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CALLING SIGNALS |
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 ODE TO THE LAKERS
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Are the pitiful L.A. Lakers
coming in from the cold?
By BUCKY FOX
of TheColumnists.com
Stop the messes.
The Lakers won a big game.
Just when they were looking like Loser Angeles, they beat the best basketball team on the planet.
Lakers 105, Pistons 94.
Lakers, 31-29 record. Detroit, 48-11. Fans, flabbergasted.
And how. The Lakers loitered into this weekend game as a bedraggled bunch. They looked lost the previous four weeks against the NBA’s worst teams--Charlotte, Atlanta, Portland.
Now suddenly L.A.’s purple and gold might be dribbling in from the cold.
I’ll take it after bidding farewell to February. And good riddance.
The minimonth gave me triple shivers:
The Super Bowl, gutless in Seattle. No wonder Mike Holmgren's wife fled to Africa to help the hungry rather than consume her man's biggest event in a decade. She’d rather pull a white woman’s burden than stomach his spineless coaching.
His Seahawks were full of themselves early on. They were eating up yards and starving the Steelers. Yet with the lead and fourth and inches at the Pittsburgh 47 in the second quarter, Holmgren wouldn’t bite.
In the mega moment of the ultra-American game, he punted.
ABC’s John Madden applauded the non-move. Which was my cue to leave the Harrah’s party in Las Vegas. I knew Pittsburgh had this game in the doggy bag. The last time Madden called for surrender, Tom Brady said nuts to that and led the Patriots down the field for a last-second triumph in the 2002 Super Bowl.
Likewise, the Steelers seized the momentum. Big Ben Roethlisberger saw Seattle’s pitiful decision and promptly pushed Pittsburgh ahead by halftime.
As the Steelers ate through their 21-10 feast, I was filling up on sports bars throughout the Vegas Strip. Fans decked out in black and gold looked fat and happy in every resort. Seattle fans looked wasted.
The Missouri Tigers, toothless in Columbia. As if anyone outside the university would care. But I’m an alum, so I do.
Used to be that the basketball Tigers were all we had. While the gridiron guys fumbled for four decades, the hoopsters reached a couple of NCAA regional finals.
One of those shots came during the Quin Snyder era. The coach came from Duke. Had cool hair. Only one problem: He cheated. That works when you win, but then came the losing.
Time for Quin to quit. For February, Mizzou was basically coachless and winless. Bring on the club chess season.
The Winter Olympics, endless with its toboggan runs. Or were they sleds? They could’ve been inner tubes for all the excitement I found in these isolated races against the clock.
Speaking of clocks, NBC had to delay its coverage to land primetime viewers. But who’s watching sports when it’s not live? Not I.
The golden event of the Winter Games--women’s figure skating--had Sasha Cohen trying to hold off Japan’s Shizuka Arakawa and Russia’s Irina Slutskaya. I was ready for a hot show. But that melted away hours before NBC’s presentation when news flashed that Cohen fell into the silver.
How sad was that? “Dancing With the Stars” had more suspense.
©2006 by Bucky Fox. This column first
posted March 6, 2006.
You can visit Bucky Fox's website at www.BuckyFox.com
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