D'Antoni's Debut

Gratefully, the Lakers put on a pretty

good show and even with their new 

coach limping along the sidelines, they

managed to win over the Brooklyn

Nets. D'Antoni opted to put his

crutches aside (from knee surgery)

and pace alongside his new team

to coach. He states that he is now

fairly ready to take to the road with

a contingency plan. Although the

Lakers seemed to not play with the

same ease and efficiency as in recent

victories over the Houston Rockets and

the Phoenix Suns, they still managed

to rally past the Nets for a 95-90 win

in front of a sellout crowd of 18,997

at Staples Center. After an electric

start in which they scored the game's

first 10 points, the Lakers limped along

for quite awhile. The Nets really "got in

their face" even though they never led

by more than 6 points. Still, they refused

to play along with the Lakers' new up-tempo

offense. D'Antoni reminds us we have

72 more games to play and we can just

learn to be more patient. Actually the only

thing that we cannot do, of course, is

to win 77. In the end, we just hope to

be the best team in the league.

Lakers team is a work in progress with

our coach healing from his surgery,

Dwight Howard at only about 80%

with the mending of his back surgery, and 

Steve Nash along with Steve Blake out of the

game for now. Metta world Peace, Pau

Gasol and our Kobe Bryant have been

certainly pulling their own weight, 

although we lost 113-97 to Sacramento

Kings on Wednesday at the Sleep Train

Arena, not one of us has given up hope

for our future wins. Friday evening we're

playing in Memphis plus back to back

games the following evening in Dallas

on Saturday. Black Friday or not, we

are keeping our spirits up for a win!

Babs Wells