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http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/11782356p-12667046c.html
Mark Kreidler: The thrill - and the hate - are gone
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, December 16, 2004
For Kings fans, it has always been a tradition to hate the Lakers. Kobe Bryant, top, is expected to be the primary target tonight at Arco Arena, but some of his sign-honored comrades from the past, above, are no longer with the team.
Sacramento Bee file/Bryan Patrick
When the sports archaeologists finally blow the dust off the thing a hundred years hence, they'll find the crude paintings that show Shaq taking his lumbering frame to Miami, and Phil the Zenster hopping on his motorcycle and riding off to that collective burg of modernism, Montana.
And they will see, deciphering these hieroglyphics, the exact point at which the Lakers stopped being interesting. To say nothing of outright detestable.
Which is all you need to know about why the rivalry is dead.
The Kings play the Lakers at Arco Arena tonight in a game devoid of the kind of battery-acid bile that any of the four or five previous years' worth of matchups might have produced. There's no good way around it: It's Sacramento against a Los Angeles team that has lost its ability to be snotty good fun.
Hate, where is thy sting?
It's over, the rivalry - and there was a rivalry, even if it existed on only the one side. If the rivalry was never anything more than the Kings and their fans desperately wanting to take down the smug and condescending franchise from L.A., that still was enough to keep it going.
But that was then. And smug, of course, was Shaquille O'Neal. And condescending was Phil Jackson.
And what have you to despise now, Kobe Bryant's pitiful daytime drama of a public life? You're going to direct your inner devil at Rudy Tomjanovich, a coach who survived bladder cancer and has been the epitome of gentlemanly behavior since?
Do you even know who the Lakers' center is? It's Chris Mihm. Ever hear Chris Mihm call the Sacramento team "Queens"?
Rivalry. Over.
"Au contraire," said Jerry Reynolds, the Kings' longtime executive and broadcaster and general human reference book on stuff like this.
"They've still got 'Lakers' displayed clearly on their chests," Reynolds said, "and they're still from L.A. I can hate 'em, no problem."
Added Christine Gillespie, a moderator of the Kingsfans.com Web site: "The ego of the average Laker fan also enters into the equation. They are so smug, so righteous, so superior in their attitude towards us and our team that we want to see them grovel. ... Some things are just in the blood."
Sure, but where's the fun? The fun for years lay in the thought that the Kings, if they could somehow get out of their own way, might be able to take down the Lakers while L.A. was still in the full throes of its haughty new-millennium dominance.
The fun was in hating the big guys and the little guys alike - and remember, young readers, we speak here of harmless, do-nothin'-about-it sporting hate, not to be confused with actual hate or any scene from the Detroit-Indiana game a few weeks ago.
The fun was in hating Shaq, yes. But let me also just say this: Rick Fox.
Remember Fox back in the day? Hollywood handsome. Married to a model/singer/ spokeswoman. Once hit Doug Christie in the chops and then took a punch to the face in retaliation - but more significantly, a player who put an NBA-approved mugging on Peja Stojakovic for games on end during years of Kings-Lakers playoff tussles.
Utterly despicable in the most entertaining way possible - and he's history.
And so is Robert Horry and his knife-in-the-neck three-pointer. Heck, you can't even despise Derek Fisher, who already got what he deserved by agreeing to play for the Golden State Warriors.
Talk about not knowing what you have 'til it's gone: Those Lakers were the perfect foil. They won all the time. They yapped all the time. They fought amongst themselves but always seemed to unify, as if on cue, in time to torture Sacramento.
"It really was a great thing for basketball," said Kings owner Joe Maloof. "I think (the seven-game 2002 conference finals) was the best playoff series I've ever seen. ... You had to be there to enjoy it."
And Phil Jackson was the playful heart of it, the most fun of all. He tweaked the Kings and their fans at every opportunistic turn. He trotted out phrases like "semi-civilized" to describe the locals, vaguely insulted Rick Adelman and Adelman's players, then stepped back and smiled slyly, waiting for the verbal spit-storm that would inevitably follow.
"I remember once before a game here, Phil stepped out onto the court and saw that banner hanging up there saying the Kings were Pacific Division champions," Reynolds said. "And Phil staggered around like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm so afraid.' He was great at stirring it up like that."
And he's gone. And it's Rudy T on the other sideline tonight, and Mihm at center. The beloved Vlade Divac's sad signing with the Lakers has been a non-starter because of Divac's injuries. Bryant, though still performing at All-Star level, continues to withdraw into his bizarre inner life, slowly alienating everyone around him.
Look, Ma! Not a drop of fun here.
The Kings can beat this bunch, which doesn't qualify as breaking news.
Sacramento is 15-6 and looking rather like it always does. The Bryant-dominated Lakers are 12-9, a fairly accurate representation of their current station in the Western Conference.
They're also nothing like the Lakers team that Sacramento wanted so desperately to knock down all those years.
"It isn't the same," Maloof said, "but there's always going to be something there. We're in the same state, the same division. ... Maybe we can get another thing going." Wishful thinking - but that's rivalry for you. Even if only on the one side.
Mark Kreidler: The thrill - and the hate - are gone
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, December 16, 2004
For Kings fans, it has always been a tradition to hate the Lakers. Kobe Bryant, top, is expected to be the primary target tonight at Arco Arena, but some of his sign-honored comrades from the past, above, are no longer with the team.
Sacramento Bee file/Bryan Patrick
When the sports archaeologists finally blow the dust off the thing a hundred years hence, they'll find the crude paintings that show Shaq taking his lumbering frame to Miami, and Phil the Zenster hopping on his motorcycle and riding off to that collective burg of modernism, Montana.
And they will see, deciphering these hieroglyphics, the exact point at which the Lakers stopped being interesting. To say nothing of outright detestable.
Which is all you need to know about why the rivalry is dead.
The Kings play the Lakers at Arco Arena tonight in a game devoid of the kind of battery-acid bile that any of the four or five previous years' worth of matchups might have produced. There's no good way around it: It's Sacramento against a Los Angeles team that has lost its ability to be snotty good fun.
Hate, where is thy sting?
It's over, the rivalry - and there was a rivalry, even if it existed on only the one side. If the rivalry was never anything more than the Kings and their fans desperately wanting to take down the smug and condescending franchise from L.A., that still was enough to keep it going.
But that was then. And smug, of course, was Shaquille O'Neal. And condescending was Phil Jackson.
And what have you to despise now, Kobe Bryant's pitiful daytime drama of a public life? You're going to direct your inner devil at Rudy Tomjanovich, a coach who survived bladder cancer and has been the epitome of gentlemanly behavior since?
Do you even know who the Lakers' center is? It's Chris Mihm. Ever hear Chris Mihm call the Sacramento team "Queens"?
Rivalry. Over.
"Au contraire," said Jerry Reynolds, the Kings' longtime executive and broadcaster and general human reference book on stuff like this.
"They've still got 'Lakers' displayed clearly on their chests," Reynolds said, "and they're still from L.A. I can hate 'em, no problem."
Added Christine Gillespie, a moderator of the Kingsfans.com Web site: "The ego of the average Laker fan also enters into the equation. They are so smug, so righteous, so superior in their attitude towards us and our team that we want to see them grovel. ... Some things are just in the blood."
Sure, but where's the fun? The fun for years lay in the thought that the Kings, if they could somehow get out of their own way, might be able to take down the Lakers while L.A. was still in the full throes of its haughty new-millennium dominance.
The fun was in hating the big guys and the little guys alike - and remember, young readers, we speak here of harmless, do-nothin'-about-it sporting hate, not to be confused with actual hate or any scene from the Detroit-Indiana game a few weeks ago.
The fun was in hating Shaq, yes. But let me also just say this: Rick Fox.
Remember Fox back in the day? Hollywood handsome. Married to a model/singer/ spokeswoman. Once hit Doug Christie in the chops and then took a punch to the face in retaliation - but more significantly, a player who put an NBA-approved mugging on Peja Stojakovic for games on end during years of Kings-Lakers playoff tussles.
Utterly despicable in the most entertaining way possible - and he's history.
And so is Robert Horry and his knife-in-the-neck three-pointer. Heck, you can't even despise Derek Fisher, who already got what he deserved by agreeing to play for the Golden State Warriors.
Talk about not knowing what you have 'til it's gone: Those Lakers were the perfect foil. They won all the time. They yapped all the time. They fought amongst themselves but always seemed to unify, as if on cue, in time to torture Sacramento.
"It really was a great thing for basketball," said Kings owner Joe Maloof. "I think (the seven-game 2002 conference finals) was the best playoff series I've ever seen. ... You had to be there to enjoy it."
And Phil Jackson was the playful heart of it, the most fun of all. He tweaked the Kings and their fans at every opportunistic turn. He trotted out phrases like "semi-civilized" to describe the locals, vaguely insulted Rick Adelman and Adelman's players, then stepped back and smiled slyly, waiting for the verbal spit-storm that would inevitably follow.
"I remember once before a game here, Phil stepped out onto the court and saw that banner hanging up there saying the Kings were Pacific Division champions," Reynolds said. "And Phil staggered around like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm so afraid.' He was great at stirring it up like that."
And he's gone. And it's Rudy T on the other sideline tonight, and Mihm at center. The beloved Vlade Divac's sad signing with the Lakers has been a non-starter because of Divac's injuries. Bryant, though still performing at All-Star level, continues to withdraw into his bizarre inner life, slowly alienating everyone around him.
Look, Ma! Not a drop of fun here.
The Kings can beat this bunch, which doesn't qualify as breaking news.
Sacramento is 15-6 and looking rather like it always does. The Bryant-dominated Lakers are 12-9, a fairly accurate representation of their current station in the Western Conference.
They're also nothing like the Lakers team that Sacramento wanted so desperately to knock down all those years.
"It isn't the same," Maloof said, "but there's always going to be something there. We're in the same state, the same division. ... Maybe we can get another thing going." Wishful thinking - but that's rivalry for you. Even if only on the one side.
