Tim's Two Cents-December 17

In this edition of Tim's Two Cents, you will get 2 opinions for the price of 1.

1. The Black Mamba Spews His Venom.  In last night's 107 to 106 Laker win, Kobe Bryant was being Kobe Bryant.  With 5.4 seconds left in overtime against the Milwaukee Bucks, Bryant nailed a jumper as time expired to steal a win from the Bucks.  Bryant ended up with a team-high 39 points.  The bigger point is that even though the Lakers came away with the victory, this was a classic illustration of who the Lakers really are.  At times, they look unstoppable, particularly at home.  At other times like last night, they play one of those games where they seem to be going through the motions with not as much passion and intensity at the start.  In these contests, they usually don't start playing well until the second half and it usually comes down to the final minutes where they have to depend on one of their stars (Kobe Bryant) to bail them out.  If you are a Laker fan like myself, there are two things you should be used to.  1. The games will almost always be interesting, and 2. They will have those games where they are inconsistent and not playing up to the level they are capable of.  In the end though, we still love them.

On a separate Lakers note, I'm missing Stu Lantz, the Lakers color commentator for games on television.  Lantz is currently on leave to be with his wife while she has an undisclosed surgical procedure.  This is one of those instances where you don't really appreciate how good something is until it's gone for a certain period of time.  No disrespect to Lantz substitute, "Hot" Rod Hundley, but he is not as good as Lantz and the chemistry with play-by-play man Joel Meyers is understandably not the same.  I can't wait for Lantz's return after December 20.  Believe me, it can't come soon enough.

2. Dodgers Remain Relatively Quiet on Hot Stove Amid Messy Divorce.  In what has been a tumultuous two months of offseason activity to say the least, the Dodgers made only their second significant move of the offseason.  Signing journeyman infielder Jamey Carroll to a 2-year deal worth around less than $4 million.  This deal comes after GM Ned Colletti traded versatile outfielder Juan Pierre to the White Sox.  Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that owner Frank McCourt is involved in messy divorce proceedings with wife, Jamie McCourt.  This could easily explain why the Dodgers have been relatively quiet thus far.  They probably don't have the necessary financial assets needed to make big moves, since it seems to be tied up in more important issues (wink wink).

Photos courtesy:

Wikimedia Commons and Jeramy Jannene under CC-BY-SA-2.5 license
Wikimedia Commons and Googie Man under GNU Free Documentation license