Let’s Give the Lakers a Little More Time

Last Saturday’s letters about Shaq and the Lakers were pathetic. Everyone is so quick to criticize a team when it’s down. As far as Kobe’s being overrated, how many championships did my great Magic man win without Kareem?

When it’s all said and done, at the end of the season, I’ll raise a glass to toast the Lakers’ fourth consecutive championship and I’ll have a big smug smile on my face as I remember all these people who put the Lakers down, buried them and threw the shovel away.

One last thing: Remember the Angels’ start this season?

Jeff McMurtrey

San Gabriel

*

Memo to Laker fans: Chill. Shaq and the rest of the team will be ready for the playoffs. Nobody takes more pounding than he does, and no team has played more games in the last three seasons. He has earned the rest and he knows what he’s doing.

In today’s NBA, the regular schedule is only a prolonged preseason anyway. Let the Mavericks and the rest of the league knock themselves out trying to set records. Remember when the Bulls won 72 games during the regular season and almost ran out of gas in the playoffs? So does Phil. He’s not going to make that mistake again.

Let’s say the Lakers are the last team to make the playoffs. Do you think the top-seeded team would want to play them in a first-round five-game series?

Maurice Sanchez

Coto de Caza

*

I have to respond to those loyal and knowledgeable Laker fans who wrote in. To Dave Drusin from Studio City, here’s hoping that by the end of the season you will have a size-23 foot in your mouth. To Sydney Cook from Orange, you’re right, Shaq has no loyalty. Those three rings he got L.A. playing on nine toes shows just how much he cares about the money only. To Joe Martin from Alameda, you were able to see right through Kobe and his selfish, flashy, ineffective play. By the way, during which triple-double did you discover this? And finally to Mick Taylor from L.A., you’re also right about Kobe’s not being able to carry a team the way Allen Iverson does. Oh, and how many rings did you say Allen has?

Hal Murray

Agoura Hills

*

In a show of unity, Phil Jackson always goes on the basketball genius disabled list every time Shaq or Kobe goes on the disabled list as well.

Elliot Semmelman

Los Angeles