Ouch! That Hurt...

After the Lakers struggled some, and looked relatively inconsistent in the initial couple weeks after Kobe's return from his ankle injury, they ran off seven straight wins. The first couple of those seven games weren't pretty, but they were wins. They started to play well again, as a team, and consistently enough that they reeled off seven straight wins.

Then they ran into a buzzsaw.

I didn't see any of last night's game, but I have to imagine from some of the score updates I saw that it was ugly. The score after three quarters was 80-47. In favor of Oklahoma City.

And for a change, Kobe had a lot to do with the 91-75 loss. He turned the ball over eight times. Seriously.

And it doesn't get any easier tonight. The Lakers are back at in the second of back-to-back games in Houston. Let's hope they don't have to call in any problems.

This team better get its act together when the playoffs arrive otherwise there won't be another parade through L.A. in June.

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A quick update: Andrew Bynum is expected to be back in action late next week after suffering a strained Achilles last week. And Luke Walton is inching closer to his return, as well.

And So It Goes...

Kobe returns after a five-game injury absence in which the Lakers went 4-1 without him, only to look listless and effortless for two-plus games since. You kind of had to think this would happen. Their "main man" goes down and the other 11 guys suddenly feel a sense of urgency and play out of their minds for five games. Then the guy comes back and the rest of the team takes a deep breathe and a sigh of relief and they wait for something to happen through four games in which they looked dreadful in two-plus of them.

In any case, Kobe's back and hopefully the last 18 minutes of Sunday's win over Denver is a sign of things to come.

In the meantime, I stumbled across this little ditty of a rumor early this morning. In a nutshell, the rumor suggests Lebron James is quietly campaigning to join the Lakers in the off-season after his contract with Cleveland expires.

Now, as the article suggests, a lot would have to happen for this to ever come to fruition. The Lakers would have to shrug Kobe off to the sidelines and end all possible contract extension negotiations. Would they dare do that to the franchise's all-time leading scorer and the second most popular player in franchise history?

I just don't see it happening, but it does make for a fun little conversation.