IT IS no secret that I’m a Los Angeles fan for the longest time. I left the Lakers only when Kobe Bryant retired. I went to Cleveland because of LeBron James, who is now a Laker.
James starred anew for the Lakers on Sunday, but Lonzo Ball shared star billing in LA’s 128-100 laceration of the Charlotte Hornets. Both had a triple-double each.
Tania Ganguli of the Los Angeles Times wrote that LeBron believes Lonzo has a lot of the same traits as he does. “Double L” in progress?
“We’re one and the same when it comes to our playmaking ability,” Ganguli quoted LeBron as saying. “We’re always looking for our teammates and that’s the greatest satisfaction we can have when we see our teammates score the ball. We’ve always been pretty good rebounders for our position, him at the guard spot, me at the forward spot. And then being able to put the ball in the hole as well. We just try to be aggressive, attack the rim, make shots from the outside when guys disrespect us and we showed all of that tonight.”
Their triple-double ended an 11-year hiatus for such a feat after Vince Carter and Jason Kidd did the trick in 2007.
Before that, it was the deadly duo of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that recorded a triple-double each for the Lakers in the ‘70s.
With the Lakers’ capture of James this season, things have started to fall in place for the former glamour team that also produced Jerry West, one of the greatest that the NBA has ever produced.
I interviewed West decades back for the Bulletin when he came to Manila as a judge in the Miss Universe contest. That was one of the early high points of my sportswriting career. Do you know that the NBA logo is West himself?
With their latest win, the Lakers now lug a record of 14 wins in their last 19 games—a pretty much decent output, thanks to Ball’s all-around game a la James.
This is just James’ first year with Los Angeles and things have already started perking up. Indeed, no way but up—if not back to La La Land for the Lakers? Soon? Suspense.