5 steps the Lakers MUST take to win again

First off, let me say that I don't like the Lakers.

Born and raised in Boston - my basketball joy comes from seeing the Celtics raise the Larry O'Brien Trophy amidst a sea of raucous Bostonians as LA's finest (which the Clippers might debate) slink off the court in complete despair and dejection.

Garnett screaming, "I'm on top of the world, Ma!" while  Kobe bite his tongue before answering another question about the lack of chemistry should be enjoyable but it's not.

Boston fans need the Lakers to be good.

It's like Samuel Jackson in UNBREAKABLE, "Now that we know who you are, I know who I am"

"I will trade you fourteen comics and a wheelchair for Dwight Howard"

The Celtics need a good villain and there is no better villain than the Lakers - although Ray Allen and the Heat are close.

"I never had court-side seats!"

Can you imagine how bad the Dark Knight would be if Cesar Romero were still around?  

Heath Ledger MADE the Dark Knight.  

Boston fans need the Heath Ledger Lakers not the Cesar Romero version and that being said, I propose:

  5 WAYS TO REBUILD THE LAKERS :

1. SEND UP THE WHITE FLAG.

This season is over.  Admit it.  Get rid of those Championship flags to put on your car antennas and put this season to rest.  Once the Red Sox finally admitted the Bobby V experiment was a failure, they made some trades and set themselves up for the next year in a way they could never have done if they had kept holding on to the fantasy.

2.  TAKE JIMMY BUSS TO THE WOOD SHED

Every boy wants to prove he's his own man - but the Lakers are Jerry Buss' franchise and he has to give his son a big spank on the bottom and take the reigns back.  Little Jimmy has been trying to prove this are HIS Lakers and as we all know when any teenager tries to be independent - things get ugly.

3.  TRADE HOWARD FOR A POINT GUARD

He's a great center.  The dreams of a Kobe/Howard dynasty were certainly wonderful for Lakers fans to think about but this is a one-man show.  Kobe doesn't share.  He is the NBA equivalent of the Lone Ranger.  Even Shaq had to go and there's never been another player to even come close to riding shotgun.  Trade Howard for a couple of good Tontos and let Kobe run the show.  This is not a centers league anymore.  If Steve Nash came to LA with a portable time machine then maybe he could have helped but Steve Nash couldn't guard my four-year old son.

4. FIRE THE COACH - REDUX pt. 2

Mike D'Antoni is a good coach.  Mike Brown is a good coach.  They are not Lakers coaches - at least not Lakers coaches right now.  Remember Doc Rivers had a lot of haters when he first started coaching.  Even the great Bill Simmons didn't like Doc's rotation of players, and people thought he was not developing the younger guys THEN came the trade for the Big 3 and everything changed.

Who knows what would have happened if Doc had stepped into all that expectation and anticipatory fan base right off the bat?  He - relatively speaking - had it easy.  The Celtics sucked, everyone knew they were going nowhere and expectations were low.

Mike & Mike stepped into a hungry juggernaut of expectations - this cavernous hole of need, dreamy expectations of Lakers Domination & a burning desire to completely erase the failures from the past two early round playoff exits proved to be too much for either man.

With the raising of the white flag, the Lakers should go ahead and hire Bernie Bickerstaff as the interim coach for the rest of the season.  The Lakers were 4-1 with him.  The expectations will be low, Bickerstaff won't threaten anyone and he  certainly won't try to impose any SYSTEM onto the Lakers - things can only get better and then the Lakers can conduct their coaching search in a low-key manner which brings me to step number five....

5. GET JEANIE BUSS & PHIL JACKSON THE SHAKESPEARE CLIFF NOTES

The Lakers need Phil.  Phil doesn't need the Lakers but everyone knows he wants them.  Jim Buss knows all of this and like Edmund in King Lear, he has tricked his foolish father into taking over the Kingdom.

Phil must use all of his natural guile and skill to right the ship and take back the reigns of the throne by marrying Jeanie Buss.  Once their union is official, then Phil can replace Jim, exile him to the Toronto Raptors and the new Los Angeles  Power Couple can reign supreme.

"Do you know the Triangle Offense?"

Of course, this will only last until the guilt of exiling her stupid brother weighs too heavily on Jeanie Buss and she rides Phil's motorcycle rides off into the sunset with a PHISH groupie where they will spend the rest of their days in a Zen monastery leaving Phil alone with only an aging Kobe.

All the while, Doc Rivers tries to raise a formidable army to attack the Western kingdom and restore order to the NBA.   Unfortunately, the Celtics are more like a Shakespearean Comedy of Errors right now and will need more help than just a Danish Army.

"It's sort of like I got it but I need a confirmation..." - Dwight Howard

Who knows, maybe they can get Howard on the cheap? 

Goats, Guts & Glory - was Flacco's Hail Mary guided by God's hand?

GOAT.

                    GUTS.

GLORY.

That's how it breaks down this morning, doesn't it?  I mean sure, you could make a case for Ray Lewis' constant rantings of, "God is great!"   But when you think about real Glory as in, "Glory to the highest..." there's only one football player that truly comes to mind.

Has the value of Tim Tebow's playoff win with the Broncos last year risen this morning like Christ on Easter Sunday?  Hard to say but the Twitterverse is blazing with how badly Manning choked (he wasn't the only one on that Broncos roster, Raheem Moore...)  However, Tebow's road to playoff victory reminds us all that the bottom line for Tim Tebow's NFL career is that given the reigns to an NFL franchise - he put far more in the debit column than the credit.  Besides Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers & (hurts to say this) Eli Manning, who else can you really include?

If I were going into battle, I would want Ray Lewis to speak to the troops before hand.  If there is another person with better inspirational speaking skills on this planet - I'd like to hear them.  As much as I hate the Raven - he is the heart, soul and every other internal organ inside that team.  He is the Baltimore Ravens.  Next year, we should simply call them, "The Purple, Black & Silver Team from Baltimore".

Peyton Manning on the other hand is the perfect shiny Italian roadster - precise, detailed, perfection - the NFL season is a bumpy, rough, hard terrain that gets bumpier come playoff time and the Manning Roadster - at least the older model has made a stronger argument that he can't handle this type of driving than he can.

Tim Tebow on the other hand - a jalopy.  The old pickup parked in the back of your house, rusty, mismatched passenger door that you picked up from the junkyard and no radio but it gets you there.    

NFL pundits talk about how, "Tebow will never get you to an NFL championship!"  My question is how many do?  All Tebow does is win - every place he's gone.    And those same "experts" that say he will never succeed were also the same people who were fitting Ryan Leaf and Ki-Jana Carter with their HOF suit jackets while waiting until the 199th pick to select a skinny kid from Michigan who split time his senior year with another "Great arm-ed" QB.

Heart, guts, glory & God - the great intangibles.  Tim Tebow has them all.  Peyton Manning has great mechanics.... And on the last play of the Broncos "Super Bowl or Bust" season - he didn't even have that.

Originally from Boston, Alan Aymie is a LA-based writer/performer whose work has been produced in LA, NY, DC & the HBO U. S. Comedy Festival in Aspen, CO.  Although he does not possess a great vocabulary,  his wife says all he does at SCRABBLE is win.  

Spiderman, French Toast & Spiritual Peace

My wife gave me a Spiderman spatula for Christmas.  Actually it was the
whole set:  Spiderman, Iron Man, Captain American and of course, Hulk...

"It's two of  your favorite things, Honey," She beamed, "Superheroes and cooking!"

"It's all in the juicer"

I looked down on the four men who have been a big part of my life and thought of how good it would be to cook my favorite breakfast: Peanut-butter French Toast using Spiderman or Iron Man to flip them over till  they were a toasty brown but I couldn't.  "I can't use them - I'm juice fasting now."  I sadly proclaimed.

I had bought a juicer - the Breville BJE50XL.   It's like the Tom Brady of juicers.  My plan was simple. Juice, Cleanse and get into the best shape of my life.  I would lose weight, create a clean and high-functioning digestive system and make 2013 the BEST YEAR OF MY LIFE..!! (echo for effect)

"I wear Uggs, too..."

The only problem is I like food.  My wife makes Christmas cookies - all kinds: chocolate with peppermint icing, vanilla cookies with sprinkled candy canes, sandwiched chocolate cookies with Nutella filling - stacks and stacks of cookies and I couldn't eat one.  I was juicing.  I was perfect.  I was Tom Brady.

When we sat down to a Christmas Eve Dinner that included glazed ham, mashed potatoes, sweet yams and pecan pie, I had carrots, kale and ginger juice.  Christmas morning amidst the presents, wrapping paper and scrambled eggs and bacon - I sipped on a mixture of pulverized beets, spinach & celery stalks.

New Years Eve brought our family, everyone's favorite foods ordered from everyone's favorite restaurants.  I had a purple concoction made from beets, celery and ginger.  Happy New Years, indeed...

My wife and kids seemed happy, joyous and content but I was hungry, angry and sick of cleaning out a freaking juicer four or five times a day. Staring at the hanging Spiderman spatula hanging on the kitchen wall conjuring up images of golden brown french toast served underneath a wet blanket of syrup; a cup of Starbucks Christmas Blend coffee on the side just made it worse.


 "Tom Brady..." I grumbled to myself as I took another sip of my red beet juice that tasted like sour dirt.

That night I broke my fast - in the middle of the night.  I had about fourteen sugar cookies, a half a side of ham and three Hershey chocolate Santas.    Shamed and smudged with chocolate, I crawled into bed and slept with Nutella-smothered cookies dancing in my head - 2013 was a few hours old and I had already failed.

The next week went pretty much the same - healthy juicing at day, shameful gluttonous gorging at night, all in the pursuit of Tom Brady-like perfection.  I couldn't look my kids in the eye any time they asked me about what I was putting in my juicer.  It was like a big fat  lineman trying to stick his chubby feet in a pair of Tom Brady Uggs and having his kids say, "Looks good, Dad!"  

"I'm a disgusting gluttonous pig..." I thought to myself as I munched on another sugar cookie.   Then, finally, today, on the first day of the NFL Playoffs - it all changed....

I woke this morning with one affirmative thought in my head:  "I am not Tom Brady".    In the NFL game of Life, I am a blitzing safety, an undersized guard but I am not the QB.  I can't handle having the game rest on my shoulders - I'd rather be the guy who nothing is expected from and then surprises everyone with an occasional big play.    

Sure Tom's got the rings, the supermodel and sits on the throne of greatness but who wants that kind of pressure.  Am I really going to spend the entire year juicing in the pursuit of that? 

I am not Tom Brady - I am Ryan Wendell.  

Undersized and undervalued.  Show up every day and do your job the best you can.  

That's TRUTH.  That's Power.    

My life is not about glory but guts.  Grabbing my lunchbox, going to work and grinding it out every day - a constant pursuit of improvement not perfection.   

That morning - with the sun shining bright,  I walked into the kitchen, pulled out the pan, eggs, Spiderman spatula while shouting, "Who wants some French Toast?!"   

Spidey and I made French Toast, smothered them in Nutella, maple syrup, and powdered sugar.  I was happy, the family was happy and I was at peace.   I was not Tom Brady.  I was Ryan Wendell.  Filled with imperfections, coffee and Nutella-smothered french toast, ready to plop down on the couch watch the NFL playoffs and remember 2013 would be about progress not perfection.    Somewhere out there, I knew Tom Brady was smiling....

And  if he needs a juicer, I can get him one - cheap.