Letters: Still waiting for that NFL team

Pat Haden will take over as UCLA football coach, have the Lord and all His disciples as assistants and win 10 consecutive national championships before the first shovel of dirt is dug for a new NFL stadium in Carson, Inglewood or anyplace else in La-La Land.

Bill Bell

Mar Vista

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As a lifelong Chargers fan, I love the team’s sneakily brilliant current plan to remain in San Diego: Stink up the joint so much that not even L.A. will want you!

John Mazur

La Cañada Flintridge

Kobe and Byron

Now Kobe Bryant is out with a sore back and he’s unsure when he will play again. Is it a coincidence that this happened after he got off the telephone with Steve Nash?

Jeff Hershow

Woodland Hills

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You have to feel sorry for journalists such as Mike Bresnahan having to discuss Kobe Bryant’s playing a full 82-game schedule with Byron Scott. The head coach uses words to the effect that Bryant is always pretty honest about how he feels. What is left out here is how Kobe’s ego feels, especially when he considers himself the greatest NBA player of all time.

Lou Soto

Trabuco Canyon

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Been racking my brain trying to find a precedent for the Lakers giving their treasury to a fading superstar and going down the tubes multiple seasons. Babe Ruth retired from the Boston Braves, not the Yankees. Willie Mays was traded to the Mets by the Giants. Joe Montana finished up with the Chiefs after his glory years with the 49ers. Johnny Unitas finished up with the Chargers, not the Colts. Michael Jordan played with the Wizards after the Bulls. While it is true Kareem retired a Laker, the Lakers were 57-25 and reached the NBA Finals in his final season.

The Lakers are clearly blazing a new path in sports history and it is not unlike watching the Hindenburg landing in 1937.

Dave Quick

Santa Monica

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Can you imagine a 25-year-old Kobe Bryant graciously giving up a slot on the Olympic team for a faded superstar? Me either.

Bert Bergen

La Cañada Flintridge

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The coach is named Byron Scott

Who stands with arms folded a lot

He wears dapper clothes

While the Lakers get hosed

Phil Jackson he certainly is not.

Gary H. Miller

Encino

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The former superstar has become a major liability and Byron Scott has not the courage nor the foresight to sit this shell-of-himself ball hog.

It’s sickening watching this undisciplined, uncoached team. They won’t reach 21 wins this season.

The good news is that Kobe won’t be with the team next year. The best news would be if Scott isn’t either.

Axel Hubert

Los Angeles

Byron Scott has no clue in coaching the Lakers. He stands on the sideline, arms folded with a disgusted look on his face letting Kobe throw up three-pointers and thinking everything will be all right. Kobe has never been a team player and it is more evident now with his greatly reduced basketball skills. It’s too late to recoup the $50 million but not too late for Kobe to sit or retire ... now.

Anthony Pasette

Studio City

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The nice thing about the Lakers’ play is that Lakers’ fans can already start rooting for them to lose, so they can get another high draft pick. The added bonus is Jim Buss will have to keep his promise to leave his position, and Mitch Kupchak can be fired. Both participated in losing Phil Jackson, the Dwight Howard fiasco, recent drafts, giving Kobe an outlandish contract and hiring Mike D’Antoni.

Andrew Bressler

Culver City

Crying shame

Wah! Wah! Wah! I always record the end of Clippers’ games because it is so much fun to watch them cry like little babies when they lose. They were in full colic mode after the Houston game. Doc is the lead crybaby, followed by Griffin, Jordan and Paul. When the playoffs come, we can burp them and put them to bed!

David Waldowski

Seal Beach

17 years ago ...

Can someone please explain the difference between correlation and causation to Bill Plaschke [Nov. 10]? Just because one thing follows another does not mean it actually causes it.

I ate pizza the night before the Northridge earthquake. Yet after all the pizza I’ve eaten since, no quake.

If you believe Plashke’s logic, UCLA coach Bob Toledo didn’t side with the wristband advocates and not only did it cause them to lose the next day’s game to Miami and the subsequent Rose Bowl to Wisconsin but it doomed his entire tenure for the next four years. Really?

Toledo wasn’t racist or a bad man. He simply felt, as many do still, that sports should be free of politics. To think that his decision — in 1998 by the way, not in this wired age — was somehow to haunt the rest of his tenure at UCLA is ludicrous.

Jeff Heister

Chatsworth

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Whereas most people who watched the game blamed poor tackling for the Bruins’ 1998 loss to Miami, that sleuth of a columnist Bill Plaschke has, 17 years later, unearthed the real truth — wristbands. Why are this man’s investigative talents being wasted covering UCLA football?

Paul Grammatico

Pasadena

Whoa, Billie!

Thanks, Bill Plaschke, for your excellent article about Keith Jackson. As I’m sure you know, he announced for other sports besides football. I’ve never gotten a correct trivia question answer when I ask others to name the announcers for the national telecast of the 1972 NBA Finals, even with the hint that it was on ABC. I know that it was Keith Jackson and Bill Russell, because my dad somehow managed to get two tickets to the clinching Game 5 at the Forum and our seats “high above the western sideline” were just above their seats.

Marty Schulman

Encinitas

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Kudos to Bill Plaschke for taking us down memory lane. It sure is a pleasure to be able in my life time to listen to a football game called by Keith Jackson. I just have I thing to say: “Whoa, Nellie.”

Bob Martinez

Glendale

America’s teammate

Dez Bryant’s agent is furious with his client after he went on a profanity-laced tirade during an interview session. Because Bryant didn’t hit or even threaten any female reporters in the room, Jerry Jones refuses to renegotiate a bigger contract.

Dave Eng

Thousand Oaks

Give Dodgers a D

Dee Gordon is the first major league infielder to win the batting title, a stolen base title and a Gold Glove in the same season. I for one am glad Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi have him on the Dodgers payroll: They know talent when they see it.

Karl Trinkley

Newhall

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So, fan favorite Dee Gordon was tops in fielding, batting, and stolen bases, while the Dodgers still paid his salary this year. Sabermetrics might be good at looking backward, but it takes baseball knowledge and experience to look forward. Based on sabermetrics, the Dodgers’ front office personnel should now be traded also.

Bill Weber

La Cañada Flintridge

Short end of deal?

Thanks to Bill Shaikin for his correct take on the Angels trade. If any of your other writers can explain the logic of trading a shortstop for a shortstop, thus leaving the rest of the trade consisting of trading two minor league pitchers with great major league potential for one catcher with limited major league potential while giving the other team $2.5 million in the process, I’m all ears.

Ron Reeve

Glendora

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The last good thing that Arte Moreno did for the Anaheim Angels — yes, Arte, we are not the Los Angeles Angels — is lower beer prices. This allows us to save a dollar while we watch Mike Trout’s career play out on a bad team. With a bad owner.

James Moorman

Corona

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