Doesn’t matter if they made the playoffs or not. Doesn’t matter if their best player is a Hall of Fame lock, but on his last legs and possibly an obstacle to their resurgence. Doesn’t matter if their only performer from Hawaii is a Laker Girl, former Rainbow Dancer O’oe Carr.
Hawaii is more loyal to the Los Angeles Lakers than is Los Angeles. The Clippers accomplished what was said could never be done. They upstaged the Lake Show.
But not here. As many fans as showed in the old days for Magic, Kareem and Worthy packed the Stan Sheriff Center for Kobe, Metta and Swaggy P on a Tuesday night.
If you were driving near the University of Hawaii at pau hana time Tuesday, you knew. Actually, you weren’t driving. You were trying not to scream because you weren’t moving.
The Utah Jazz might as well have been the Washington Generals playing stooge to the Harlem Globetrotters. But it was a really good game, especially for an exhibition.
“Unbelievable,” Utah coach Quin Snyder said, when asked about the atmosphere. “It was great. It was a road game, it felt like for us.”
Snyder said this with a smile, because, indeed, his team not only beat the Lakers, it beat them at “home.” For the second time, and this one in OT, 117-114.
It had a little of everything, including one of those one-punch, or in this case, one-slap, fights you sometimes see in a tense regular-season game. Trevor Booker got ejected after taking a wild swing at the Lakers’ Roy Hibbert.
Maybe Kobe Bryant is a bad teammate, but in this situation he showed he can be a good one. The first thing he did after the dust-up was pass up an open jumper and find Hibbert under the basket for a dunk.
The fans who came love Bryant. They don’t care that other stars don’t want to be his teammate. They don’t care that at the least he committed adultery and paid a settlement to a woman who claimed he raped her in 2003.
I know Lakers fans who wish he’d never been a member of their favorite team for those reasons, despite all the championships. But they weren’t at the SSC.
“It felt great,” said Bryant, who scored 13 points in 21 minutes. “Felt great to be back here.”
Nick Young, the aforementioned Swaggy P, took over in what Magic Johnson used to call “Winnin’ Time,” late in the fourth quarter. But the Jazz wouldn’t cooperate, and it went to OT.
Bryant was done for the night, and apparently coach Byron Scott couldn’t hear the guy behind me who shouted, “Put Kobe back in.”
Swaggy missed from long distance with less than nine seconds left. And that was that.
The Lakers lost, again. Doesn’t matter though — it’s just preseason and it was the most entertaining event at the SSC in a long time — whether you love, hate or are indifferent to Bryant, whether you think the Lakers will stink again or not.
Just a few other reminders of past glory remain in addition to Bryant. There’s Scott, of course. John Black, the longtime PR man; Gary Vitti, the trainer. James Worthy just got hired as VP in charge of being James Worthy, or something like that.
That’s about it. But when it comes to the NBA, the Lakers still rule in Hawaii. Regardless of whatever.
Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quickreads.
