Saving their season would be more about effort than execution.

“Tonight it was just one of them days where you just got to leave it out there on the basketball court,” Carmelo Anthony said.

Now they have to do it two more times.

Anthony scored 28 points and the Knicks avoided elimination in the Eastern Conference semifinals with an 85-75 victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 5 on Thursday night.

Reserves J.R. Smith and Chris Copeland each had 13 points for the Knicks, who trail 3-2 and will need a victory Saturday in Indiana to force a seventh game back here Monday. They are trying to become the ninth NBA team to overcome a 3-1 deficit to win a series.

“I was totally impressed because we met the challenge,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “I think as a coach you come into games like this and you want to see who’s going to step up and make plays, and I thought we did that tonight. We were the better team in terms of doing that.”

Anthony, who didn’t make a basket in the fourth quarter of either game in Indiana, made a jumper midway through the fourth quarter after Indiana closed within four points. He followed with two free throws, Raymond Felton made a layup, and the Knicks were never in jeopardy again.

Paul George had 23 points, six rebounds and six assists for the Pacers. They played without point guard George Hill because of a concussion and committed 19 turnovers.

“We’ve just got to play more solid. There’s no other way to put it,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said.

George battled foul trouble and couldn’t contain Anthony quite as well as he had while the Pacers easily won the previous two games.

Anthony made his first two shots as New York raced to a 7-0 lead in a game it never trailed. He finished only 12 of 28, but got plenty of bench help.

“We didn’t shoot the ball very well but we made shots at the crucial time,” Anthony said.

David West had 17 points and 10 rebounds for the Pacers, who were trying to reach the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2004.

“We didn’t play well. It was a bad game for us and we were still there,” George said.

The winner will face the defending NBA champion Miami Heat in a series that will start Wednesday.

New York didn’t really shake its scoring slump, shooting only 41 percent from the field, but put together a few runs during the game to open just enough space against a Pacers team that shot 36 percent and was a dismal 19 of 33 at the free throw line.

They clearly missed Hill after learning about four hours before the game they would be without him.

Vogel said Hill was hurt after a collision with Knicks center Tyson Chandler during the first half of Indiana’s 93-82 victory on Tuesday. Hill finished the game and scored 26 points, but experienced some headaches and showed concussion symptoms since and wasn’t able to pass the league’s concussion tests in order to play Thursday night.

The Knicks went back to their regular lineup, reinserting Pablo Prigioni, after going with a bigger group in Game 4 in a futile effort to match Indiana on the boards. The smaller group did a better job, getting outrebounded only 43-40.

“We’re not going to go out without fighting,” Chandler said.

The Knicks finally opened it up midway through the third quarter with a 12-4 run, started by Smith’s bank shot and featuring a 3-pointer and follow shot from Copeland, who got more playing time while Woodson gave little to veterans Amar’e Stoudemire and the slumping Jason Kidd, who missed his only shot and remains scoreless in the series.

“Coaching is a feel. It’s not always what players want at the end of the day, it’s about winning,” Woodson said. “That’s all I’m in it for.”

Anthony made a jumper and a 3-pointer on his first two shots, and Iman Shumpert followed with another jumper for a 7-0 start. Smith got a big ovation when he checked in, which grew much louder when he made his first shot, dribbling back behind the arc for a 3-pointer that made it 17-12 with 2:56 left in the opening quarter.

Smith has endured a miserable stretch since elbowing Boston’s Jason Terry in the fourth quarter of Game 3 in the first round. Suspended for Game 4, he hasn’t relocated his shot since, hitting 28 percent in the first four games and has been criticized for not being focused after he was seen out a nightclub with singer Rihanna the night before Game 1 — a day game.

He was only 4 of 11, but hit the jumper that started the Knicks’ run in the third quarter.

“Still didn’t shoot the best but it always helps coming home and playing in front of these fans,” Smith said. “Hopefully the little bit of rhythm that I did get carries me over.”

The Knicks extended their 19-15 lead after one to 32-23 on Copeland’s 3-pointer with 7:06 remaining in the second. The Pacers chipped away for most of the half but couldn’t take the large in part because of their sloppy free throw shooting, going 8 of 16 in the half that agonizingly wouldn’t end when both Chandler and the Pacers’ Sam Young committed fouls more than 30 feet from the basket in the final 2.4 seconds.

Game notes
Kidd is 0 for 8 in the series, part of a 0-for-17 skid that began with Game 3 against Boston in the first round. The 40-year-old point guard, surely headed for the Hall of Fame, is 3 of 25 in the postseason and hasn’t scored since hitting a 3-pointer against the Celtics in Game 2 on April 23. He played 5 minutes and Stoudemire played 6½. … The Phoenix Suns are the last team to win a series after trailing 3-1, beating the Los Angeles Lakers in 2006. The Brooklyn Nets forced Chicago to a seventh game in the first round but dropped Game 7 on their home floor. … West was 5 of 13 in the first half. The other four Indiana starters were 5 for 23.

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Buss died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Bob Steiner, his assistant.

Buss had been hospitalized for most of the past 18 months while undergoing cancer treatment, but the immediate cause of death was kidney failure, Steiner said. With his condition apparently worsening in recent weeks, several prominent former Lakers visited Buss to say goodbye.

“The NBA has lost a visionary owner whose influence on our league is incalculable and will be felt for decades to come,” NBA commissioner David Stern said. “More importantly, we have lost a dear and valued friend.”

Under Buss’ leadership since 1979, the Lakers became Southern California’s most beloved sports franchise and a worldwide extension of Hollywood glamour.

Buss acquired, nurtured and befriended a staggering array of talented players and basketball minds during his Hall of Fame tenure, from Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard.

“He was a visionary, he was a trailblazer,” Johnson said during an interview on “SportsCenter” on Monday afternoon. “He did things that were, at that time, people thought wasn’t cool, wasn’t proper. He was a man who walked the walk and talked the talk. He produced championships, because he was the most competitive owner you could ever meet in your life.”

“Condolences to the Buss family,” tweeted James Worthy, the Lakers’ Hall of Fame forward. “Dr Buss was not only the greatest sports owner, but a true friend & just a really cool guy. Loved him dearly.”

Few owners in sports history can approach Buss’ accomplishments with the Lakers, who made the NBA Finals 16 times during his nearly 34 years in charge, winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010. The Lakers easily are the NBA’s winningest franchise since he bought the club, which is now run largely by Jim Buss and Jeanie Buss, two of his six children.

“We not only have lost our cherished father, but a beloved man of our community and a person respected by the world basketball community,” the Buss family said in a statement issued by the Lakers.

“It was our father’s often-stated desire and expectation that the Lakers remain in the Buss family. The Lakers have been our lives as well, and we will honor his wish and do everything in our power to continue his unparalleled legacy.”

The Buss family owns approximately 65 percent of the Lakers, a team source told ESPNLosAngeles.com. A team spokesman reiterated the family’s intention to maintain majority ownership of the franchise.

“The future of the organization will remain unchanged,” Lakers spokesman John Black said Monday during a news conference. “Dr. Buss set it up years in advance — he planned for the team to remain with the family.

“For the past several years, Jim Buss has been running the basketball operations and working in conjunction with our general manager Mitch Kupchak, and that will continue. Jeanie Buss has been running the business operations for 15 years, and that will continue. As far as the operation and running of the team, that will be unchanged.”

Buss always referred to the Lakers as his extended family, and his players rewarded his fanlike excitement with devotion, friendship and two hands full of championship rings. Working with front-office executives Jerry West, Bill Sharman and Kupchak, Buss spent lavishly to win his titles despite lacking a huge personal fortune, often running the NBA’s highest payroll while also paying high-profile coaches Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.

Always an innovative businessman, Buss paid for the Lakers through both their wild success and his own groundbreaking moves to raise revenue. He co-founded a basic-cable sports television network and sold the naming rights to the Forum at times when both now-standard strategies were unusual, further justifying his induction to the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.

“RIP Jerry Buss. Your encouragement and support along with your stories of staying true to yourself had an enormous impact on me,” tweeted Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

“Dr. Jerry Buss was a cornerstone of the Los Angeles sports community and his name will always be synonymous with his beloved Lakers,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. “It was through his stewardship that the Lakers brought ‘Showtime’ basketball and numerous championship rings to this great city. Today we mourn the loss and celebrate the life of a man who helped shape the modern landscape of sports in L.A.”

Johnson and fellow Hall of Famers Abdul-Jabbar and Worthy formed lifelong bonds with Buss during the Lakers’ run to five titles in nine years in the 1980s, when the Lakers earned a reputation as basketball’s most exciting team with their flamboyant Showtime style. The buzz extended throughout the Forum, where Buss used the Laker Girls, a brass band and promotions to keep Los Angeles fans interested in all four quarters of their games.

Jackson then led O’Neal and Bryant to a three-peat from 2000 to ’02, rekindling the Lakers’ mystique, before Bryant and Pau Gasol won two more titles under Jackson in 2009 and 2010.

“Our drive to be successful was there,” Bryant said in an interview with 710 ESPN Radio in Los Angeles. “Championship or bust — that starts with Dr. Buss.”

Although Buss gained fame and fortune with the Lakers, he also was a scholar, renaissance man and bon vivant who epitomized California cool — and a certain Los Angeles lifestyle — for his entire public life.

Buss rarely appeared in public without at least one attractive, much younger woman on his arm at USC football games, boxing matches at the Forum, poker tournaments — and, of course, Lakers games from his private box at Staples Center, which was built under his watch. In failing health recently, Buss hadn’t attended a Lakers game this season.

Buss earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at age 24 and had careers in aerospace and real estate development before getting into sports. With money from his real-estate ventures and a good bit of creative accounting, Buss bought the then-struggling Lakers, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and both clubs’ arena — the Forum — from Jack Kent Cooke in a $67.5 million deal that was the largest sports transaction in history at the time.

The reported estimated value of the Lakers at the time of that deal was $16 million. Forbes Magazine estimated last month that the Lakers currently are worth $1 billion, second to the New York Knicks among NBA franchises.

Buss also helped change televised sports by co-founding the Prime Ticket network in 1985, receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 for his work in television. Breaking the contemporary model of subscription services for televised sports, Buss’ Prime Ticket put beloved broadcaster Chick Hearn and the Lakers’ home games on basic cable.

Buss also sold the naming rights to the Forum in 1988 to Great Western Savings & Loan — another deal that was ahead of its time.

Born in Salt Lake City, Gerald Hatten Buss was raised in poverty in Wyoming before improving his life through education. He attended USC for graduate school, eventually becoming a chemistry professor and working as a chemist for the Bureau of Mines before his life took a turn into wealth and sports.

The former mathematician claimed his fortune grew out of a $1,000 real-estate investment in a West Los Angeles apartment building with partner Frank Mariani, an aerospace engineer and co-worker.

Buss purchased Cooke’s entire Los Angeles sports empire in 1979, including a 13,000-acre ranch in Kern County. Buss’ love of basketball was the motivation for his purchase, and he immediately worked to transform the Lakers — who had won just one NBA title since moving west from Minneapolis in 1960 — into a star-powered endeavor befitting Hollywood.

“One of the first things I tried to do when I bought the team was to make it an identification for this city, like Motown in Detroit,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “I try to keep that identification alive. I’m a real Angeleno. I want us to be part of the community.”

Buss’ plans immediately worked: Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar and coach Paul Westhead led the Lakers to the 1980 title. Johnson’s ballhandling wizardry and Abdul-Jabbar’s smooth inside game made for an attractive style of play evoking Hollywood flair and West Coast sophistication.

Riley, the former broadcaster who fit the L.A. image perfectly with his slick-backed hair and good looks, was surprisingly promoted by Buss early in the 1981-82 season after West declined to co-coach the team. Riley became one of the best coaches in NBA history, leading the Lakers to four straight NBA Finals and four titles, with Worthy, Michael Cooper, Byron Scott and A.C. Green playing major roles.

“Today, in the world of sports, we have lost a true giant,” Riley said in a statement. “Jerry Buss was more than just an owner. He was one of the great innovators that any sport has ever encountered. He was a true visionary and it was obvious with the Lakers in the 80’s that ‘Showtime’ was more than just Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It was really the vision of a man who saw something that connected with a community.

“I was privileged to be part of that for 10 years and even more grateful for the friendship that has lasted all these many years. I have always come to realize that if it weren’t for Dr. Buss, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I owe my start in professional coaching to him, and I will always hold him and his memory in the highest of regards.”

Overall, the Lakers made the finals nine times in Buss’ first 12 seasons while rekindling the NBA’s best rivalry with the Boston Celtics, and Buss basked in the worldwide celebrity he received from his team’s achievements. His womanizing and partying became Hollywood legend, with even his players struggling to keep up with Buss’ lifestyle.

Johnson’s HIV diagnosis and retirement in 1991 staggered Buss and the Lakers, the owner recalled in 2011. The Lakers struggled through much of the 1990s, going through seven coaches and making just one conference finals appearance in an eight-year stretch despite the 1996 arrivals of O’Neal, who signed with Los Angeles as a free agent, and Bryant, the 17-year-old high schooler acquired in a draft-week trade.

O’Neal and Bryant didn’t reach their potential until Buss persuaded Jackson, a six-time NBA champion while coaching the Chicago Bulls, to take over the Lakers in 1999. Los Angeles immediately won the next three NBA titles in brand-new Staples Center, AEG’s state-of-the-art downtown arena built with the Lakers as the primary tenant.

After the Lakers traded O’Neal in 2004, they hovered in mediocrity again until acquiring Gasol in a heist of a trade with Memphis in early 2008. Los Angeles made the next three NBA Finals, winning two more titles.

Through the Lakers’ frequent successes and occasional struggles, Buss never stopped living his Hollywood dream. He was an avid poker player, frequently participating in high-stakes tournaments, and a fixture on the Los Angeles club scene well into his 70s, when a late-night drunk-driving arrest in 2007 — with a 23-year-old woman in the passenger seat of his Mercedes-Benz — prompted him to cut down on his partying.

Buss owned the NHL’s Kings from 1979 to ’87, and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks also won two league titles under Buss’ ownership. He also owned Los Angeles franchises in World Team Tennis and the Major Indoor Soccer League.

Jerry Buss still served two terms as president of the NBA’s Board of Governors and was actively involved in the 2011 lockout negotiations, developing blood clots in his legs attributed to his extensive travel during that time.

The post Lakers owner Jerry Buss dies appeared first on IdealCapper.

Mike Brown (Los Angeles) gone five games into the season; Avery Johnson (Brooklyn) gone the day after Christmas, 28 games into the season; Scott Skiles (Milwaukee) gone 32 games in, when his team fell to .500 for the fourth time this season. Gentry lasted 41 games.

And somehow, there have been no Phil Jackson (or Stan Van Gundy) sightings.

Since the firings, the Lakers, Nets and Bucks have gone three different directions. The Nets are 9-2 post-AJ, the Lakers are 16-18 since firing Brown, the Bucks 3-3 since Skiles was asked to return the keys. One coach is catching hell (Mike D’Antoni with the Lakers), one is so under-the-radar that hardly anyone knows he is a current head coach of an NBA team (Jim Boylan with the Bucks), one is on pace to have a statue built in his likeness outside the Barclays Center (P.J. Carlesimo with the Nets). With the Suns, it’s too early to tell.

Each team had different reasons for enforcing a head coaching change when it did. The results of each are so all over the place that it’s hard to determine if there is a right or wrong in what each team did, the way the teams went about doing it and/or the arguable timing of them all.

No rhyme, less reason. Nothing seems to fit when the immediate results are so random and varied. Owners flip a coin, hoping it’ll land on the opposite side of their current results.

Just two weeks ago, we watched the NFL fire seven coaches on Black Monday. The NBA? Owners don’t have patience like that. They embrace change in a different way. They react with quickness. Regardless of how the firings are rationalized internally or justified publicly, two things are certain: Job security for an NBA coach is maybe the greatest oxymoron in sports, and there is no assurance that the immediate results under a new leader will give any team the answer it sought.

For instance, there were four coaching changes during the 2011-12 shortened season. Of those four, three of the coaches were retained and have not been pink-slipped. Yet.

Yet, there’s no telling if Randy Wittman in Washington, Keith Smart in Sacramento or Mike Woodson in New York (although he seems relatively safe, nothing is guaranteed if the Knicks fall out of the top four seeding in the East or the “Amar’e Experiment” doesn’t work out soon) were the right choices. There’s no telling if there would be any difference if the teams did what Orlando did when it rode the season out with the existing/sacrificial coach, dismissed him in the offseason, hired the guy the owner and organization “really” wanted (Jacque Vaughn) and began the new season fresh.

The Bulls waited until the offseason to hire Tom Thibodeau a few years ago, as did the Clippers with Vinny Del Negro and Golden State with Mark Jackson. Indiana did not with Frank Vogel. And all these teams are remarkably better than they were the day the current coaches took over.

Go figure.

In the NFL, going back a few years, Marty Schottenheimer (his first job) and Don Coryell (his second) replaced fired head coaches in the middle of a season, and their careers turned out well. In comparison, Jason Garrett took over the Cowboys in November 2010 when Jerry Jones fired Wade Phillips after a 1-7 start. Now the odds are, even after two 8-8 full seasons as Jerry’s puppet, Garrett might not make it to Black Monday next year.

In the NHL, Ken Hitchcock took over a 6-7-0 team in St. Louis last season and proceeded to finish 49-22-11 and first in the Central. Bruce Boudreau was on both ends of an owner’s midseason whims: fired in D.C. with a 12-9-1 record only to be hired by Anaheim and go 27-23-8 with a team that finished last in the Pacific, even after improving under him.

In MLB. In the English Premier League. In the National Rugby League. In any team sport at the pro level, the same theory-less theory holds true. The results prove to be the same: inconclusive. Same no rhyme. Same less reason.

So how do we judge and or generalize when it is a good/bad, appropriate/inexcusable, smart/incompetent time to fire/hire head coaches?

The best example of how (and why) there may never be an answer to this, especially in the NBA where the coaching carousel can get extreme and thoughtless, can be found in the head coaching history of Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.

He, too, was an interim coach who replaced Bob Hill 18 games into the 1996-97 season. (His was one of eight midseason coaching changes by seven teams.) Since then, Popovich has gone on to become the sensei of all active coaches. And he would be the perfect example of the upside to firing a coach during or somewhere in the middle of an NBA season if … at the time he wasn’t the GM and VP of basketball operations for the Spurs and he hadn’t appointed himself as head coach.

Despite owners’ certainty that a change on the bench will bring different results, flipping a coin often lands with the same ugly results staring them in the face. Heads or tails. And sometimes, because they limit their thinking to those two options, either this or that, they’re surprised when it lands on the coin’s narrow third surface, spinning on its edge.

Coaches in all sports come and go. Coaches in the NBA just seem to do so at an advanced pace.

When it comes to the revolving door at the core of most relationships between ownership and a head coach, how the coin will land after it stops spinning is too hard to guess. A few games midseason rarely determine — especially in the NBA — the good decision/bad decision outcome of a bad fire/new hire.

Or is it new fire/bad hire? Looking at the immediate results, I can’t tell if there’s even any difference.

The post Midseason NBA coaching changes appeared first on IdealCapper.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity because no deal has been reached.

One person says the Kings could sell for more than $500 million. The Kings’ future in Sacramento has been uncertain because the Maloofs and the city haven’t been able to come up with a long-term arena solution.

Yahoo! Sports first reported the discussions between the Kings and Hansen. Yahoo! reported a possible sale could land the Kings in Seattle for the 2013-14 season, where the team would play at KeyArena as a temporary home until a new arena is constructed.

A source close to the Maloofs, however, insisted to ESPN that an agreement has not yet been reached and that the Maloofs are still unsure whether they want to sell the team.

Hansen reached agreement with local governments in Seattle last October on plans to build a $490 million arena near the city’s other stadiums: CenturyLink Field and Safeco Field. As part of the agreement, no construction will begin until all environmental reviews are completed and a team has been secured.

Hansen’s group is expected to pitch in $290 million in private investment toward the arena, along with helping to pay for transportation improvements in the area around the stadiums. The plans also call for the arena to be able to handle a future NHL franchise. The remaining $200 million in public financing would be paid back with rent money and admissions taxes from the arena, and if that money falls short, Hansen would be responsible for making up the rest. Other investors in the proposed arena include Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer and two members of the Nordstrom department store family.

“I know as much as you do,” Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn told The Associated Press when asked about the situation. “If it’s true, ain’t it cool?”

His counterpart in Sacramento thought the news anything but cool. At an afternoon news conference, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said Wednesday was significant because for the first time Kings fans know the team is for sale. Johnson said he would do all he could to try to find a buyer with a Sacramento connection to possibly purchase the team and keep it in California’s capital city.

“We’re going to fight, and we’re used to being in this situation,” he said.

The NBA had no comment. Representatives for Hansen did not return messages seeking comment. Any franchise looking to relocate must submit their plans to the NBA by March 1 and the move must be approved by the league.

“As we have said for nearly a year, we will not comment on rumors or speculation about the Sacramento Kings franchise,” Maloof family spokesman Eric Rose said when contacted Wednesday by the AP.

The Kings’ asking price would top the NBA-record $450 million the Golden State Warriors sold for in July 2010. Johnson said he’s had past discussions with more than one group about possibly stepping forward as owners if the Kings were up for sale.

“All indications that I have seen and read and heard is they are exploring opportunities to sell the team, and that is public and that is the first I have ever heard,” Johnson said. “We need to put ourselves in a position to find an ownership group and buyers to keep the team here in Sacramento.”

Johnson said he had not spoken with any members of the Maloof family or NBA commissioner David Stern on Wednesday.

News of the discussions came a day after officials in Virginia Beach, Va., announced they were dropping their efforts to build a new arena. Virginia Beach was thought to be a relocation option for the Kings.

The Maloofs backed out of a tentative $391 million deal for a new downtown arena with Sacramento last year, reigniting fears the franchise could relocate. Johnson and the Kings broke off all negotiations in the summer.

In 2011, the Kings appeared determined to move to Anaheim before Johnson convinced the NBA to give the city one last chance to help finance an arena. At one point, Johnson seemed so certain the team was gone he called the process a “slow death” and compared the city’s efforts to keep the Kings a “Hail Mary.”

Johnson made a desperate pitch to the NBA Board of Governors in April 2011, promising league owners the city would find a way to help finance a new arena to replace the team’s outdated suburban facility. That pitch bought the Kings time, before the brokered deal between the city and the Maloofs fell apart last year.

Johnson said the Maloof family still must repay a $77 million loan to the city and other lenders.

While some players around the league took to Twitter on Wednesday to express their excitement about the possibility of the NBA returning to Seattle — especially those players from the Puget Sound area — others were more reserved.

“There’s a part of me that’s disappointed because Sacramento, I’ve enjoyed my times. I think Sacramento is a great town,” said Denver coach and former Seattle coach George Karl. “I’m not going to lie — I’m happy that Seattle is going to have a team more than Sacramento. But I am disappointed that Sacramento can’t keep their team.”

The post Seattle investor eyes Kings appeared first on IdealCapper.

“They’re real good and they’re having a great streak, so we’ll have to reckon with them and they’re kind of setting the bar of where we need to get to,” D’Antoni said.

The Clippers, who share the Staples Center with the Lakers, came into Sunday with a league best 24-6 record and a win streak that accounted for more victories than the 15-15 Lakers have had all season, but D’Antoni said he doesn’t pay them more attention than he would any other elite NBA team.

“As much as you notice Oklahoma City,” D’Antoni said. “As much as you notice Miami. You watch. They’re a very good basketball team but I don’t get caught up that they’re across town. You can’t help where they are. But yeah, they’re good.”

When asked if the current Clippers team was the best he’s seen in his 17 seasons as a professional basketball player in L.A., Kobe Bryant replied: “I don’t think it’s a question about it.”

“To put together win streaks that are that long, it shows a lot of focus, it shows a lot of unity and a lot of depth because they can beat you multiple ways,” Bryant continued. “If you’re going to have a winning streak that’s that extensive, you have to have guys coming in from all aspects of the game.”

Despite seven of the Clippers’ 14-man roster being new to the team this season (Matt Barnes, Jamal Crawford, Willie Green, Grant Hill, Ryan Hollins, Lamar Odom and Ronny Turiaf), Bryant noted that several of their players had been teammates before wearing the Lakers’ purple and gold.

“They have a lot of guys who have played together before,” Bryant said, referring to Barnes, Odom, Turiaf and Caron Butler. “They’re very familiar with each other, so even if it seems like they slapped a lot of talent together, which they did, but a lot of those guys have been together before and they understand how to play together.”

The Clippers and Lakers play this Friday in a “road” game for the Lakers at Staples Center. If the Clippers stay undefeated between now and then, their win streak would be at 19 games coming into the Lakers showdown.

Does Bryant want the Clippers to stay hot to have a shot of ending that streak as a little payback for the Clippers’ 105-95 win over the Lakers back on Nov. 2?

“I really don’t give a s—,” Bryant said.

Regardless of whether the Clippers are still on their win streak when they play the Lakers, Chris Paul & Co. will still be ahead of the Lakers in the standings. The Lakers are currently 10th in the Western Conference, on the outside looking in at the eight-team playoff picture.

“I’m not worried about where we’d play (in the playoff seeding),” D’Antoni said when asked if the Lakers have a shot at securing one of the top four seeds in the West and thus homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs. “Obviously, we’d like to and that’s our goal. We’ll see. We’ll have to have cooperation from some other teams, so, when it’s not in your hands it’s not always a thing to worry about.

“What we got to worry about is to play well. And, we’re taking some steps. I think the standings will take care of themselves. Obviously, I will look and do look and act like I’m not worried about it. Yeah, I am worried about it, but we just got to keep progressing as a team.”

How realistic would it be for the Lakers to put together a run to try to catch the Clippers, Thunder, San Antonio Spurs or Memphis Grizzlies at the top of the conference standings?

“Every season is different and every team is different, so you can’t say, ‘Well, that’s never been done,'” D’Antoni said. “Well, we’ve never had this team before so nothing is out of the realm of possibilities if you’re playing well at the right moment. That’s what we can control and that’s what we have to do. I think it’s fun to sit around and look at standings and fantasize and watch games and yell at the other team (playing on television), but we can’t control that so that’s not something we have to worry about too much.”

D’Antoni said he’ll have a better feel for the Lakers’ chances after they host the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday, play that “road” game against the Clippers on Friday and finish up the week with a home game against the Denver Nuggets on Sunday.

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