By T.J. Simers
Dear Patrick Soon-Shiong,
I am a day late with this, but then the Lakers didn’t even show up, so why quibble.
I know you’re probably down, what with being part owner of the disappointing Lakers and the disappointing LA Times.
I’m sure you’re still interested in the Lakers but obviously not so much the Times or you would say something.
How did you not say something about that inane three-point Lakers’ celebration story in your newspaper? I read it because I thought the organization was planning a mega-party when LeBron finally hit a three.
From what I gather the story was about the four-year-old kid of one of the Lakers like I care about the four-year-old kid of any Laker unless he can perform in the fourth quarter better than his dad.
He was doing “the Freeze,” which is some kind of poise the losing fathers do when they hit a three, maybe the problem why they are so cold the stupid nickname of their celebration.
I started the playoffs with the Nuggets reading Plaschke who said LeBron had cost the Lakers with lousy play in the fourth quarter. Sometimes with Plaschke you can’t be sure if he’s saying LeBron was bad in the fourth quarter or his whole life, but not really his whole life but that’s how he wants it to sound so somebody will read it.
After Game 2 LeBron played just as awful in fourth quarter as Game 1, almost mirroring the game-costing mistakes but reading Plaschke it was now Anthony Davis’ fault. Barely a mention of LeBron.
So, I was really curious to see who your sports columnist was going to blame after Game 3.
He didn’t even write about the game, giving up on the Lakers as they came home to win a game they had to win. The first identified Laker quitter.
He wrote about USC.
How does the top sports columnist at your newspaper, Patrick, ignore the Lakers in their biggest time of need? There was nothing to advance in the USC story on this particular Sunday other than Plaschke beating his chest to say he was really mad because the USC athletic director quit before the Times could nail him.
So, I guess we’ll never know which Laker escaped a brutal Plaschke beating for blowing Game 3.
I hope I can get over it.
