kimblr.com

BOSTON — The Los Angeles Lakers can't help themselves. They are totally, completely, absolutely mocking the injury to Paul Pierce. They're all but calling him a big, fat fake.
When asked by a reporter about the Pierce drama, Kobe Bryant started laughing.
Asked if Pierce's injury was a Willis Reed moment (which it wasn't), Phil Jackson, always the cute one, ever the damn comedian, said: "Well, if I'm not mistaken, I think Willis Reed missed a whole half and three quarters almost of a game and literally had to have a shot, a horse shot, three or four of them in his thigh to come back out and play. Paul got carried off and was back on his feet in a minute. I don't know if the angels visited him at halftime or in that time-out period that he had or not, but he didn't even limp when he came back out on the floor. I don't know what was going on there. Was Oral Roberts back there in their locker room? But he certainly carried some energy back on the floor for them."
Was Pierce really hurt or was he was pulling a Jack Nicholson?
Rivers said both Pierce and Kendrick Perkins (high ankle sprain) were both still ailing. The good news for Boston is that there's no game until Sunday. They have time to heal. Still I wouldn't count on either of them and at the very least they're going to be ailing badly.
People who believe Pierce earned a Golden Globe didn't watch him walk around after the game. His limp was pretty pronounced.
Unless he was faking that as well.
"Oh, I don’t care," said Rivers of the skepticism. "Aren’t we skeptics anyway now about everything? So what the heck; let it begin. Let it begin. Lee Harvey Oswald did it."

sportsline.com

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
•Is it just me, or have you overdosed on Red Sox-Yankees for a while?
Too much of a good thing inevitably becomes just too much, like eating five hot fudge sundaes when one would have been fine and dandy.
Maybe it’s the fact that it’s still April, and it all seems to have come too soon. Maybe it’s because the games are interminable, a journey that never seems to end, and there’s nothing I want to do for four hours, never mind watch a baseball game. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s like a movie we’ve seen too many times before.
Whatever it is, it all seems too much, at least for now.
The Red Sox-Yankees is great theater, as good as there is in all of sports.
But right now it seems cheapened.
•Kudos to both PC athletic director Bob Driscoll and the Rev. Brian Shanley for finding what seems to be an excellent choice for their new basketball coach, a search that wasn’t easy.
•Although if new coach Keno Davis was a native Rhode Islander, he probably would have been named Casino Davis.
•And would be doing ads for Twin River.
•Mike Mussina against Manny Ramirez is such a mismatch the baseball gods shouldn’t allow it.
•What crumbles first, Yankee Stadium or the Yankees?
•Quiz of the Week: How many guys who played college basketball in Rhode Island also played for the Celtics? (Answer near the end of the column.)
•Line of the Week comes from PC’s Father Shanley on the hiring of Keno Davis: “He’s the answer to our prayers.”
•Stop-Loss is a powerful, unsettling film about Iraq that deserves a wider audience.
•You know it’s not your grandfather’s NHL anymore when the Bruins have 15 Canadians on their roster and the Montreal Canadiens have 11.

projo.com