After Christmas debacle, Lakers’ trip opens with thanksgiving

What a way to begin the toughest and longest road trip of the season, Lakers! If we were hoping for a game to make us forget the uninspired play of Christmas Day, we got it!

Thanks, Pau, for the great free-throw shooting. Thanks, Ron, for showing us why the Lakers effectively traded you for Ariza. Thanks, Bynum, for proving why you should be an All-Star.

Thanks, Phil, for learning how to make the necessary adjustments over the last month.

Thanks, Lakers. I can hardly wait to thank you for the next seven games.

Mike Cirasole

Whittier

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Kobe misses 19 shots and gets a total of two rebounds in the loss to the Cavaliers, and then complains that his teammates aren’t tough enough. The media, of course, goes along with it. Nobody dares criticize Kobe in L.A.

Jim Woodard

Woodland Hills

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Phil Jackson not only gets a free pass on his ugly, typically arrogant comments about “mitzvahs,” but Bill Plaschke [Jan. 17] supports him. Then Plaschke uses Elgin Baylor’s ridiculous discrimination suit to further pile on the far-from-perfect Donald Sterling. Sterling kept the incredibly inept Baylor well past his deserved expiration date.

Plaschke should know better. Phil Jackson is a delusional egomaniac. There is no hope he will ever know better.

Bert Bergen

La Canada

No charge

Marty Schottenheimer takes over an average team, turns them around after several years, creates a 14-2 team that plays competitively but loses their first game in the playoffs to an equal or superior team, the New England Patriots. For this he is fired.

Norv Turner is handed an exceptional team, and, for several years, guides them to fewer and fewer wins. Then, in 2009, they complete a 13-3 season, and, after a first-round bye, they play an uninspired and poorly coached game in losing to the underdog New York Jets. For this he is awarded a contract extension.

The Chargers need a true leader, not a misplaced offensive coordinator whose main selling point is that of being a “toady” for Smith and Spanos. The Bolts will not reach the Super Bowl as long as Turner is head coach.

Bill Geyer

Rancho Palos Verdes

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The Chargers were not the Lightning Bolts last weekend, they were dead Bolts.

David R. Stern

Los Angeles

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Shawne Merriman is accused of choking in September, the rest of the team waits until January.

Jim Meser

Simi Valley

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I can still remember

Back to two thousand five

Marty lost his courage

The Chargers took a dive

Now, it’s five years later

Nate Kaeding’s a sure bet

Still, I wonder . . . and I wonder

Who’ll stop the Jets?

Rick Solomon

Lake Balboa

On the court

When I first read that UCLA’s basketball team was not expected to be in the NCAA tournament this year, I thought it was a mistake. Well not anymore. This 2009-2010 team would be hard-pressed to win a high school championship, much less the Pac-10 or NCAA.

After watching them against USC, I’m convinced they are the least athletic team I’ve ever seen. I know some of their players have left early, but other schools also have that problem. With what went on at USC in the last year, how can they field a better team than UCLA? And why if Southern California is a basketball hotbed does little of this talent seem interested in playing for Howland? I’m only hoping that this is an aberration and that things will improve next year.

David Lawler

Santa Maria

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I must have missed it. When did Steve Lavin rejoin the UCLA coaching staff?

Mark Mead

San Diego

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USC donned the black basketball uniforms for the first time when O.J. Mayo was there. Why don’t the Trojans get rid of them now that they have repented?

Joseph Delgadillo

Monterey Park

Heritage haul

It has been a year since Pete Carroll embarrassed himself and his university by petulantly walking out of Mark Sanchez’s news conference announcing he was turning pro. Since then, Carroll has beaten his own hasty retreat while Sanchez has graduated from USC, was picked sixth in the NFL draft, is a star quarterback in the biggest media market in America and has his team one win away from the Super Bowl. Yet Carroll still refuses to admit he was wrong or, perhaps more correctly, admit that he was acting in his own selfish best interest.

Carroll was actually heard on the radio this week suggesting that Sanchez owes his success in New York to “an offense where the quarterback doesn’t run the whole show.” If an outsized ego translates to wins in the NFL, Carroll should do just fine. If integrity and the ability to judge NFL ready talent are what’s required, Seattle may be in big trouble.

George Pisano

Rancho Palos Verdes

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A saying by the old Notre Dame football coach Frank Leahy fits Mike Garrett to a T: “Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”

Pat Borsch

Manhattan Beach

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It’s hard to believe that you couldn’t come up with even one pro-Mike Garrett letter. I can assure you that long faithful Trojans such as myself do not overlook his accomplishments. Though Coach Carroll is gone, the program remains in good stead as long as Mike Garrett is minding the store.

Chris Ramsey

Los Angeles

Battle for L.A.

General Rick Neuheisel’s comment at halftime of the USC thumping of UCLA at Pauley Pavilion that “until the new regime proves itself, UCLA has every right to claim Los Angeles,” is right on! Just like Napoleon has every right to claim Waterloo and Custer can claim Little Big Horn.

Neuheisel (which, based on his unproven bravado, should be pronounced New-Weis-al) is on pace to do worse than the Karl Dorrell Era, and somehow thinks two 21-point defeats to USC give him the right to claim the city? Hey, Rick, don’t look now but the “New Regime” is the same “Old Regime” that was coaching the Trojans during those 40-point “behind the woodshed” beat-downs recently laid on the Bruins.

Aye-aye, Capt. Rick! The Titanic is doing just fine.

Nick Tonsich

Rolling Hills

No horse sense

Pete Carroll’s famous mantra of “always compete” obviously meant nothing to the Eclipse Award voters because they chose as horse of the year a horse that did not compete in the most important race of the year, the Breeders’ Cup Classic. The “ Sport of Kings” has thus regressed to the “Sport of Ignoramuses.”

Howard Cohen

North Hills

Double fault

In a televised interview, Serena Williams claimed that she was assessed the largest fine in tennis history not because of her egregious behavior at the U.S. Open, but because she was a woman.

Perhaps she should change her name to Cleopatra, because she certainly is the Queen of Denial.

Harris J. Levey

Venice

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