Eddie Jones At His Best

I remember when i was a lil kid in the 90's I used always play some NBA game on Nintendo 64 and the ball was on fire and I would always be Kobe or Eddie jones and dunk all damn day. lol

purp n gold wrote:Like many of you I'm very fond of the 95-99 era Lakers... Eddie was one of my favorites out of that bunch. Remember that 97 team?

Van Exel/Scott/Fisher
Jones/Kobe/Scott
Horry/Kersey/Kobe
Campbell/Horry
Shaq/Campbell

That was a fun squad to watch.

Man I loved watching Eddie work! Shoulda fired Del freakin Harris first before making that trade. That was championship team, but I guess like someone said, had to give Kobe some room to improve. Still think Phil could have made it work though. Who knows...

^^That was the team that had 4 All stars that year...yea they were stacked but had no chemistry...lol...Nicky V was beating up officials..Eddie and Kobe couldn't play together and Shaq and Campbell couldn't play together either....

I liked Eddie despite his playoff performances. He wasn't an egotistical jerk like Nick. I also believe that Phil would have gotten more out of him than Del did.

jlkr wrote:Eddie had a bad habit of disappearing in the playoffs *every* year. So much as I loved his athleticism, I stopped liking him on the Lakers because dammit, the ring is the thing and Eddie was not helpful toward that goal. Could not wait for Kobe to take his starting job. So I wasn't sorry to see him traded, heck I'm still not sorry even if Rice didn't work out, that was a trade that had to be made: Buss wasn't paying big salaries to 2 off-guards and there was a hole at the 3.

My fave Lakers from the 90's: Sedale Threatt and Nick Van Exel. Loved them both. Neither was afraid of the spotlight. Threatt was originally brought in to be Magic's backup but was thrust into the starting role when Magic was forced to retire; I liked the way he stepped up, he had that great move to his left with the push off jumper. Regarding Van Exel, yeah there's "Cancun", but I'll never forget his very first game as a Laker; he had an excellent game and I was just blown away. And I'll always love Van Exel for very last time the Lakers played in the old Boston Garden: he won that game for the Lakers with a near 50 foot last second heave from midcourt near the out of bounds line, then promptly turned around and ran into the locker room with celebrating teammates. Eat that, Red!

This is exactly the way I remember it as well..... Nick was afraid of no one and no situation. Threatt was a professional and filled a huge void. Eddie was a fantastic regular season player but couldn't raise his game when it mattered most.... at least not in his Laker days. He did become a valuable post season player later in his career.

Those teams of the 90's were more exciting to watch than the "Triangle" teams that won it all IMHO.... you were always on the edge of your seat waiting for something to happen..... good or bad..... and those teams didn't disappoint in either respect......

raviator wrote:

purp n gold wrote:Like many of you I'm very fond of the 95-99 era Lakers... Eddie was one of my favorites out of that bunch. Remember that 97 team?

Van Exel/Scott/Fisher
Jones/Kobe/Scott
Horry/Kersey/Kobe
Campbell/Horry
Shaq/Campbell

That was a fun squad to watch.

Man I loved watching Eddie work! Shoulda fired Del freakin Harris first before making that trade. That was championship team, but I guess like someone said, had to give Kobe some room to improve. Still think Phil could have made it work though. Who knows...

Actually the odd part of that one was that they HAD already fired Del Harris. The trade of Campbell and Jones came the next season when Rambis was coaching. The lame part of the timing of that trade was that the Lakers had just won 10 games in a row, and they had just beaten the Utah Jazz in their house. The Jazz was the team that kept taking them out in the playoffs, and you know they used to never lose at home. So the move was very ill-timed. Rice was in fact still kind of recovering from his elbow injury and the other guy that came (J.R. Reid, IIRC) was pretty weak.

They had Rodman on board and he was actually playing great with those guys. After the trade happened he lost interest and tanked. The team didn't have any chemistry after the trade at all.

They were in first place at least in the Pacific (not sure if they were the very top in the west or not, but were up there for sure) and had just won those ten games in a row. They were kicking butt. And then the trade just de-railed them completely. They ended up getting schooled by San Antonio in the playoffs and that was when Shaq started making noise about Kobe being a ball hog.

All of it had the Shaq flavor to it. He threw Nicky V under the bus for being sarcastic, when Nicky was a powerhouse competitor who was sick of Del Harris' horrid coaching and was the only one calling him out. Shaq always hated Elden Campbell and had been calling him out since the day he got here. On top of it, he was always pushing for us to trade Eddie Jones. "I need a shooter. Gimme a shooter." And then as soon as those guys were gone (Nick, Eddie, Elden) he started right in on Kobe in that San Antonio series. That's exactly when Shaq started the feuding with Kobe.

He got his shooter in Rice but Rice was pretty useless for that season and it wrecked our chemistry. The one thing Shaq was right about and I'll give him credit for, was that we needed a world class coach. He did push for Phil and that was the smartest thing he's done. Otherwise I'm not sure we ever would have gotten over the hump.

get in a time machine and do it mitch