Hits just keep coming
It is amazing to me that when confronted with the New Orleans Saints’ bounty scandal, people are discussing what level of fines, suspensions and sanctions would be appropriate.
This is criminal activity. It’s Tonya Harding stuff. In that case, people went to prison. If Johnny Perp organized a couple dozen of his friends to ambush offduty cops in bars and crush their trigger fingers, do you think the police would be talking about fines?
It was known at the highest levels of the organization. The owner wanted it stopped, but he sure didn’t inform any authorities either. It was institutionalized corruption that injured its victims. It looks to me like it meets all the requirements of a RICO prosecution.
Does perpetrating these acts on grass between chalk lines create immunity?
Richard Murphy
Whittier
T.J. Simers has a point in his March 6 column, several actually. “Smash-mouth” football is pretty endemic to the game. And because the size of bounty paid was merely lunch money to these guys, the bounty system was merely a symbolic focal point to rev up the defensive players. The only real difference is they turned it into a system so tawdry and crass — and have now been caught doing so.
Isn’t the only real solution for the league to pass and enforce stricter rules at the point of contact? Commit a flagrant foul and you’re out of the game, period. Do it again next weekend, and you’re suspended one game and so on. Even baseball and basketball throws players out.
If team management loses the services of key players during critical games enough times, see how fast they’ll self-police these potential season- or career-ending hits.
Joe Whitaker
Arroyo Grande
Purple pain
Memo to Kobe Bryant: Because your high school education apparently did not include math, let me try to catch you up. If you are being guarded by three players from the opposing team, that leaves two opponents to guard four of your highly paid teammates. Therefore two teammates have no one guarding them. This is especially true in the last two minutes of a game. If you are unsure of the meaning of all of this, ask Mike Brown to elaborate. You are welcome.
Mike Gamboa
Buena Park
The Lakers need a good player coming off the bench to get them rolling into the playoffs. I guess it is difficult to find someone like the Mavericks forward who won last year’s sixth-man award.
Ken Johnson
Pinon Hills, Calif.
The Lakers need to use the amnesty clause on Mike Brown and acquire Brian Shaw from Indiana before the trade deadline.
Greg Macdonald
Fontana
Jim Buss has personally transformed the Lakers from a championship contender into a second-tier team. The Lakers’ organization needs to immediately reassign him to a position more suitable to his talents. Iwould suggest either locker room towel boy or team mascot.
Scott Zimbler
Lakewood
If this is the Jim Buss era, you can have it. I can’t stand it.
Michel Kassett
Los Angeles
Both the Lakers and Clippers are starting to look like the Clippers.
Jerry Leibowitz
Culver City The Bruins
Like the proverbial broken clock, even T.J. Simers is occasionally right, and his column Wednesday was spot-on in evaluating Kareem Abdul-jabbar’s comments on UCLA. John Wooden coached in an era with different kids and a different game than Ben Howland faces. Wooden probably would have opted for high school coaching in this era.
And as for the original Sports Illustrated article criticizing Howland, clearly when no NCAA violations surfaced, the author put down his pen and picked up his hatchet.
Alan Abajian
Alta Loma
Iwas stunned by T.J. Simers’ snark-free column on Ben Howland. Insightful. Intelligent. Professional.
Who wrote it for him?
Jim Fredrick
Manhattan Beach
Bill Plaschke gets it (finally). I too watched the bench during the Arizona-UCLA game against an inferior but better-coached team and one with heart because what was happening on the floor was unwatchable. No one wants to hear from Josh Smith about how the team underachieved. He could have been the catalyst and Bruin royalty instead of becoming the team’s Burger King.
And while we’re still in awards season, how about a career “non-achievement” award for Jerime Anderson, one of the biggest recruiting disappointments ever at UCLA?
Allan Kandel
Los Angeles
Why is the basketball team of a public university staying at a hotel the night before an afternoon game at an arena located 15 miles from its campus? And then taking a bus one block from the hotel to the game?
Peter Myers
Palos Verdes Seriously? Josh Smith was benched for missing by minutes the team bus . . .
. . . that took the Bruins one block to the arena . . .
. . . that the lumbering Smith beat on foot . . .
. . . that no other team in the Pac-12 tournament used?
Coach Howland or Captain Queeg? Call it the “Arcane Mutiny.”
Steve Ross
New York
Joshua Smith could foul out in a game of H-O-R-S-E!
Marc Popkin
Los Angeles
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