Welcome back to the Lakers newsletter, where we’re likely standing at an airport as you read this.
The NBA schedule is in full swing. The chaos JJ Redick mentioned at the beginning of the season has arrived. The Lakers played a game with seven standard contract players. Austin Reaves went on a heater for the ages, scoring 51 points in a game, 41 in the next, then hitting the game-winner in the one after that. Nick Smith Jr. threw up in the hallway at Moda Center then dropped 25 on the Portland Trail Blazers.
But through it all, the Lakers are crediting their 6-2 start to something that can’t be measured in the box score.
All things Lakers, all the time.
‘Play Laker basketball’
There seems to be an advanced statistic for everything now. As a math person, I wholeheartedly embrace the nerdification of sports. But the thing Redick preaches most to his team is something that can’t be quantified.
Just “playing hard.”
It sounds simple, but, in fact, there is a way to do it wrong.
“That’s what we call ‘fake hustle,’” guard Marcus Smart said. “It’s all for the cameras. It’s all just to look good so you don’t get in trouble in the film room. But when you’re playing hard, you can feel it. You can feel the way you’re playing, you can feel the way the energy. Your body can feel it. Your mind can feel it. And you’d be surprised how the game turns out because of that.”
The Lakers’ early season commitment to simply playing hard has helped them weather injury storms and roster uncertainty. They’ve gone 3-1 in games without Luka Doncic. One of those victories was without Doncic and Austin Reaves, and all have been on the road. LeBron James hasn’t even played a minute this season.
“There’s certain things that we are doing right now that we did not do until mid-to-late January of last year,” Redick said before the Lakers’ game against Memphis.
Naturally, only hours after praising his team’s consistent competitiveness, Redick was frustrated with the effort in the second quarter against the Grizzlies. He called his players “zombies” as they let Memphis score 19 unanswered points in the second quarter.
So, no, things aren’t perfect yet.
But in a long season, with pieces that are still finding their way together, any early glimpse at some of those intangible, championship team qualities are meaningful. Redick lauded his team’s confidence, belief and connectivity in the win over Portland without Doncic or Reaves. Getting any or all of their stars back will change the complexion of what this team will ultimately achieve in April, May or — they hope — June, but the Lakers don’t want to it to affect what they do any given night.
“I think it all started in training camp, really just going as hard as we can, JJ not giving the crap who’s out there,” center Deandre Ayton said. “He wants to play Laker basketball.”
After the Lakers beat the Grizzlies, Smart gave the team a B+ in how hard it’s playing. But after Monday’s win in Portland in which Smith scored 25 points off the bench, Smart upgraded the rating to a B++.
So there’s still room to grow on this report card.
A new boss in town
New Lakers majority owner Mark Walter.
(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
The Lakers officially have a new majority owner.
Mark Walter’s acquisition of the Lakers was unanimously approved by the NBA board of governors last Thursday. It was a monumental week for the billionaire. One day after the sale went final, Walter hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy for the second time in as many years with the Dodgers, who won the World Series in epic Game 7 fashion. Then on Sunday, Walter was sitting courtside at Crypto.com Arena in a royal blue Dodgers jacket to watch the Lakers defeat the Heat. An arena employee shook Walter’s hand, presumably thanking him for bringing L.A. another championship and already dreaming about the next one that could come for the purple and gold.
Redick said he spoke briefly with Walter after the news and came away impressed with Walter’s enthusiasm to learn about a new league.
“Baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team sport. It’s a different thing,” Redick said. “Daryl Morey said it best on a podcast a couple years ago. He said the NBA now is the equivalent of the Giants when Barry Bonds was in his prime, basically getting to bat every single time and not only that, getting to pick who pitches to him every single time. That’s what the NBA is. … The impact of star players, a guy like Luka, a guy like LeBron, a guy like AR, it’s just different than any other sport.”
Favorite thing I ate this week
Miso pork katsu sando from Tokyo Sando food cart in Portland.
(Thuc Nhi Nguyen / Los Angeles Times)
As my Uber driver dropped me off at my hotel in Portland, we drove by a collection of food trucks around the corner. He recommended that I make a stop for lunch. Little did he know, I had already scoped out the entire area, and I had my target locked.
The miso pork katsu sando from Tokyo Sando felt like culinary perfection after a chaotic back-to-back turnaround.
And when Marcus Skeet, the record-breaking charity runner and mental health champion received his Special Recognition Award, he got an extra surprise. After handing Marcus his trophy, pop star Anne-Marie, and podcast duo Pete Wicks and Sam Thompson revealed Pride of Britain had launched a special GoFundMe for mental health charity Mind in Marcus’s honour.
Money raised will pay for special mental health walking and running groups all over the country called Marcus’s Movers. The groups, which include mental health practitioners, cost £2,500 to set up.
Sam and Pete kicked things off with a £5,000 donation on stage, and then Pub Landlord Al Murray took to the floor to persuade some other famous faces to chip in too.
Dragons Den tycoon Duncan Bannatyne donated £20,000, bringing the total raised on the night to £50,000, enough to fund 20 potentially lifesaving Marcus’s Movers groups. A stunned Marcus told Ashley Banjo: “From the bottom of my heart, that means the absolute world. I’m lost for words.”
Now you can help by donating to the GoFundMe to help Mind set up even more Marcus’s Movers groups in communities all over Britain. The Daily Mirror Pride of Britain Awards with P&O Cruises celebrate unsung heroes like Marcus. His own life was transformed by walking and running – the teenager went from the lowest possible ebb to becoming a record-breaking charity fundraiser and Pride of Britain winner.
He was 12 when his dad was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Marcus’s physical and mental health rapidly declined and he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and intrusive thoughts which dramatically impacted his life.
At 15 he was in “one of the darkest places”, and attempted suicide after spending months alone in his room with no contact with the outside world. Desperate to turn his life around, Marcus, now 17, started walking short distances at first, before building up distance and speed until he was jogging longer routes. He says: “My mental health was at an all time low so I decided to run, not just for mental health but to raise awareness. Running pushed my body and mind and the feeling after a run was like nothing else.”
Since then, Marcus has raised more than £200,000 for Mind through running, including a run from Land’s End to John O’Groats. The gruelling 874 mile challenge saw him become the youngest person ever – and the first under 18 – to run the entire length of the UK.
Marcus has documented his journey on social media in the hopes of inspiring others who are struggling with their mental health. He says: “Life is brutal, sometimes you feel like you’re in a place you can’t get out of. But I promise you, every road may have speed bumps but you’ll get over them. Mental health is such a big thing, everyone is different but I find running helps mine.”
PHOENIX — Marcus Smart estimated he’ll be limited to about 20 to 25 minutes in his Lakers preseason debut Tuesday night against the Phoenix Suns as he returns from Achilles tendinopathy.
Speaking after the team’s shootaround Tuesday, the 31-year-old guard said the rash of Achilles injuries suffered by NBA stars recently — including three during the playoffs last season — made his initial diagnosis frightening, but he took a cautious approach with the Lakers staff to ensure he was ready for the season.
“It wasn’t scary in the fact of understanding that tendinopathy, we all kind of have it playing over the time,” said Smart, who is entering his 12th NBA season. “Just making sure you do everything you need to do, to make sure that you can get back out here, or to be able to say, ‘No, I can’t.’ So you got to test it, unfortunately, and you got to see where you’re at. So we’ve done all the tests on the court, off the court and we’re feeling fast, feeling good so we want to give it a shot.”
Guard Luka Doncic is also expected to make his preseason debut after he was on a modified training schedule following a busy summer spent with the Slovenian national team. Coach JJ Redick said Monday after practice that Doncic and the team’s training staff had yet to determine a minutes restriction on Doncic, but expects that the five-time All-Star will see an increased workload by the time he suits up again for his second preseason game.
The Lakers will follow Tuesday’s game in Phoenix with a game against Doncic’s former team, the Dallas Mavericks, in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Because of the back-to-back schedule, it’s likely Doncic will play again Friday at Crypto.com Arena against the Sacramento Kings.
Since they are playing four games in six days, the Lakers ruled out guard Gabe Vincent, forwards Rui Hachimura and Jarred Vanderbilt and center Jaxson Hayes for Tuesday’s preseason game.
Rookie guard Adou Thiero [knee] has progressed to on-court activities, the team announced Tuesday, after the second-round draft pick was battling swelling in a knee. He will be re-evaluated in two to three weeks.
England face Latvia in Riga on Tuesday knowing victory will guarantee qualification for next summer’s World Cup in Mexico, Canada and the United States.
Rashford, who scored two goals in the Champions League for Barca against Newcastle United, has fallen out of favour at Manchester United and is looking to get his career back on track away from his boyhood club.
In January, manager Ruben Amorim criticised Rashford for not showing the attitude of someone “giving the maximum every day”.
Tuchel pointed out that Rashford is still young enough to make the right decisions in his career “because otherwise, he will be disappointed in 10 years at what could have been and what he made of it”.
Barcelona boss Hansi Flick has been pleased with Rashford’s efforts so far though, calling him “unbelievable”. The La Liga club has the option of signing him on a permanent basis for £30m in 2026.
“I think the limit for him is very, very high. Maybe higher than for others,” said Tuchel. “He has the potential – but potential is a dangerous word with high-level sports.
“You have to reach your personal best on a regular basis – that is what is demanded on this kind of level, and that is the challenge for him.
“He can be one of the best in the world because the quality I see in training, the finishing with both legs and with the head.
“He is explosive, he is fast, he is strong in the air, so where are the limits?
“There are no limits – but the numbers don’t reach the potential, it is as easy as that.”
When it was first published in 1975, “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” was immediately recognized as something new. In six taut, probing, far-ranging essays about certain popular or otherwise forgotten musicians, author Greil Marcus cracked open a world of sojourners, tricksters, killers and confidence men — the lost subterranean underlife of America as inflected in the music itself.
“Mystery Train” was a landmark in cultural criticism that took on Rock ‘n’ Roll as a subject of intellectual inquiry. In 2011, Time magazine named “Mystery Train” one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of all time. For the book’s 50th anniversary, a new edition has been published, with a wealth of new writing from Marcus that brings his book up to date.
On a recent Zoom call, I chatted with him on the 50th anniversary of his book about its lasting impact, the anxiety of influence and the staying power of criticism.
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✍️ Author Chat
Book jacket of “Mystery Train” by Greil Marcus.
(Penguin Random House)
Congrats on 50 years of “Mystery Train.” Could you have possibly imagined that it would still have a life in 2025 when you wrote it in 1975?
For this book to have this kind of a life, you can’t predict it. I had a miserable time writing it. I’d never written a book before. I rented a room at a house near our little apartment, and just stayed there all day, trying to write or not trying to write, as the case may be. I didn’t have any hopes or ambitions for it. I just wanted it to look good.
This is the thickest edition of “Mystery Train” yet. Your “Notes and Discographies” section, where you update the reader on new books and recordings about the artists, among other things, is longer than the original text of the book.
That’s what’s kept the book alive. I mean, I still think the original chapters read well. I’m glad they came out the way they did, but for me, they opened up a continuing story, and that has sort of kept me on the beat so that I obsessively would follow every permutation that I could and write them in the notes section.
“Mystery Train” changed the way popular music was written about. Who were your literary antecedents?
Edmund Wilson, Pauline Kael, D.H. Lawrence’s critical studies. Hemingway’s short stories, just as a way to learn how to try to write. There was another book that was important to me, Michael Gray’s “Song and Dance Man,” which was a rigorous examination of Bob Dylan’s music. It was totally intimidating. His knowledge of blues, novels, poetry — I thought there’s no way I can write something as good as this. So I started doing a lot more reading, and listening more widely.
For many readers of the book, it was the first time they came across artists like Robert Johnson or Harmonica Frank. How did you discover these artists?
I was an editor at Rolling Stone magazine in 1969 when the Altamont disaster happened, when people were killed at a free Rolling Stones concert. It was an evil, awful day. I was drained and disgusted with what rock ‘n’ roll had become, and I didn’t want to listen to that music anymore. I found myself in this little record store in Berkeley, and I saw an album by Robert Johnson that had a song called “Four Until Late” that Eric Clapton’s band Cream had covered, so I took it home and played it, and that was just a revelation to me. It led me into another world. It became the bedrock of “Mystery Train.”
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger signs autographs at Altamont Speedway. Later, on Dec. 6, the Stones gave a concert where one fan was stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel.
(Associated Press)
Your book explores how certain myths transfer across vastly disparate cultures. Had you read the great mythologist Joseph Campbell prior to writing the book?
I read a lot of Joseph Campbell in graduate school. Probably a half-dozen of his books. In some ways they cover the same territory as “Mystery Train.” Campbell makes the argument that myths persist, they don’t even need to be cultivated. They cultivate us, and they are passed on in almost invisible ways. That really struck a chord with me when reading Campbell’s work.
You’re very good at explaining what music sounds like. Are you influenced by fiction at all?
I’d say fiction is part of my work. One of the books that hovered over me when I was writing “Mystery Train” was “The Great Gatsby.” Certain lines, they sang out.
What is the purpose of criticism?
My next book is about Bryan Ferry, the leader of the band Roxy Music. Now, you listen to a song like Roxy Music’s “More Than This” and you say, what makes this so great? How did that happen? What is going on here? That’s what criticism is, just wrestling with your response to something. That thing where someone has captured a moment so completely that you sort of fall back in awe. That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life as a writer. There is this urge to, not exactly take possession of something, but to become a part of it to some small degree.
Your book plumbs the murky depths, exploring the mysterious dream life of America as transmuted through certain music. Are there any mysteries left for you?
Oh, yes, absolutely. I remember when I met Bob Dylan in 1997. He was getting an award, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and I was to give a talk. We met and he asked what I was working on. I had just published a book called “Invisible Republic,” about his “Basement Tapes.” He said, “You should write a sequel to that. You only just scratched the surface.” Now, I’m not saying I did a bad job. He said that to me because certain music has infinite depth. So, yes, there are certainly more mysteries to think about.
📰 The Week(s) in Books
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Valerie Castallanos Clark loves Jade Chang’s new novel, “What a Time to Be Alive,” calling it “equal parts love letter to Los Angeles, narrative about being a first-generation Asian American, exploration of grief and love and a found-family novel featuring an adoptee that doesn’t put reunion as the emotional climax.”
With “Shadow Ticket,” Thomas Pynchon has delivered a late-career gem, according to David Kipen: “Dark as a vampire’s pocket, light-fingered as a jewel thief, ‘Shadow Ticket’ capers across the page with breezy, baggy-pants assurance — and then pauses on its way down the fire escape just long enough to crack your heart open.”
Stories Books & Cafe is on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park.
(Claudia Colodro)
Ever since it opened its doors in 2008, Stories Books & Cafe has been a community cornerstone. A snug yet carefully curated store, with loads of obscurantist art books and choice indie press titles, Stories also has a cafe tucked in the back that is always bustling. Owner Claudia Colodro runs the store as a creative cooperative with her five co-workers. I talked to the team about the shop on Sunset.
Stories is small, yet I always see titles in there I don’t see anywhere else.
Stories prides itself on its painstaking curation, influenced by every employee’s area of expertise. Much like the community we have garnered, Stories leans toward the eclectic, esoteric and even fringe. Over our 17 years in existence, Stories has been a bookstore that loves our local authors and independent publishers, and encourages readers to come in with an open mind more than a predetermined list.
Remarkably, you have endured in a neighborhood that has seen a lot of store closures, post-COVID.
In a world predominantly automatized and authoritative, we like our people and books to be a countermeasure to the mainstream creature comforts — in hopes to push people out of the path of least resistance and into the unseen abundance.
