Two Unrelated Thoughts On The Lakers

by A.J. Coltrane

Kobe scored 48 the last Tuesday. The ESPN highlight package for the game opened with Kobe with the ball at the left of the free-throw line, then taking a big dribble and a big pivot step. He then took five more steps, doing a series of small shuffles away from his defender until he had enough space to get up a shot. I know it was seven steps because as I was watching the highlight I said to myself: “That’s a lot of steps!” , then I slowed it down and counted. During Kobe’s dance his defender was frozen in place — if his defender had moved forward to close the gap Kobe would have simply jumped into him and drawn a shooting foul.

I *was* going to post a link to the highlight package, but ESPN removed it from circulation — as far as I can tell they only showed it the one time, then replaced it with a different series of highlights. It’s a conspiracy! I’m guessing some phone calls were involved.

Here’s good read about Kobe Bryant on Grantland.

2nd Thought: Before the Mavericks (at) Lakers game last night the production crew scanned the crowd, showing all the “celebrities”. The celebrities included the usuals like Nicholson, Adam Sandler, and Chris Tucker. They also showed Dyan Cannon. I’m wondering if including Dyan Cannon in the celebrity montage is just a courtesy at this point — when was the last time she was actually famous? And has anyone under the age of 40 ever heard of her?

I tried a Google search for a picture of Cannon. The first autofill was “Diane Cannon Plastic Surgery”.

 Yep.

Bonus trivia: Did you know Cannon was married to Cary Grant? If Grant were still alive, tomorrow he’d be 108 years old.

Happy Birthday Cary Grant – you handsome man!