How Howard impacts the West

It just doesn’t seem possible that one team can continue to hit the jackpot as often as the Los Angeles Lakers. From Wilt Chamberlain to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Shaquille O’Neal to Pau Gasol, there might not be a franchise in North American pro sports that has had more success prying prime assets from their competitors.

Add Hall of Fame-bound center Dwight Howard to the list following the recent completion of the four-team deal that delivered him from Orlando to Hollywood for a pu-pu platter of journeymen and mediocre draft picks. If most of L.A.’s other exchanges were made for pennies on the dollar, this was borderline theft. And now the Spurs and Oklahoma City, who battled for last year’s Western Conference title, will have to deal with the results.

It’s hardly a lock that the Lakers, who also pried the still-productive Steve Nash away from Phoenix, have vaulted past both. Look at their own spotty history when it comes to building teams around aging superstars.

The West/Baylor/Chamberlain triumvirate of the late 60s and early 70s never lived up to expectations. Indeed, it wasn’t until Baylor was forced to retire that the Lakers finally won their first title in 1972. Then there were the ill-fated additions of Gary Payton and Karl Malone in 2004, with the former never meshing with Phil Jackson’s triangle offense and the latter breaking down in the midst of a pounding from Detroit in the Finals.

With Kobe Bryant, Gasol and Nash all on the wrong side of 30, and a glaring lack of depth, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if L.A.’s latest super team fell short as well. But, with such a top-heavy collection of talent, the Lakers should present a massive challenge to their fellow contenders.

San Antonio: Even more than the Lakers and Thunder, the Spurs’ biggest enemy, as always, is time. Retirement looms on the near horizon for Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, at which point they’ll finally be forced to embark on the rebuilding job management has done so well to stave off in recent years. The additions of Nash and especially Howard should only accelerate that process, with both addressing major holes for the Lakers — namely, playmaking, outside shooting, consistent interior defense and athleticism.

Oklahoma City: If any team can feel good about how it matches up with the Lakers, it’s the Thunder. They boast one of the top interior defensive tandems in the league in Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins. And with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden all still under the age of 25, the Thunder should only get better, presenting a stark contrast to L.A.’s potent but graying lineup. Westbrook is likely already salivating at the prospect of attacking Nash off the dribble, and Bryant is no longer capable of matching buckets with Durant.

So, while it’s anything but a given that the Lakers will be able to beat either team on its quest to reclaim the Western Conference crown, the chase has obviously gotten much, much more interesting.

Phil Jackson still hammering Spurs about 1999 ‘asterisk’ season

Spurs Nation has held a special grudge against Phil Jackson for a long time.

It’s not just because he always seemed to end up playing the Spurs in a competitive playoff series with the Lakers.

Most Spurs fans have never forgiven Jackson for branding the Spurs first title team in 1999 as an “asterisk” team because they won the championship after playing in a truncated 50-game schedule after tghea lockout.

Now with the league in the midst of the same kind of work stoppage, Jackson is talking about the Spurs first championship again. He’s remembering that season in a way that he believes would be bad for the league after the lockout ends.

Jackson told the Chicago-based Waddle and Silvy Show about his and how different that 1999 season was from a normal one.

And yes, Spurs Nation, he has another not-so-subtle tweak about that championship season. (Hat tip: Sports Radio Interviews.com/Project Spurs.com)

“You want to have a season that is comparable to what it is like to play a season of basketball,” Jackson said. ” The year they patched together [1998-99 season] when they played 50 games they lost more than a third of the season and then they rushed to play those games into a magnified schedule and it questioned the teams that were really going to have a chance to win it like Indiana and Utah.

“New York finished 8th that year and obviously an up-and-coming San Antonio team, which turned out to be quite a great team, but those were the teams that ended up in the finals. When teams would play 18-19 games in the last month of the season it broke down some of the older steady teams because of that impact of a heavy schedule.

“I always kind of term that as an asterisk season out of this fun at poking fun at San Antonio. In reality it changes the complexity of how you play the game and what you make your team up with. You have to have young players and you have to have healthy players to win. So they want to have a representative season and we have some terrific teams in the NBA right now and there are some teams that are very, very good. It should be interesting to see how a lot of them come out and a lot of teams don’t want to lose that opportunity.”

A shortened season will pose some unique challenges for Gregg Popovich and the Spurs this season. They are much older than that 1999 team, so a shortened season would be favorable in that sense. But cramming multiple games into too short of a period with a lot of back-to-back games could be catastrophic for an older team.

It will be interesting to see. But whoever emerges as the champion will have to battle the same stigma the Spurs have faced since that first title because of playing a less-than-complete season.

Rodman never spoke with Jordan, Pippen away from court

Maybe all that talk about communication for winning teams might be a tad overrated.

Dennis Rodman related a of which he was a member in the mid 1990s.

It seems that Rodman never had a conversation with either Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen during his time with the Bulls.

Rodman tells Yahoo.com interviewer Graham Bensinger why he never talked to his teammates and why he believes it helped him during his Hall of Fame career.

BENSINGER: “Your then teammate when you were with the Bulls, Scottie Pippen, was quoted as saying “I’ve never had a conversation with Dennis. I’ve never had” a conversation with Dennis in my life, so I don’t think it’s anything new.” Why not speak to your teammates then?

RODMAN:” Well, I think it was important for me to go in there and win. I don’t have a job to speak to people. My job is to collate and understand how people work and make people believe in the fact that [I] belong there. Talking to people will come. Relating to people will come. If they see you performing and doing your job and being with the group, that’s all I want. Me and Scottie — we’re cool today. We’re a little older, a little wiser. We’re cool today. And me and Scottie never had a conversation. Me and Scottie and Michael never had a conversation in three years in Chicago. Only time we had a conversation was on the court, and that was it.”

Those Bulls teams won three consecutive championships. with records of 72-9, 69-13 and 62-20. And yet, there was no communication or even conversation away from the court from some of their key players.

All of those egos in one room must have made for a unique coaching job for Phil Jackson — even with all of the basketball talent on the team.