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Hgo’s eye – The English Version

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06/03/08

They gotta have art

Tattoos, frowned upon in the NBA not too long ago, are practically considered must-haves in today’s league.

By Jonathan Abrams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 1, 2008

Bashfulness and bravery came together in a curious marriage as Ronny Turiaf strolled into a tattoo parlor in Spokane, Wash.

Turiaf, a Laker now and a Gonzaga Bulldog then, did not exactly know what to expect but knew it was for him.

He received his first tattoo five years ago. He left that parlor $100 shorter in cash and with the motto “Never Lose Faith” on his back.

“Once you get one it’s pretty addictive,” said Turiaf, who has since added several more tattoos, all serving as odes to his family. “It’s a matter of just putting something on your body that really means a lot.”

Today, one can watch an NBA playoff game and be treated to jumpers and alley-oops and tattoos — lots and lots of tattoos. About 75% of NBA players have them.

“Guys are getting more and more,” Lakers guard Derek Fisher said. “It seems like whatever they had last year, the next year, you come back and they’re even more tatted up or marked up.”

The NBA’s population of about 450 players is primarily African American, but the distinctions of players and their tattoos may be more easily defined into cultural and generational terms than racial ones.

It wasn’t so long ago that tattoos in the NBA were deemed bizarre and odd from the days when Dennis Rodman turned himself into a walking palette of color.

Then in 1996 Allen Iverson joined the league. Iverson quickly turned into a scoring machine and his fame soared, and so did his tattoo collection, spreading to his neck, shoulders, arms, chest, and onto his left hand, which is inked with a dollar sign and the motto “Money Bagz”.

At the time, tattoos were still largely frowned upon by the league. Iverson’s tattoos were once airbrushed from the cover of an official NBA magazine. But Iverson was a trend-setter.

“He has a large following of people who look up to him and idolize him or whatever, and it becomes a competition of ‘I want to fit in. I want to be just like him’ and they just keep getting more and more tattoos,” said Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw, who played with Iverson as a Philadelphia 76er in 1998.

Now, NBA players who don’t have a tattoo are in the ever-shrinking minority.

A decade ago, the Associated Press reported that 35% of NBA players were tattooed. Five years later that number had doubled, according to “In the Paint: Tattoos of the NBA and the Stories Behind Them,” a book detailing players and their tattoos.

Many tattoos are inspirational, bearing a credo or Bible passage to live by.

Shaquille O’Neal has a big “S” for Superman on his left biceps. A once clean-cut Kobe Bryant showed up one year with tribute tattoos to his wife and daughter on his left arm.

Other tattoos are deeply personal, and like Turiaf’s, tributes to family.

The Lakers’ Lamar Odom has a portrait of his son Jayden, who died two years ago while sleeping in his crib, on the side of his left chest and a portrait of his mother on his back.

Others are menacing — portraits of the Grim Reaper or lions. Some tattoos are funny, such as that of former Jazz center Greg Ostertag of a dunking Fred Flintstone.

Jazz point guard Deron Williams, 23, is among those who keep adding to their body art. They include his daughters’ baby feet, names and birthdays, a cross with a rose in it and a basketball on his left biceps that reads “Texas made.”

“It’s a way to express yourself,” he said. “I probably won’t like them when I’m 90. But right now I do.”

In a sense, this reflects America’s society, where more than a third of people age 18 to 25 have tattoos, according to a Pew Research Center study.

But in that commonality, some of the goal of individuality may be lost.

“I think it’s just everybody trying to be like everybody else,” said Davy Sheets, a tattoo artist in Hampton, Va., who has inked Iverson. “At one time, people got tattoos to be different, now it seems like they get tattoos to be the same.”

While tattoos are popular among young American-born players, they are less so among Europeans in the NBA.

“European players are coming from a different culture and coming to an American game, and the tattoo is part of the American culture,” said Todd Boyd, a cultural studies professor at USC and author of “Young, Black, Rich and Famous: the Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture.”

Said Lakers forward Vladimir Radmanovic, who hails from Serbia and is tattoo-free: “I just don’t see myself being 60 years old, walking my grandchildren down the street and having tattoo work on my arm. It looks nice on a young guy, but once you reach a certain age, it really doesn’t look nice anymore.”

To that extent, the tattoo rift is also felt among an older group of players who remain ink-less.

The reason, according to Shaw, who played in the NBA for 14 years and broke in with the Boston Celtics in 1988, is because his generation had its own new-age movement that threatened the status quo. It was earrings.

“I got [my ear] pierced during my rookie year when I was in Boston. I remember the guys on the team and the head coach making a lot of comments about me having an earring, but that was the big thing back in the ’80s,” Shaw said.

Count Fisher, 33, among those players with tattoos.

He opted for small ones on his right arm about five years ago. One symbol stands for faithfulness. The other represents heart, mind and spirit. Both are for his wife, Candace.

And he got them in a spot that could be easily covered by a shirt depending where his life drifted after basketball.

But tattoos do still have some limits.

Al Thornton, a 24-year-old forward for the Clippers, came into the league without a tattoo. He doesn’t plan on getting one any time soon.

“If I get one, it would have to mean something,” he said. “I see a lot of guys getting one that doesn’t mean something and, also, people that are close to me really don’t have them.”

“He knows his mom,” said Philomenia Thornton. “We don’t do tattoos. Maybe one day, that might be something that might help him. People will look for someone clean cut with no tattoos and someone that listens to their mama.”

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06/05/08

Richmond compares Kobe to MJ

The Mercury News:

Mitch Richmond knows this better than most, knows it so well and vividly that there’s almost a touch of post-traumatic stress when he talks about it.

Richmond knows because no less an authority than Michael Jordan declared him one of MJ’s toughest matchups, and because Richmond went up against Kobe Bryant in practice every day when they were Lakers teammates during the title-winning 2001-02 season.

Richmond knows: The single greatest common thread between Jordan and Bryant is their ability and hunger to destroy every opponent in their paths.

Belittle Bryant’s cold arrogance all you want. Call him selfish. Rail about his sense of entitlement. But you can’t deny that Kobe and Jordan are the only two guards who have played the game like this.

“Both guys, when they’ve got you in a cage, they’re going to keep you in there,” Richmond said this week. “They’re going to kill you and keep killing you until you’re dead.”

That’s the macro-maniacal look at the Lakers-Celtics meeting in the NBA finals, which starts tonight in Boston. But it’s also the most significant piece of developing history.

It’s about Kobe Now vs. MJ Past. It’s about Bryant, finding his place in the all-time basketball constellation.

It’s about Kobe, at 29, 12 years into his pro career and after countless rampaging controversies, aiming for his first finals most valuable player award, fully aware that Jordan won six, Shaquille O’Neal three (with Bryant as his tense sidekick

for all of them), Tim Duncan three, Magic Johnson three and Larry Bird two.

“Kobe’s not finished yet,” said Richmond, who retired in 2002 and now is a Warriors executive. “I think he’s going to go down as one of the best guards that ever played the game. And Michael is the best guard who ever played . . .

“We used to call Michael . . . well, we used to call him ‘God,’ you know. He could do no wrong on the basketball court in anything he tried.”

So Richmond very definitively is not ranking Kobe ahead or on par with the Jordan deity; Richmond says that nobody can equal Jordan’s impact on the game.

But it’s significant when a sterling member of the MJ Generation allows that there are heavy similarities. And importantly: Richmond and his peers have always admired Bryant for his ferocity and stubborn single-mindedness.

What Richmond understands about Bryant is his ability and will to take over the most important parts of the most important games – such as the end of Game 5 against San Antonio.

Bryant doesn’t have a pack of NBA buddy-peers, nor does he want one. Bryant has demanded to be traded, feuded with and eventually pushed O’Neal to be traded, exchanged gibes with Ray Allen, Phil Jackson and many more.

Basically, Bryant wants to dominate and he wants to eclipse Jordan, Bill Russell and anybody else you want to name.

And now Bryant has a handful of teammates on whom he can rely – Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Derek Fisher, Jordan Farmar, Sasha Vujacic – and he still has the skill to put up 50 at any time.

Richmond plays it down, but I’ve heard that in 2001-02, Bryant sought out Richmond time and again for feisty practice-court showdowns – as a test, as an acknowledgment of Richmond’s status in the league, and as a way to show the Old Guard what was coming next.

“Oh yeah, it got heated sometimes,” Richmond said. “I was physical and he knew that was going to be the way I played him. I was an older guy, fading, and he was a young guy, up and coming. And you still want to hold your ground.”

That was in 2001-02, the Lakers’ final title season of the Kobe-Shaq tandem; in summer 2004, O’Neal was traded to Miami, then O’Neal won the 2006 title with the Heat.

Why didn’t Bryant want to play with O’Neal anymore? He knew that O’Neal’s body was already breaking down and that O’Neal would never put in the work to keep himself in top shape; Bryant wanted new, younger, sleeker teammates; most of all, Bryant wanted to carry the team on his own.

“He wants to put the team on his back every night because he’s just such an eager scorer,” Richmond said. “He’s starving every day to score. Starving.

“But now he’s understanding that he can let the other guys touch the ball early, let them get into a flow. I think Mike did that at the end of his career – let guys get into the flow, get his buckets in the flow of the game and when it’s time to score, he does it in the fourth quarter.”

Bryant is guaranteed to do it a few times in the next few games – my prediction: Lakers in five – and he might not be the most friendly person in the world while doing it.

Bryant won’t care much, as long as he’s the one collecting the trophies and getting that much closer to joining Jordan at the summit.

So Mitch sees Lakers in 5… hummm let’s see…

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Lamar Odom at guard? Lakers look at changes for

next season

New season, new Lakers?

The Lakers could feature a completely different makeup next season, Coach Phil Jackson said today.

“If and when [Andrew Bynum] is back, which we anticipate, it will be a different team entirely,” Jackson said.

The shifting probably will involve players sliding into new roles, rather than a full-out hunt in the free-agent market this summer.

It will include juggling a loaded frontcourt and Lamar Odom possibly moving from power forward to small forward.

“It’s a real issue,” Jackson said. “We think we can do it. We think people will have to sacrifice.”

General Manager Mitch Kupchak said the team would be creative in its rotation next year, and one option was for Odom to play guard and Kobe Bryant to move up to small forward.

“It could be the longest and biggest frontcourt in the NBA in many, many years,” Kupchak said.

“It is a team that would be very talented, very long and versatile, and I think training camp would be an important time to test out what [Jackson] has done during the summer.”

Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss, Kupchak and Jackson will sit down in the next couple of days to assess the team’s future.

As for the Lakers losing in the NBA Finals to Boston in six games, Jackson said:

“We were a Cinderella team, and we just couldn’t put the slipper on,” before adding: “I just think we weren’t ready to assume that role.”

As for Bryant and Pau Gasol stretching their bodies to play in the Beijing Olympics this summer, Jackson admitted some concerns, but, “They’re so gung-ho about it that I just have to allow them my blessing to play.”

Meanwhile, Kupchak’s midseason trade for Gasol, in what many considered a heist, is largely credited with catapulting the Lakers into the Finals.

Kupchak said today he expects to retain free agents Sasha Vujacic and Ronny Turiaf, but otherwise may show a faint interest in the free-agent market.

Kupchak confirmed that the team’s ownership would meet shortly to discuss possible off-season moves.

“We’re well over the cap; we’re well over the luxury-cap threshold,” he said. “I’ve looked at the free-agent list. We’ve ranked them … but the bottom line is, it’s not a very strong unrestricted group of free agents.”

Kupchak said Bryant appeared “chipper,” when the pair met Thursday.

“It was certainly different than last season’s exit meeting,” Kupchak said.

Today was the last day of exit interviews for the Lakers at their El Segundo training facility.

Here are some comments from players as they left the Lakers’ complex:

The point guard rejoined the Lakers this season, falling just short of earning his fourth championship with the team.

He said he was dealing with mixed emotions.

“[I'm] disappointed we couldn’t get it done, couldn’t get it figured out,” Fisher said. “But at the same time, proud of our accomplishment and proud to be a member of this team.

“Just losing in the Finals is not a good feeling.”

Fisher said he doesn’t anticipate major personnel changes with the team this summer and hopes that he is right.

For any team, he said, there has to be an amount of mutual responsibility and accountability. “I think our group was willing to do that this year,” he said.

Andrew Bynum

The young center got the Lakers started on their path to the NBA Finals before sustaining a season-ending knee injury in January.

Bynum had hoped to return to action during the playoffs, but setbacks caused him to eventually undergo surgery instead.

Now, the Lakers can dream of next season when Bynum will finally join Gasol in their long-anticipated frontcourt tandem.

Bynum said he would resume training in two to three weeks and intended to work on his lateral quickness over the summer to handle plays such as the high-pick-and-rolls the Celtics tossed out at the Lakers.

Bynum also is due a contract extension, but the Lakers probably will wait to see how his leg reacts to workouts this summer before approaching the issue.

“That’s for my agent to handle,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Lamar Odom

The season had hardly ended before rumblings of Odom being traded for a small forward better suited for the triangle offense started popping up.

“It’s crazy,” Odom said after his exit interview today. “As soon as I walked into our meeting, Mitch [Kupchak] told me sorry about something that came up in the paper. It’s been going on ever since I came here.”

But he also was adamant about where he wants to be.

“This is where I want to end my career,” he said. “As a Laker.”

Odom said he would work on his lateral quickness this summer in anticipation of shifting from power forward to small forward with the return of Bynum.

Still, the devastating Game 6 loss in Boston will sting for a while.

“I’m staying away from NBA TV right now,” he said. “I can’t stomach it right now. It’s something that’s going to stick with us for a minute.”

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