Joined: 17 Apr 2008 Posts: 4077 Location: New York, NY
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 10:44 am Post subject: Top 10 iconic Laker injury images
Since injuries are affecting our purple and golders so much right now, I started thinking of an unhappy topic: Laker injuries throughout history. But even more, the images we remember from those injuries. So this list isn't necessarily the 10 most devastating injuries in team history or the ones that had the biggest impact on the team's season or trajectory (though many of them are that as well). It's more the iconic -- and, occasionally, awful -- images we remember of those moments. Perhaps a bit of an unhappy moment down memory lane. On the other hand, better than watching the highlights from last night's game. Your list will differ (and I'm sure I'm forgetting some); offer up your own suggestions too.
10. The first of many players on this list rolling around in agony in front of horrified Lakers viewers. Kobe sprains his ankle in Game 2 of 2000 Finals. I remember seeing him on the ground and thinking, wait, they could lose this. He could be out weeks. Pacers could win this series! Fortunately LA pulled out Game 2, lost Game 3 without Kobe but then he started building the legend with his Game 4 performance.
9. James Worthy writhing with broken leg. The dynamic rookie crumbles in a heap. A disheartening image when it happens to any player but for the Lakers that season it helped ruin their later chances at knocking off the powerful Sixers. Fortunately Big Game came back stronger than ever. (Credit to our guy NPZ for this rare one since I and most Lakers fans didn't actually see this, but clips of Worthy rolling around eventually did emerge and became ingrained).
8. The most violent of clips. Imagine this happening today. Kareem takes an elbow from Kent Benson and delivers a devastating punch to the rookie oaf, sending Benson to the hospital and breaking his own damn hand in the process, costing him a few months. You absolutely did not mess with Kareem, if you wanted to keep your face. (NPZ should put together a greatest hits of Kareem getting ticked and going after dudes).
7. Wilt hurts his knee in Game 7, 1969 Finals. Goes up for a board and lands awkwardly. Limps around. This play became even more dramatic when Van Breda Kolff didn't put Wilt back in after the Lakers rallied, only to come up short. Not surprisingly Butch was shown the door after the season.
6. Same game. Same clip. West's wrap on his injured hamstring and him running up and down the court with that thing. Think about how primitive sports medicine was then. Look at that thing Mr. Clutch is carrying around! I can always visualize that wrap. And yet he went for 42-13-12, maybe his greatest game in the worst loss in franchise history.
5. Recency bias? Probably. Still. LeBron. "I felt a pop." AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. Christmas. New superstar. Kicking GSW's ass. And then this. Yeah they went on to win this game but since then...and who knows how this plays out. If this lingers or he reinjures one, this one would move up the list for all the wrong reasons. But the image of LeBron clutching his groin is certainly a memorable one.
4. The sinking feeling of seeing Andrew Bynum land and crumple and roll around clutching his knee. After a few years of struggles, the Lakers, improbably, had suddenly found something with Drew. Remember Christmas vs. the Suns? Then, this happened and every Lakers fan knew how devastating this would be. We knew it meant the return of Kwame. Good god. Incredibly, this all ended with Pau and the rest is history but this moment was such a gut punch. (his one the next year could have also easily made the list but that was almost a more of the same feeling, plus we did already have Pau and knew we could survive.)
3. Karl Malone's reaction to his knee injury. The man who never got hurt (hmm....heard that before) goes down with a freakish type injury and was never the same that season. Perhaps costs the Lakers the title (I mean, I say it absolutely did but I'll go with a weaker qualifier). Karl Malone, down on the ground, clutching his knee! Never happens! Ever. And then it did.
2. This and No. 1 could be exchanged, I think. Magic's dismay after his hamstring injury in Game 2 of '89 NBA Finals. Who can forget Vitti going out to help Magic and Magic pulling away in anger and frustration and utter devastation? He knew he was done at that moment and Lakers fans knew the dream of a three-peat died too. Even without Scott, I think we could have won that series. But when Magic came up lame and walked off the court as CBS cut to commercial, those hopes were done. "I've never seen him look like that," Stockton said. No one had.
1. Kobe falling to the court. Grabbing his leg. Going to the bench. Coming back and hitting the FTs. We didn't know for absolute certainty it was an Achilles...but we also sort of did. But the insanity and greatness of Kobe was captured in that moment when he came back to knock down the free throws and then limp again off the court. He'd return but was never the same. But even in his worst moment, he still gutted it out and also delivered buckets.
Thanks for this. Kareem looked like a sissy punching Kent Benson. Dude looked like he was sneaking up behind him, waited for there to be a good shot, punched him and backed away real quick. That was dirty and cowardly.
Joined: 24 Dec 2007 Posts: 35809 Location: Santa Clarita, CA (Hell) ->>>>>Ithaca, NY -≥≥≥≥≥Berkeley, CA
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 1:32 pm Post subject:
Where would Bynum's 2009 injury and his 2010 finals injury fall on this list? What about Nash and Randle breaking their legs? _________________ Damian Lillard shatters Dwight Coward's championship dreams:
Where would Bynum's 2009 injury and his 2010 finals injury fall on this list? What about Nash and Randle breaking their legs?
Yeah, the 2009 Bynum injury was the worse one IMO. We knew how good we were at that point (it wasn't just the potential like on '08) and Kobe's reaction to it being his fault (by accident) was brutal.
Joined: 17 Apr 2008 Posts: 4077 Location: New York, NY
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 1:59 pm Post subject:
I put Bynum No. 1 on there just because at the time it led us into the Kwame Era Redux (just a few months after Kobe demanded a trade) and everything looked as bleak as it did from 05-07. When they took him off the court, it just seemed like all the good from previous month had been killed and winter would return. Then the Pau miracle happened.
09 was awful. But I also knew the Lakers would be okay, while also realizing Bynum probably never would be.
Joined: 24 Dec 2007 Posts: 35809 Location: Santa Clarita, CA (Hell) ->>>>>Ithaca, NY -≥≥≥≥≥Berkeley, CA
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 2:11 pm Post subject:
loslakersss wrote:
CandyCanes wrote:
Where would Bynum's 2009 injury and his 2010 finals injury fall on this list? What about Nash and Randle breaking their legs?
Yeah, the 2009 Bynum injury was the worse one IMO. We knew how good we were at that point (it wasn't just the potential like on '08) and Kobe's reaction to it being his fault (by accident) was brutal.
Kobe's pinky and ringfinger injuries were also pretty bad. So was him collapsing with back spasms in the playoffs against Utah in 07-08 and yet continuing to play. _________________ Damian Lillard shatters Dwight Coward's championship dreams:
Joined: 24 Jun 2005 Posts: 2500 Location: Inland Empire
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 3:09 pm Post subject:
This was a painfully bad topic.
Bad for the memories and what they represented. But cool to look back so props to OP.
Also a bad omen as each year these injuries happened, the Lakers didn't get a ring.
Bye. _________________ "This trophy removes the most odious sentence in the English Language. It can never be said again that 'the Lakers have never beaten the Celtics.'" -Dr. Jerry Buss (1985) R.I.P., 33 x M.V.O.
The Nash injury should be on there somewhere, that cost us chemistry and some wins, maybe Kobe didn’t even have to play those heavy minutes if the lakers had more wins
Joined: 17 Apr 2008 Posts: 4077 Location: New York, NY
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 8:01 pm Post subject:
gumby wrote:
This was a painfully bad topic.
Bad for the memories and what they represented. But cool to look back so props to OP.
Also a bad omen as each year these injuries happened, the Lakers didn't get a ring.
Bye.
This is my audition tape for Lakers Top 10 on Spectrum as I think they've exhausted every other topic, up to and including Top 10 gigantic white centers who weren't very good but were still sort of beloved, led by Chuck Nevitt and Mike Smrek.
Bynum was aheadnof his time IMO. People see what Joel Embiid is doing, that was Andrew before his injury. He had really come on strong the last 20 games or so before injury looking like Kobe’s number 2 over Odom.
Joan last year with us, people complained about him taking that three. Well looks like he knew a little something the rest of us did not.
I’ll always think fondly of him for attacking KG and hammering all over him in the regular season VS Boston.
The most vivid season-crushing, momentum-altering Laker injury was omitted by the OP:
1980/81
Magic Johnson returns to the court for his second season and suffers cartilage damage to his left knee in early November. He plays on for a while, increasing damage. He misses more than forty games overall and returns to action strongly, but he and the team are a bit off, a bit impaired. A not-sharp, cocky Laker team got eliminated early in the playoffs by Houston (back when a three game series seemed appropriate in the early rounds). The Lakers missed on their first opportunity to repeat.
Joined: 04 May 2017 Posts: 3078 Location: The Left Coast
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:45 am Post subject:
My wife and I were at that game Kobe ruptured his Achilles. I'm from the Bay and see the Lakers play at Oracle almost every season against the Warriors. April 12, 2013 was my first time at Staples to see them play the up and coming Warriors. It was an amazing performance from Kobe, willing his team to victory, much like he did all that season. It was (bleep) luck to have this happen at our first game in Staples
I will never forget him getting hurt 2 times before rupturing his Achilles and playing through that pain.
When Magic pulled his Hamstring is was like all the wind went out of all of Los Angeles all at once. You could just feel a huge part of the city was in shock because everyone knew at the same moment that the Lakers were done and not winning anything without him. I’d bet productivity went way down around the city while people tried to recover.
Magic truly was a rockstar at that point in his career, people loved him (the person and the player) more than any sports figure I can remember.
Joined: 03 Oct 2003 Posts: 8323 Location: Santa Monica
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2019 4:07 pm Post subject:
When Kobe tore his Achilles I knew that was it for his career. I knew he'd eventually come back, but that he wouldn't be a good, let alone a great player anymore.
Knowing that he wanted to get every drop of production out of his body, and how he said a few years earlier that he would keep playing until the "wheels feel off", I think it's fitting that his career really ended with that injury. _________________ Lakers 49ers Chargers Dodgers
The ones that bothered me most were ones that really screwed them in the playoff hunt. Not that I'm heartless as to injuries when they come at any time. There have been bad ones on a human level that didn't impact playoffs at all. For destructive power, Worthy's ankle in 91 pretty much screwed us in that Bulls series. He and a couple of others were hurt in 83. Scott and Magic both in 89. Malone. I don't know if they would've won any of those 4 series, but they were even that much harder with those injuries. Bynum's injury (Odom's foot) on 1/13/08 potentially impacted those Finals in a big way. He was playing great up to that point. Looked like he was on his way to become a star. He was a lot lighter and more athletic then. Why they wanted him to bulk up so much after that I have no idea. _________________ GOAT MAGIC REEL SEDALE TRIBUTE EDDIE DONX!
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