Friday, June 4, 2010

The coach'es coach, John Wooden, is ill right now and could
use our positive thoughts. He led UCLA to 10 National titles in
basketball before retiring in 1975. Currently he is in UCLA
Medical Center. Former star and father of Lakers Luke Walton,
Bill Walton, has been close to John Wooden & visited him earlier
this past week. Wooden is just 4 mo. away from turning 100!
Another bit of information that I will pass on to you concerns
The Boston Celtics (team we played against Thursday).
Coach Doc Rivers, made a remarkable ploy of gaining his teams'
confidence in themselves by asking each player for $100 awhile
back and told them he would seal the money within an envelope
and that he did, then he proceeded to hide the envelope up on
Staples Center locker room ceiling beneath a ceiling tile. He then told
each player that they could regain their money if they played hard
and were able to come right back there to play against the Laker team
in the finals! What motivation! Really a remarkable idea in my opinion.
Guess our coach had some similar feeling too as coach Phil Jackson asked
our players for $50 each and told them to stand defense against
the Celtics and watch their plays better (which they did too) and if
so, he would return the money he had taken back to them after the game.
It worked! Our defense was great, fouls a bit hard to take as it seemed
the ref's. took great pride in calling fouls at every turn down the court.
Eighteen fouls called in first quarter. Crazy. We were 9 points ahead
at half time and ended the first game of these finals with score of 102-89.
Great game. 1-0 for first game of the possible 7 so now we will see how
these finals play out with the very next game to watch this coming Sunday.
Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant took the floor by a storm, Kobe making 30 points
and Pau adding 23 points and 14 rebounds.Our Laker team were poised
and polished and it showed. They unleashed 2 years of pent-up emotions
and roared past the Boston Celtics. Sundays game will also be at Staples Center.
Babs Wells

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