose career began as a waitress in Manhattan. After a cynical remark got her fired, she took her humor to a place it would be appreciated – The NY Improv, which is where she launched her 20-year stand-up career. After much time spent performing at clubs, colleges and numerous tours with the USO, along with appearances on The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Young Comedians Special, she replaced her microphone with a Mac computer and began writing and producing TV. She has written on “Brotherly Love,” “Sex and the City,” and “The Ellen Show.” In 2001, She got a call to be a producer on the groundbreaking reality series, “The Osbourne’s.” She had no idea a new phase of her successful career was about to unfold. After garnering her first Emmy nomination, she went to produce a new MTV show called, “Newlyweds,” a reality series that documented the early-married life of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. In 2009 she landed a job as supervising producer of the highly touted culinary competition series, “Top Chef.” She eventually became co-executive producer, garnering two more Emmy nods. Adding to her many hats, Sue also co-hosted a morning radio talk show with Steve Mason, on NY’s iconic WNEW. Having the dubious honor of going up against Howard Stern, the show was cancelled after sixteen months, but her partnership with Mason paid dividends. When he returned to his prior radio sports talk gig in LA, he gave Sue a featured segment on the show. Sue’s love of sports surfaced at the age of 10 when her older brother turned her on to baseball, and her hero, “The Say Hey Kid,” Willie Mays. While she still followed the Giants, her uncle’s box seats at Shea Stadium made her a Mets fan, and to this day, she’s still chasing the high of ’86. Sue’s love of writing about sports began as a daily analysis of the World Series on Facebook. Due to popular demand, she has created this blog. As if that’s not enough she just completed producing the past season of Last Comic Standing, and is writing an animated feature. Sue lives in Long Beach, California with her husband and two grown dogs.