Where The Lakers Will Have To Settle For 78-4.

Troy Murphy lit up the Wizards to the tune of 28 points on 10-18 shooting, 2-6 from long range and 6-6 from the line, 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals and 2 turnovers. The Pacers won that game due to Gilbert Arenas' (22, 10 and 11, his first triple-double of the year) missed free throws, but who cares about a meaningless regular season game between Washington and Indiana? It's not like either of those teams will challenge the Lakers for the championship, right? I only tune in to these games for their fantasy implications. (I love watching games go to overtime [several overtime games tonight! Yay!] so my players can pad their stats, but I'll take what I can from Murphy).

I own Murphy in my h2h league and I love his versatility in terms of his contributions in treys and boards, a rare combination. It also helps that he is quite an efficient shooter. That means that his FG% and his FT% are both above the league average. Guards tend to have bad FG% (shooting from farther away usually causes lower percentages) and high FT% (thousands of hours practicing), and Bigs tend to have high FG% (they shoot really close to the basket) and lower FT% (bigger hands?). So when you find someone like Murphy, who shoots free throws at 84% for the season, then that's pretty efficient.

On a side note, if you rearrange the letters in Troy Murphy's name, you get: "Hurry, my pot!"

In actual real life basketball news, Deron Williams (21 and 11) and his Utah Jazz stopped the Lakers' 11-game win streak. There were a lot of factors for the Lakers losing this one. (I will always consider the Lakers' losses as their losing it as opposed to the opponents' winning it.) Kobe Bryant broke his index finger yesterday, he also had some kind of internal stomach problem, the Utah Jazz are one of the top home teams in the past decade, Deron Williams usually has his way with Derek Fisher, etc. Whatever.

A lot of fans look at Kobe Bryant and they see him playing through his injuries and they call him a warrior. They look at LeBron James sitting a game for breaking his non-shooting hand's pinky finger (happened last year), and they call him a weaksauce. As much as I love Kobe Bryant, I don't buy into the whole playing-through-injuries thing. It's just not smart. Seriously, you already look really cool and gutsy doing the things you do when you're on the court, but you're not doing the organization a favor by playing through an injury in a meaningless regular season game. The Laker organization is paying you millions of dollars to take care of your body and perform at high level. Professional athletes are being paid to take care of their bodies; they really should invest more in it. I would rather have Kobe play 70 games this season and stay healthy, than to play 82 games, where he can potentially (the risk really isn't worth it) aggravate a previous injury.

There's nothing to prove, really. If anything, it should be seen as reckless, stupid and prideful. What if he aggravated his injury even further in the game? Then what? In hindsight, we see Kobe playing entire seasons through injuries and winning championships, and we go, "Wow. Everyone should be like that." But they shouldn't. There have been so many cases where players have tried to help the team by playing through injuries, but instead hurt their team even more by making their injury even worse (Danny Granger, Jose Calderon and Andris Biedrins this year, Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady in the past decade). Believe me- Kobe Bryant is the exception, not the rule- when it comes to playing through injuries. Really, it's dangerous. How's that one saying go?

Better safe than sorry. (I'm great at giving life advice, too.)