Lakers have two new folk heroes after melee
LOS ANGELES – The Lakers lost a game and lost their cool, and they will temporarily lose two of their more influential players through suspension. While gaining two folk heroes. Stick with me on this one. For if you have a hard time seeing fist-hurling duo Rajon Rondo and Brandon Ingram as heroes after the messy melee that tainted the home opener defeat Saturday night to the Rockets, it just means you’re a solid person who doesn’t approve of fighting.
Look, fighting is wrong, it shouldn’t have happened, it sets a bad example to youngsters and blah, blah, blah.
But the fact is Lakers fans didn’t leave Staples Center glum and dispirited and bemoaning the moral degradation of their team. They were energized and upbeat.
“Like them less?” jersey-clad Lakers supporter Kyle Sanchez, 28, said hours after the game, when asked about Rondo’s and Ingram’s behavior. “I like them more. You can’t let yourself be pushed around, just because the other team has more talent. Respect.”
Other fans, around central Los Angeles, online and on local radio, voiced a similar sentiment. Whatever punishment the NBA handed down to Rondo and Ingram for letting their fists fly in the direction of Chris Paul late the fourth quarter, it won’t be matched with ostracism from the loyalists.
For the Lakers’ hopes of being even remotely competitive in the Western Conference this season hinge upon being able to show stomach for a battle and a refusal to be bullied around.
That’s what the Rockets tried to do. In particular, Ingram, the talented young swingman, was a consistent target for physical play and verbal jabs.
Now, no one is suggesting he channels his inner UFC fighter every time someone pisses him off, but there is also something to be said for not slipping meekly into the night in the face of such tactics.
The Lakers are going to lose a lot of games if they don’t make themselves tough to beat, and there are two ways of doing that in the NBA.
One is by having superior players. The Lakers, despite the presence of basketball’s best player — LeBron James — doesn’t have that option.
The other is by adopting a style that throws the other team out of its rhythm, and that’s what head coach Luke Walton has started now. The Lakers employ rapid movement on fast breaks, highintensity defense and constant pressure. It was enough to give even the Rockets, a legitimate title contender, plenty of nervous moments.
No one likes to see a fight ... scratch that; we do like to see it but then feel a little guilty about the fact that we like it.
Either way, just two games into the season, the Lakers’ identity is suddenly not that of a relocated superstar surrounded by a bunch of spare parts. Or of a winless team that faces a tough task to even make the playoffs.
Both of those things are true. But the message that has been sent is that the Lakers are a team that won’t back down and is in your face for 48 minutes.
Before Saturday, there was a degree of skepticism surrounding Rondo in these parts. That is perhaps due to his history with the Celtics, a Lakers rival who they twice battled in the Finals while he was there. But it also relates to concerns about what he could contribute at 32 and long past his prime.
Ingram’s natural ability was beyond question, but some queried whether he had the stomach for the intensity of NBA battle.
No longer. The rest of the league might see them as players who lost their mind in a moment of madness.
In Lakerland, rightly or wrongly, they are viewed as the guys who threw down to defend the team’s honor.
The punishments will be deserved — four games for Ingram, three for Rondo and two for Paul — but it might turn out that they were worth it.
Los Angeles has a team it can rally behind.
The Lakers won’t be serial winners, but they won’t go down without a fight.