Text messages from text row...

Sleepwalking probably won’t cut it for Kobe Bryant and the Lakers tonight in Salt Lake City. . . .

EnergySolutions Arena will be electric. . . .

Jazz energizer Deron Williams, as TNT’s Charles Barkley noted after Game 2, is a “stud, a flat-out stud.” . . .

By the way, only 31% of readers responding to a USA Today poll believe the Lakers will win the NBA championship, while 63% favor LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. . . .

How about this for a poll question: How many believe that Andrew Bynum and pop star Rihanna are “just friends”? . . .

Before the Lakers did it this season, no team that won as many as 65 games had failed to post the NBA’s best record. . . .

The Dodgers’ offense has been so potent that Andre Ethier & Co. won six times during their eight-game winning streak without Manny Ramirez driving in a run. . . .

It’s a pretty safe bet that the injury-riddled Angels won’t win 100 games this season, but perhaps a season-long struggle would leave them better prepared for a lengthier October run. . . .

Noting that Dick Ebersol called John Madden “the best sports broadcaster that ever lived,” reader Armand Varlotta of Rancho Palos Verdes e-mails to ask, “Has Ebersol ever listened to Vin Scully?” . . .

Or Al Michaels? . . .

If USC has four players taken in the first round of Saturday’s NFL draft, as most mock drafts are projecting, that would make eight in two years, rendering the Trojans’ 2007 loss to Stanford at the Coliseum all the more inexplicable. . . .

The Trojans had seven players taken in the first round of the 1968 and ’69 drafts, among them the top overall pick in each draft, Ron Yary in 1968 and O.J. Simpson in 1969. . . .

The good news for the Ducks is, they could conceivably win the Stanley Cup without winning a game at the Honda Center. . . .

He was the player of the year in the Pacific 10 Conference as a freshman a year ago, but Kevin Love finished fourth among former Pac-10 players in voting for NBA rookie of the year. . . .

Neither the Lakers nor the always-in-the-lottery Clippers have produced a rookie of the year since moving to Los Angeles. . . .

Actor Jason Segel, star of the 2008 film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” won a dunk contest at a tournament in Florida during his junior year at North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake, high school teammate and Jazz reserve Jarron Collins said in a radio interview this week. . . .

A list of past competitors in the Ojai tennis tournament, being contested this week for the 109th time, reads like a who’s who in the sport’s long history: Pete Sampras, Billie Jean King, Jimmy Connors, Bill Tilden, Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly, Lindsay Davenport, Arthur Ashe, Tracy Austin, etc. . . .

It’s not hard to imagine USC and UCLA adding “sand” volleyball teams for women when the sport gains official NCAA status in the 2010-11 school year, especially after USC won the beach volleyball competition last weekend at the Alt Games in Riverside. . . .

Gary Sheffield, who hit 129 home runs during his 3 1/2 seasons in Los Angeles, is the first member of the 500-homer club who hit as many as 100 for the Dodgers, according to 500hrc.com. . . .

Only Reggie Jackson hit as many as 100 for the Angels. . . .

Bruce Springsteen, who last week during a two-night stand called the Sports Arena “the joint that don’t disappoint,” might get an argument from longtime Lakers fans who saw Jerry West, Elgin Baylor & Co. go 0 for 4 in the NBA Finals during the 7 1/2 seasons they called the building home in the 1960s. . . .

Donald Sterling’s Clippers, of course, also played there. . . .

USC’s annual “Swim With Mike” swim-a-thon raised $905,000 to fund scholarships for physically challenged athletes. . . .

Regarding a report that Deacon Jones coined the name given to the art of tackling quarterbacks behind the line of scrimmage, reader Dan Bates of Dana Point e-mails to note, “Here, I always thought Wilt Chamberlain was King of the Sack.” . . .

Former Times staffer Earl Gustkey, who died last week, was the Huell Howser of sportswriters, deeming virtually every story he ever reported as nothing less than a “crackerjack” yarn. . . .

He would have been tickled this week to learn that an ex-sportswriter and former Arizona State discus thrower, Julie Cart, had won journalism’s top honor: a Pulitzer Prize. . . .

Kudos, Julie, and R.I.P, Earl.

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jerome.crowe@latimes.com