Greg Oden’s foot overshadows Lakers

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Defending champion Boston Celtics get their rings, beat LeBron James (LeBron has a team I think, it just wasn’t mentioned much) and the Lakers were running like the Showtime days, posting an exhilirating 96-76 win over Portland, both games back-to-back on the NBA’s opening night on TNT.

And yet Greg Oden stole all the media hot lights. Oden turned his ankle and it was the mainstay of the TNT post game show. Either it’s a sprained ankle or a tweaked ankle, Charles Barkley parsed the Oden pain in that kind of detail. Sprained will be worse than a tweak. Will the x-rays actually say ‘tweak’?

That’s OK. There will be plenty of time to decide whether Kobe Bryant can stay vibrant all season after playing in the Olympics and what is to become of Andrew Bynum and whether Tuesday’s doubleheader of Celtics first and Lakers second is any kind of foreshadowing.

Oh, and Charles is also a political prognosticator too. ‘We’re going to have a black president. You get used to it, buddy,’ was Barkley’s reply to studio host Ernie Johnson when Johnson let Barkley riff on how he went to the Democratic convention.

Doctor, political pundit, Charles can talk about it all. Just not much Lakers. Yet.

-- Diane Pucin