http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/recap;_ylc=X3oDMTBpZmFlcXBpBF9TAzk1ODYxOTQ4BHNlY
wN0aA--?gid=2003112313&prov=ap
``I'll say this: When I was on the opposing team and he wasn't in
there, I
just had a sigh of relief,'' said Malone, who played 18 seasons for
the Utah
Jazz before joining the Lakers this season.
``It's a lot different this year,'' Malone said. ``It was neat for
guys to
step up and do the job tonight. If he's not in there, we have to pick
up the
slack.''
``You look around, you've got a Karl Malone and a Gary Payton and a
Kobe
Bryant and Derek Fisher coming off the bench,'' said the 38-year-old
Grant,
who returned to the Lakers this season to back up O'Neal. ``We don't
want
him to miss too many games, but when he does, we've got enough to get
the
job done.''
``Where they hurt us, where no one has hurt us this year, was in
transition,'' Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown said. ``Last year Kobe
Bryant had
to carry a lot. Now, you've got Malone and Payton and you can see all
three
guys had a solid game.''
``Ninety percent of that game was enjoyable for us as a coaching
staff,''
Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. ``I was very pleased with the defense.
I
thought that was where we were effective. And we shot the ball very
well.''
``The key to the turnaround was our defensive intensity picking up,''
Bryant
said. ``We made a hard push near the end of the second quarter and
took it
from there.''
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-lakers24nov24,1,6500722.story?coll...-headli
"They looked good," O'Neal said as he met his family near his car, him
shuffling a bit on a bad calf muscle and none too happy about it.
"We got our dinner served to us tonight," Grizzly guard Shane Battier
said. "It was a funny thing; every time we were trying to make a pass,
they got in the way."
While Grant, who had six points and three rebounds in the first
quarter in place of O'Neal, said, "You can't fill shoes like that,"
someone on the team had promised Phil Jackson a victory. Jackson said
so before the game, and afterward grinned and said, "I guess it was a
guarantee and a lock on top of it, but we don't want to take anything
for granted like it's a done deal."
The men in the locker room were vague. Most of them.
"I didn't hear anything about it. I don't know," Bryant said.
But, Jackson said …
"Oh, he did? I didn't hear anything about that," Bryant said, a grin
tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Phil likes to make that stuff
up."
Malone, who played through the tenderness in his left hamstring, said,
"We didn't know he was going to say nothin' to nobody about it."
Turned out, it was Bryant, according to sources deep inside the locker
room.
"That's what Kobe said," one player said, "that, 'We're going to win.'
When our big guy says something like that, we gotta back him up."
Right up until the tip the Lakers called O'Neal's participation "a
game-time decision," though Jackson had said, "We'll be surprised if
Shaq does play." So, Grant and Malone showed up expecting to log time
at center. Both of their workloads eased because of the blowout, Grant
played 27 minutes, all of them at center, and Malone played 26, a few
of them in the middle.
"Injuries come up," Grant said. "You have to deal with it and go on."
The Lakers were 5-10 without O'Neal last season and are 52-44 without
him in eight-plus seasons.
"We were playing as if Shaq was playing," Grizzly forward Pau Gasol
said.
"That," Jackson said, "is what we want to see them play like."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-adande24nov24,1,6580024.story?coll...-headli
As Karl Malone said, "I don't care about the score. We want [O'Neal]
back, as quick as he can get back."
But this was a little test, to see how they would perform without
O'Neal from start-to-finish. As Jackson said beforehand, "We'll know a
little bit more about this team."
"I went home and cut my phone off, I didn't talk to anyone, I ate
spaghetti and meatballs when I woke up," Grant said. "I was ready [to
play] about 40 minutes."
"That's great teammwork," Memphis Coach Hubie Brown said . "The rest
of the guys rose to the occasion."
"Just go back a year ago: when Shaq misses the games [the Lakers] are
sub-.500."
"Don't forget that now. See that's easy to forget, see, cause you're
in La La Land, you've got all this success and all this [b.s.], OK?
But now, without him, you've got two other stars to step up, and
Bryant has a major supporting cast."
"You had really excellent contributions from the people who came here
for the right reasons."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-lakerep24nov24,1,3000823.story?col...a-headl
"Between the two," Malone said of the rebounding and scoring numbers,
accumulated over 18-plus seasons, "I'd say the rebounds have more
meaning. Rebounding, to me, is a dirty job. You score 18 points,
that's pretty good. But 18 rebounds, that's a lot of work.
"Considering a lot of teams didn't draft me [12 in the 1985 draft],
who said I didn't work hard enough or wasn't coachable, it's a decent
feeling."
It is not, however, his favorite statistic over nearly two decades.
"I think," he said, "it would be 'Games Missed Due to Injury.' "
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~29583~1786919,00.html
"Disappointing," Jackson said. "We talked about the disappointment of
you want all your players to have a chance to play 82 games. With
Shaquille, we know that that operation on the toe (in September 2002)
was -- I'm not saying cosmetic, it was repair so to speak -- but he
still has trouble pushing off with his toe. That's an ongoing problem.
And we hope that it's not something that debilitates him as the season
goes on."
"This is one of those injuries that, although it's painful, you're not
capable of hurting it worse," Jackson said. "It shouldn't bother him
once it gets a chance to heal."
http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=68274§ion=SPOR...subsect
"We have a lot more threats out there," Bryant said. "It's a much
deeper team this year..."
FAQ
Profile
Private Messages
Log in
