Even With No Lakers, Bryant Still a Big Target

The Lakers’ season is long over, but apparently it remains open season on bashing the Lakers in general and Kobe Bryant in particular.

Peter Vecsey, in Sunday’s New York Post, explained why he believed the Miami Heat would fare better against the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals than the Lakers did in last season’s NBA Finals.

“For starters,” he wrote, “[Dwyane] Wade plays smarter and more unselfishly than Kobe Bryant.”

Trivia time: The Lakers were 15-1 during the 2001 playoffs, when they won the second of three consecutive NBA titles. Which game did they lose?

A different viewpoint: The Miami Herald’s Greg Cote wrote that Shaquille O’Neal’s Heat team is better than his Laker team, but not every sports columnist in Florida is ripping the Lakers.

Karen Crouse of the Palm Beach Post wrote, “O’Neal got to crow first, but who’s to say [Jerry] Buss won’t end up crowing last? Imagine Phil Jackson returning to coach the Lakers and Bryant allowing himself to be coached and the dynamism of Jackson luring a strapping free agent, say, Cleveland’s 7-foot-3 center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, to L.A. Why, Ron Shelton couldn’t write a better Hollywood sports story.”

Another winning script: Regarding Katie Brownell, the 11-year-old from Oakfield, N.Y., who, against boys, pitched a perfect game and struck out all 18 batters in the six-inning contest, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times wrote, “With rumblings this thing could go Hollywood, Tatum O’Neal is reportedly warming up in the bullpen.”

Since Brownell’s Little League team is named the Dodgers (her perfect game came against the Yankees), L.A.’s Dodgers sent her a congratulatory letter, signed by pitching coach Jim Colborn and pitchers Scott Erickson, Derek Lowe and Wilson Alvarez, who have all thrown major league no-hitters.

Brownell’s performance was no fluke. She threw five innings of one-hit ball -- with 14 of the 15 outs strikeouts -- in the season opener. And she was hitting .714 after three games.

Looking back: On this day in 2002, the Dodgers’ Shawn Green became the 14th player in major league history to homer four times in a game and set a major league record with 19 total bases. He went six for six, scored six runs and had seven runs batted in in a 16-3 victory at Milwaukee.

Green is one of three Dodgers to have six-hit games. Coincidently, the other two also did it in late May. Willie Davis had six hits on May 24, 1973, in a 16-inning game against the New York Mets, and Paul Lo Duca had six hits in an 11-10, 11-inning victory over the Colorado Rockies on May 28, 2001.

Trivia answer: Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers at Staples Center.

And finally: Channel 9’s Alan Massengale, on the Dodgers’ referring to their Orange County rivals as the Angels or the Angels of Anaheim: “If this silliness continues, I just hope the Angels won’t retaliate by referring to the Dodgers as the Dodgers of Elysian Park.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.