Shaq, Lakers Can Hack Just About Anything

Let’s talk about the Hack-a-Shaq, shall we?

We could talk about what it says about a coach when he gives up on strategy and adjustments and instead relies on desperately exploiting a sorry loophole in the rules.

We could talk about what it does to a team when they realize their coach has lost confidence in them; when they’re told to toss their uncommon talents and years of accumulated skills in the garbage and instead resort to flailing blindly at a man they admire and respect in the hope that they can gain ground by exposing his one weakness.

We could talk about the drag and grind that wear down a game once renowned for its excitement, athleticism and sheer heart-pounding speed, reducing it to an agonizing pageant of free throws and timeouts while the clock crawls drearily toward its mind-numbing anticlimax.

But perhaps we should just talk about one fact. It simply doesn’t work. It never has and it never will. Why any coach would debase himself and his team for a doomed strategy that benefits no one is beyond me.

Brian Dalton

Santa Paula

*

I remember before the Laker season began all the concern about how Kobe Bryant’s legal troubles might affect the team. Who knew that at the very most, committing a felony, or at the very least, betraying a wife, could lead to an athlete’s personal best and be so beneficial to the Lakers?

Congratulations, Kobe, you have disproved the theory that personal troubles negatively affect professional life. What a tragic message.

Jana Iriarte

Hacienda Heights

*

Would you please reassign Bill Plaschke? Friday’s narrow-minded, fawning, needlessly divisive article illustrates his incapacity. Celebrate the team, Bill.

On a night when the Lakers played the best team ball since Showtime, his blinkered view can see only Kobe Bryant. With such a splendid forest, why would anyone anoint a single tree above all the rest?

Tommy Lohmann

Santa Monica

*

Dear Bill Plaschke,

I’m looking into playing a new sport that involves jumping from one moving bandwagon to another.

Could you please give me some pointers? You are obviously an expert.

Amit Kashman

Tarzana

*

How likable is T.J. Simers? He makes Bill Plaschke seem like the Good Humor Man.

The hypocritical Simers whines about some slight by USC, bellyaches about money (remember his daughter’s wedding?) and dumps on the Lakers for whining and bellyaching.

The Lakers are not paid to be likable to Simers. They’re paid to win and that’s what they are doing. There is no greater entertainment in L.A. than the Lakers.

I’d like to propose that The Times trade Simers to a town with a team he finds “likable.” Then he’d have nothing to write about.

Barbara McCarren

Venice

*

The solution to Shaq’s free-throw shooting is obvious -- fine him $100,000 for every miss. I guarantee he’ll improve.

OK, to be fair, waive the fines in every game he scores 30 points.

All right, if you really have to be more than fair, pay him a $100,000 bonus for every one he makes.

Bob Patterson

Alta Loma

*

NBA refereeing is about as believable as professional wrestling. They call phantom fouls 20 feet from the basket while ignoring much of the mayhem occurring down low. Three seconds in the lane; they never heard of it. Nearly every player travels nearly every time he has the ball. I won’t even try to describe inbounding the ball after a made basket.

Rod Hersberger

Santa Barbara

*

Are Laker fans the biggest morons in the NBA? Don’t you think that anyone with the resources to score tickets for Laker playoff games would know which ticket to present [Laker notes, May 25] at the gate? Do you think that they are going to say, “Oh, Lord, I brought ticket F-40 when you said I needed C-1!”

Steve Tarde

San Diego

*

The plan was simple.

Step 1: Sell the house for cash.

Step 2: Find a DeLorean in the used-car section, but make sure it has a Flux Capacitor.

Step 3: Set the time machine to May 6, the day after the Lakers went down 0-2 to the Spurs.

Step 4: On a long stretch of road, get the car going 88 mph and wait for the flash.

Step 5: Drive to Vegas and go into a sports book. Walk up to the counter and ask the guy behind it, “What odds can I get on the Lakers winning four in a row from San Antonio?”

Leonard J. Ratzman

Bellflower