Back To School

[Sorry, this was supposed to be up yesterday but my internet connection was hosed.]
Watching the first game of the pre-season reminds me of the first day of school. There's old faces, new haircuts. New faces, old haircuts. There's those who arrive with a confidence-fed maturity and others with a sobering rustiness. And of course, there's new hope and old problems for all.

For the most part, all of that was there last night. Here are my thoughts.

+ One thing that anyone who has watched Kobe's career knows: It seems like he has two modes. He can score whenever he wants or he can pass all night long, seemingly refusing to shoot. The art is performing both modes in parallel not in series as he did in the first (1 shot, 0 points) and third quarters (17 points), respectively.

Granted, this was a pre-season game so who the fuck cares, right? But still, some balance would have been a very positive sign seeing as how Kobe is supposed to be taking more of a facilitator role this year. Because to me, that is the key to the Lakers' success this season. They were never going to win with Kobe scoring massive amounts of points and nobody doing much else. It's when he's melting the two modes together that he is the best basketball player on the planet and the Lakers are a tough, tough team to beat. Of course, we've been over this.

+ Bynum wasn't overly impressive. He looked a little bigger. A little quicker. But he still couldn't dunk over a weak-side helping Austin Croshere. That's not good. That said, his defensive rebounding and defense in general helped the Lakers get back in it in the second half. I see we're just about picking up where we left off with Bynum.

+ Sasha sucks, looks like a smaller version of 07 Radmanovich.

+ The halftime segment highlight: The shaving of Kwame Brown

+ The 'Colt > Kobe' sign. Oh wow...

+ Colt Brennan must be getting so much ass over there.

+ The Lakers are toying with the idea of starting Turiaf at the four, sliding Lamar over to the three and making Luke the six-man. And although Turiaf didn't look terribly good last night, I really like the sound of this move. First, Turiaf will bring some energy and hustle from the opening tip. This will be important if the Lakers want to be an defensive minded, uptempo team. Second, this puts Lamar in attack mode on the wing, a move that could help Lamar become a legit second scorer instead of a, well, not so legit one. And third, this puts Luke on the bench. Not that he's not of a starter's quality. I just he think the second unit could use a guy like Luke to help run the offense. I guess we'll see how this all works in reality when the other two principles are in uniform.

+ Belinelli is Stallone's illegitimate child. And he can shoot the rock.