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Letters: A good or bad sign for UCLA?

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It only took ornery Uncle Bill Plaschke about the time of a fastbreak basket to try and put a damper on UCLA basketball fans’ greatest day since, well, in a long time. He points out the obvious about Coach Ben Howland being on the hot seat due to increased expectations brought on by superior recruiting. I guess that puts him in the same elite boat as, well, every other coach in collegiate sports. I guess Howland would have been better off scouring the small private schools to find that next 5-10 superstar so he can keep his job as his team would then be sure to overachieve.

Good plan, Plaschke. I’m sure it will be brought up at the next Bruin Booster meeting.

Allan Kandel

Los Angeles

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Not to wallow in nostalgia, but it’s sad to see college basketball reduced to a glorified NBA tryout. If Shabazz Muhammad is anywhere near as good as UCLA hopes he is, he’ll turn pro after his freshman year. Do people really expect Ben Howland to “coach” this kid? They used to have a word for unconnected players who were brought it on a short-term basis to help a team win. They were called “ringers.”

David Macaray

Rowland Heights

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So Shabazz Muhammad will be the savior of UCLA basketball? I can well understand that Ben Howland and Dan Guerrero really do need Muhammad to help them resurrect their own shaky employment status, but why would a fine educational institution like UCLA want to emulate the tawdry one-and-done model of Kentucky, no matter how successful in the very short term?

Shame on Howland and Guerrero and the other administrative enablers at UCLA who are eager to hand out a “scholarship” to someone whose main interest in the university seems to be the convenient location of the weight rooms. What part of “educational mission” do these people not understand?

John de Jong

Long Beach

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Bill Plaschke is right that a high-level, highly recruited college basketball player can be a burden to a coach, and basketball coaches through the years have wrestled with this challenge. I remember watching UCLA practice sessions when John Wooden was working with Lew Alcindor. Wooden frequently worked with him one on one, gently suggesting how he should change his stance when making free throws — “Now watch me, Lewis. Try to bend your knees like this Lewis. Yes, that’s fine Lewis.”

Coach Ben Howland is a gentleman in the mold of Coach Wooden, and hopefully he can handle his new — and fabulous —- burden.

Martin A. Brower

Corona del Mar

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Heck, if Shabazz Muhammad can at least make it to the team bus on time, I’ll be happy.

Mark J. Featherstone

Windsor Hills

They’ve got a secret

The proposed new ownership and Frank McCourt want certain details of the sale hidden and sealed from the public. If everything is on the up and up, why hide it? This whole new ownership and McCourt relationship just doesn’t pass the smell test. After 48 years of being a Dodgers fan, I’m going to continue my boycott of anything Dodgers-related. Maybe it’s time to root for the Angels now.

Toby Kovaleff

Long Beach

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It should be happiness, but it’s not. A McCourt-less Dodgers future is huge, yet McCourt is still there. Baseball had a cancer in L.A., a disease that broke up a whole organization into two dozen parts, dividing and spreading per Biology 101. Now we are stuck with a perpetual McCourt half-life due to epidemiological dissemination and metastasis; no amount of fancy words will disguise that stinky fact.

The McCourts were toxic, and they were treated with a big payday, plus they still are involved with the stadium area. Two billion dollars and no cure.

Mason Malugeon

Huntington Beach

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Magic may still have his Showtime smile, but McCourt still has the parking lots. I know I speak for thousands of baseball fans, if McCourt keeps the parking lots I won’t be attending any games. Simple. Sorry Dodgers. I would rather take the train to Anaheim.

Lori Anderson

Studio City

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T.J. Simers has tried to shame Dodgers fans because they feel good about Magic Johnson being part of the new ownership group. What Simers fails to recognize is that whatever the size of Magic’s stake, fans are excited because they trust his judgment. Magic is more than a front man. His success since he stopped playing basketball is not a fastbreak. He’s built up his good character for more than 30 years.

Paul Bergman

Santa Monica

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Can Magic, the baseball fan, name the starting lineup of any baseball team, ever? I’m not swallowing the Kool-Aid on this one yet. Would have been cheaper to bring back Steve Soboroff.

Leonard Klein

Sherman Oaks

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For many of us, Vin Scully’s absence from the broadcast booth at Dodger Stadium is a better reason to postpone a game than rain.

Jon White

Monrovia

Tough trip

Like many of us, I’ve been attending games at Dodger Stadium (with the exception of the last couple of years) for 50 years now. I’ve attended several openers, Bat Days, Camera Days, Fan Appreciation Days, a few playoff games, two World Series games. Many, many games were sellouts. Never was I late. Never.

Until today, opening day.

“Well, you shoulda left earlier,” you might say. When I got off the 101 at Grand Avenue, made the left off the ramp and a quick left onto Cesar Chavez (the path I’ve taken since 1978), I looked at the clock on my truck’s dash. It was 11:25 a.m. “We’re gold!” I announced to the wife and daughter. “We’re only a mile from the parking lot and an hour and a half to go.” Problem was that I had only gone about three-quarters of that mile when the F-18s flew overhead. No Beach Boys. No seeing the players standing on the baselines. No first pitch. The bottom of the first was over before I parked. The last out of the second occurred as we sat in our seats.

From our vantage point in Section 54, Row JJ in the reserved deck, I could see a line of about a dozen cars still coming in on Academy Road during the bottom of the fifth.

Were they inspecting vehicles entering the stadium like it was Stalag 17? Were the attendants getting grief from everyone for higher parking prices? Was there a huge traffic accident that had completely blocked the streets?

I wish I knew.

Other than that, a good time. Observing a baseball game from six blocks away had its own challenges, but it was still a Dodgers game in Dodger Stadium, Ethier knocked a ball into the right field pavilion to win the game and I was there. Finally.

Eric Monson

Temecula

No worries?

Same old Angels. Mike Scioscia continues to monkey with a different lineup every day, except now Mark Trumbo mostly sits out games. How’s he going to learn to play third base riding the bench? Isn’t his power bat needed anymore? He was the Angels’ best power hitter last year; but the likes of Abreu, Wells and Callaspo seem get preferred playing treatment. Contrary to claims, it seems new GM Jerry Dipoto works for Scioscia too, just like the last GM. With management like that, they are going nowhere, Pujols or no Pujols!

Joe Bonino

Glendale

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It is way too early for Angels fans to worry the Pujols’ signing is a failed attempt to make up for the Mike Napoli trade and that neither he nor Vernon Wells will be worth a fraction of their salary and that the questionable bullpen will continue be as awful the rest of the season as they’ve been so far enabling Texas to cruise to a third straight American League West title. I’m certainly not.

Ron Reeve

Glendora

Say it

Ozzie Guillen shouldn’t be fired over his remarks about Fidel Castro. Instead he should be fired over his sheepish acceptance of a five-game suspension for exercising his rights to free speech.

Mark Bridgeford

Valencia

No Mora that

So according to Bill Plaschke, Jim Mora can curse [April 8]. So can I as can most of the Pacific Fleet. So what’s your point? Can he win football games? That’s what counts, with or without cursing.

Write another article in January and let us know what bowl game the Bruins went to and what the score of the USC-UCLA game was. That’s what counts.

Russell Morgan

Carson

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Somewhere up in heaven, you can hear John Wooden saying, “Gee willikers...who is this potty mouth Mora?

Richard Whorton

Valley Village

Rise of Bynum

Open letter to Andrew Bynum:

At last you are fulfilling the potential that Jim Buss (and many of us) believed in for so long. The Lakers have had the greatest group of centers of any team in the NBA. You may have the ability to join that group. But you are behaving all too often like a spoiled kid who flouts authority.

Maybe that plays in the real world where a 24-year-old is still considered a youngster by some folks, but in the NBA, where you are old in your 30s, you are now entering middle age, so it’s time for your behavior to start reflecting that.

If you hope to join George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal and see your jersey hanging in the rafters, more is expected of you than just your game. How could you play alongside Derek Fisher for so many years and not know that?

Bob Walter

Altadena

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T.J. Simers always finds a dark cloud in an otherwise sunny day. He could find fault with Abraham Lincoln. Now that Frank McCourt is out of the picture he has to find some topic to write about and why not pick on Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum. Both of these individuals have their faults, but without them we could be the Charlotte Bobcats, so lighten up T.J. and smell the roses. It’s spring!

Kenneth M. Bezich

San Pedro

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With or without Bynum, Kobe, or Gasol, the Lakers are about as aimless as a rudderless dinghy adrift without sail in a white squall, and as consistent as a bipolar patient without medication, therapy or a psychiatrist.

Michael E. White

Burbank

Big D

Blake Griffin and Vinny Del Negro would have us believe that defense in the NBA is actually rocket science. Come on, Blake, play hard, keep your man in front of you and box out. It really is that simple.

Maury D. Benemie

Corona

Swing shift

Present-day Tiger Woods and his mechanical swing overhaul No. 3 might want to ruminate on the idea that a guy who has never had a lesson just won the Masters in grand style.

Brad Kearns

Auburn, Calif.

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So Tim Leiweke needs local sports fans to change their habits and take the Metro or take a walk or take a bike or take public transit to their proposed cash grab, I mean, football stadium. In that same vein, here’s an environmentally friendly suggestion for AEG that will improve the situation for all local fans who are tired of this Colorado-based real estate group masquerading as an NHL team owner and civic benefactor:

Take a hike.

Elizabeth Tanner

Beverly Hills

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Only a salesman with the unmitigated hubris of Tim Leiweke and a company as out of touch with reality as AEG could print a 10,000-page document and then implore Angelenos to be more ecological.

Andrew Mackinney

Westchester

Nyuk

I told my husband that The Three Stooges were at the top of the Sports section this morning. He wanted to know what Phil Anschutz, Tim Leiweke and Frank McCourt had done.

Sally Vasquez

El Segundo

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The Los Angeles Times welcomes expressions of all views. Letters should be brief and become the property of The Times. They may be edited and republished in any format. Each must include a valid mailing address and telephone number. Pseudonyms will not be used.

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