Letters: There are no teams of destiny

Bill Plaschke saying the New Orleans Saints deserved to win the Super Bowl [Feb. 7] is absurd. The only team that deserves to win is the team that actually wins the game. It has nothing to do with natural disasters or man-made tragedies.

God bless the people of New Orleans for all the suffering that Katrina brought, but that’s like saying the New York Yankees “deserved” to win the 2001 World Series because of 9/11. The Arizona Diamondbacks deserved it because they won the Series. And now that the Super Bowl is over, the Saints deserved to win.

Frank Lansen, Seal Beach

Who would have thought that the New Orleans Saints would win a Super Bowl before the Kings would win a Stanley Cup?

Dave Ballman

North Hills

The Kobe factor

Yeah. I’ll say it: The Lakers are a better team without Kobe. I love watching him take over a game, but his dominance usually turns his teammates into spectators or patsies, depending on which way he’s going. It may be “his team,” but “his guys” have looked like men of their own without him.

Jeff Rokos

Huntington Beach

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I kept wondering how a team gets so much better when its star player, who is arguably the best player in basketball, sits out a few games with an injury. Then it hit me. When Kobe plays, there is no team. Kobe so dominates the Lakers’ landscape that he enables the rest of the Lakers to not realize their full potential. When he sits, the team emerges.

I hope Kobe was watching closely while getting his ankle treatments.

Larry Weiner

Culver City

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Pass, screen, pass, score! Pass, ball fake, cut, pass, score!

Team basketball. What a concept!

Russell Hosaka

Torrance

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Injuries to key players are never good, but watching the Kobe-less Lakers replace “ME-ball” with “WE-ball” has been downright refreshing.

Scott Jackson

Lawndale

The Phil factor

A few years ago I coached a girls’ softball team to two Little League World Series and a national championship in a three-year span. I did it with great players and by emulating my favorite coach of all time, Phil Jackson. I saw it time and time again; other teams would struggle, their coach would yell and storm around, and that team would get more uptight. When my team went through a rough stretch, they’d see me sitting there calmly and it would help to settle them down.

I don’t know who Bill Plaschke [Feb. 10] has been talking to, but everyone I know loves Phil, and the day he leaves the Lakers will be a dark one.

Josh Clark

San Gabriel

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Interesting article by Plaschke about Phil Jackson. Phil’s “practice of poise and self-control are the keynotes of what he teaches.” But something tells me that if he showed more emotion during a game, that energy would transpire to more intensity from his team. A missing ingredient in all their losses.

George Metalsky

Redondo Beach

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While L.A. likes personality, it loves winning, which is exactly what Phil brings to L.A.

Katrina Ong Yiu

North Hollywood

Get with hockey

Dear Fox Sports West:

Your TV ads say, “Follow the L.A. Kings all season long on Fox Sports West,” but yet you have:

a) Failed to televise a single Kings road game from Canada all season.

b) Televised only three out of five games in the middle of a crucial five-game trip, including a thrilling 3-2 last-minute comeback in New Jersey and,

c) Shut off the best play-by-play man in the NHL, Bob Miller, from doing Monday night’s game with the Kings going for a record 10th win in a row.

Your ads also show a string of developing photos of Kings players and again you say, “Follow the Kings on Fox Sports West to see what develops.”

I think you forgot to load film into your camera.

Greg Ripke

Westchester

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Is there anyone at NBC who knows how to produce a hockey game?

Every Sunday we are fed the “Sidney Crosby Game of the Week.” There’s virtually no chance the Kings or the even-better San Jose Sharks will ever make it to a national game on that network.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s “Hockey Night in Canada” actually keeps people home on Saturday nights.

NBC should get a clue. I hear Conan O’Brien isn’t doing anything on Sundays.

Jeff Prescott

La Jolla

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Wow, a hockey photo above the fold on Page 1 of today’s Sports section? And it’s larger than thumbnail-size, like the kind from a Lakers game or illustrating the end of the world. The Kings didn’t win the Cup (since they’d have to make the playoffs first), so it must be time for the Winter Olympics again!

Drew Freedman

Los Angeles

A cover-up

Bill Plaschke finally gave me a laugh, when I substituted his name for Lindsey Vonn’s in his Feb. 11 piece scolding her for posing in SI’s swimsuit issue.

HEADLINE: “Plaschke’s injury could affect his performance in Olympics, but everyone’s more interested in Plaschke in a bikini.”

Plaschke, at a news conference, is talking about his debilitating shin injury,but the hunky Plaschke on the website is posing in a fur wrap too small for his chest and hot pants too tight for his bottom. Plaschke does it even though hanging out half-naked on pages with skimpy models trivializes his skill as a sports columnist. Plaschke offers his body as an object for female consumption even though this is diametrically opposed to the male empowerment symbolized by his journalistic craft.

It stinks, but Plaschke does it. And in a separate news conference, his Times colleagues embraced his decision. “It was awesome,” said T.J. Simers. “It was great to see Bill in a bikini.”

Charles Sergis

Huntington Beach

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Perhaps Plaschke is auditioning for the Calendar section with this mock horror over a skier in the SI swimsuit issue. Perhaps he imagines we were born last Tuesday. Whining about Lindsey Vonn’s overexposure as though we forgot Gabriela Sabatini and Maria Sharapova, to name just a couple in just one sport.

Fellow readers can list their own favorites and fill his next column with reasons to rein in his ridiculous rants.

Tom Sloss

Fountain Valley

Kim-possible

Certainly he’s had a fair shot at turning the team around and changing the Clippers’ culture: Fire Kim Hughes.

Andrew Rubin

Sarasota, Fla.

Who are they?

While watching the Who perform at halftime of the Super Bowl, I could only think of the lyrics to “My Generation”: “I hope I die before I get old.” Sorry, Roger and Pete, too late.

Bob Ostrove

Oxnard

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