UCLA football: Carroll, Nelson and Flowers leave Bruins' program

Jim Mora began reshaping the UCLA football program by dismissing two players, while a third left school because of academic issues, the school announced Monday.

Tight end Raymond Nelson and defensive tackle Wesley Flowers were both let go for violating team rules. Randall Carroll is academically ineligible and is no longer enrolled at UCLA.

Carroll was allowed to play in the bowl game after filing an appeal. Carroll had come to UCLA with great fanfare, as former Coach Rick Neuheisel had lured him away from USC.

He was also outspoken and was one of the vocal critics when UCLA temporarily withheld players’ bowl checks last month.

Carroll was the California 100- and 200-yard champion as a senior at Los Angeles Cathedral High School in 2009. He came to UCLA as wide receiver but had only 21 receptions in three seasons and was
making the transition to defensive back.

Nelson, a freshman, appeared in eight games. Flowers, a redshirt freshman, has struggled with injuries since he came to UCLA.

--Chris Foster

ALSO:

A Q and A with Kirk Herbstreit

Setting the scent for the BCS title game

SEC is consistently better ... and occasionally lucky

Photo: Randall Carroll, left, Wesley Flowers and Raymond Nelson. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

Ted Green: Kobe and Steve, an appreciation

The Beatles first sang it on Abbey Road in 1969: Here come the Suns.

That's the Phoenix Suns, giving us a fascinating, ferociously contested, even beautiful conference finals in a true clash of NBA titans.

On one side, there's Kobe Bryant, the Black Mamba, passionately dedicated to winning a repeat championship with these Lakers, HIS Lakers, in what would be his fifth career title, tying Magic Johnson (and Kareem and Michael Cooper) as the winningest lifetime Lakers ever.

On the other side, Steve Nash. Defying Father Time at 36. A phenomenally conditioned athlete and basketball Beethoven, a prodigal-type court genius who eventually seems to solve all the long, tough, supersized defenses the Lakers and Phil Jackson throw at him.

The emerging story: All the Hubie Brown wannabes in the press corps notwithstanding, it isn't gimmick zones or the Suns' bench or the Lakers casting up too many triples, or even Ron Artest going from Biggest Bonehead Shot to Biggest Basket of His Wacky Career. Those issues matter, good storylines, but they're also mostly the Xs and O's.

No, the emerging story is Nash's Last Gasp, probably the great, old point guard's last and best chance to finally reach basketball's biggest stage, a stage he certainly deserves, a stage he has never once stood on, the NBA Finals.

It's Stevie Wonder, trying to put his fingertips, you might say, on a prize that's been so elusive for him, yet a place, the NBA Finals, where Kobe has already appeared six times, winning four. But you know the Kobester. He's greedy about this winning thing.

Ted Green: Did the Lakers gamble and lose on Andrew Bynum's knee?

 
As you are about to see, it’s more than fair to ask this simple question:

Could a decision made by the Lakers’ medical staff to hold off performing what figured to be a routine arthroscopy on Andrew Bynum’s torn right-knee cartilage, potentially as early as May 2, perhaps end up costing the Lakers what they’re working so feverishly hard to achieve, their repeat championship?

Don’t think for even a second that quietly, privately, behind the scenes, members of the Lakers’ organization aren't  asking themselves that same provocative question, too.

From someone who has undergone eight arthroscopic knee surgeries (five on the right knee and three on the left), from someone who knows how a meniscal tear feels, how it inhibits your movement and determines what you are and are not able to do, how it prevents you from running at anything approaching full speed -- yes, that someone is me -- I can tell you without hesitation or equivocation that Bynum should not be in Phoenix, frustrated, physically compromised, his knee stiff and too often painful, bravely pretending everything is OK with him when it obviously isn’t OK at all.

Bynum should be in El Segundo, at Laker headquarters, rehabbing a knee he should have had fixed, arthroscopically, more than three weeks ago.

Twenty-three days ago, to be exact.

In fact, for argument’s sake, with a nice, standard four-week recovery, it’s quite possible Bynum could be playing far more effective minutes for the Lakers than he is right now … by next week.

That’s right, friends. The docs will naturally say otherwise to justify their original decision, but it’s all too clear now: Bynum should have had his knee scoped the day after the meniscal tear was diagnosed on May 1.

Second-guess?  Hindsight is 20-20?  Not at all.  I said it on May 2, the day the Lakers announced that it was torn.

Frustrated myself, I asked everyone in my circle who fervently follows the Lakers: Why doesn’t he go in and get that thing scoped today?! He’ll be back for the finals!

Ted Green: Phoenix has permanent sun damage

They're a Phoenix that rose, then got turned into ashes.

The last time a sun had this bad a day, I lived in Chicago.

Sunscreen, sunblock, pick your bad sun pun, they all apply.

They say the sun can't explode, but it looks like their confidence did.

If the Phoenix Suns came into the Western Conference finals with swagger, it's been replaced by stagger.

Or was that a dagger?

Adjustments? Sure, if they see a chiropractor. Steve Nash's back will appreciate the visit.

It's lucky Nash has only one good eye. The bad eye is grateful it didn't have to see that mess.

Lamar Odom versus Louie Amundson? I'll take Odom, even if Amundson throws in that nice downtown L.A. theatre he owns.

After watching that demolition derby, I'm changing my prediction. It was Lakers in five. It's now Lakers in three.

Seriously, the Suns are a small, feisty team, a fun team, a good team too, but there are more mismatches in this series than on any Internet dating site.

It's a good thing Jared Dudley was "gonna do some things" to disrupt Kobe, like "get under him," "flop" and "hit his finger," as Dudley brashly, foolishly promised on his Twitter account. So what "things" did Dudley do? He got whistled for two fouls in a space of like 10 seconds while the Mamba was dropping 40.

Can't wait for Dudley's next tweet. It should read: HELP!

It might be just one game, but the last time anyone delivered a message as definitive as this one, it was Paul Revere on a horse, telling the colonists that the British were coming.

The Suns can't match up with the Lakers' front line if you take Robin Lopez and add Brook Lopez, George Lopez and Jennifer Lopez.

Like everyone else, I'll watch the rest of the series because:

A) It's the NBA's final four

B) It's the Lake Show

C) It's intriguing to see if they can repeat, and

D) I get paid to do it.

But the writing's already on the wall in big, bold letters, some purple, some gold, some kelly green:

BRING ON THE CELTICS.

-- Ted Green

Green formerly covered the Lakers for the L.A. Times. He is now senior sports producer for KTLA News.

Photo: Kobe Bryant drives past Suns defenders Jason Richardson and Jared Dudley on Monday night. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times.

Ted Green: For the Dodgers, it's always a matter of money

On Friday, a Superior Court judge with a more superior grasp of math than you and I possess ordered Dodgers owner Frank McCourt to pay his estranged wife, Jamie, $637,159 a month in temporary spousal support, plus lawyers' fees, pending their bitter divorce.

That's like $7.5 million a year. Just about what you'd pay a real good frontline pitcher, isn't it?

I know.  The Dodgers insist, swear like Tommy Lasorda, that the money being discussed in the Divorce From Hell is totally separate from the money used to run the baseball team.

"The Dodgers are not Frank McCourt's personal piggy bank," his lawyer says. So that's what they tell us and that's what we're supposed to believe.

Ahh, but if you're really True Blue, don't you suspect with more than average conviction that the Dodgers' failure to spend one red penny on pitching during the off-season is somehow connected to funds being tied up in the McCourts' big breakup?

I admit, I have no idea know how much Jamie McCourt needs to pay mortgages on seven houses plus an eighth piece of property in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I wouldn't know what to do with seven houses, especially when the one perfectly good house we already have luckily has a laundry room and swimming pool, not requiring me to go someplace else to swim or wash my gym shorts. But, hey, homes are expensive, especially when they're in Malibu and Holmby Hills.

However, I do know by cleverly looking it up on MLB.com that the Dodgers are currently 26th out of 30 major league teams in staff earned-run average, with an ERA over five runs a game. Only four teams are worse, one of them being the Angels, keeping bad pitching in Los Angeles-area family. 

I'm guessing the Dodgers didn't spend on upgrading their wobbly starting pitching because Frank McCourt correctly figured the fans would give him a freebie this season, more placidly accept an off year or even two because, after all, the team did win the N.L. West the last two seasons, reaching baseball's final four, buying Frank a year or two, you would think, to fail on the field.

Ted Green: Relief and resentment rule the day

Thank you, Edison, for inventing electricity. So there is a switch!

The Lakers threw it and lit up Staples Center, bright as neon in Game 5, just a bravura all-around performance, leaving me with some very ambivalent feelings.

As a Laker fan, watching the champs go up 3-2 and now possibly/likely winning the Okie series is a heckuva lot better than leaving the playoffs in April. That would have been ugly and could have led to other goodbyes like maybe to Phil Jackson, Derek Fisher and Jordan Farmar for sure.

However, as a journalist who is supposed to critique performance, I’m actually angry that the Lakers are this arrogant. Are the NBA’s current lords of the rings really so high and mighty as to throw that switch, to play their best and most enthusiastic basketball only when they absolutely have to, only when losing would probably mean the end of their championship reign?

By definition, it means they’re making less than their best effort on a steady basis, like, oh, 95% of the time.  So if you love championship pedigree, admire effort and laud those teams and athletes who leave it all out there, giving it their very best virtually all the time, then this Laker team does leave you wanting -- and expecting -- so much more.

If Game 5 was an indication, they’re treating these playoffs like an Austin Powers movie, losing their mojo, then going back in their time machine (2009) to try to get it back. All that’s missing is Dr. Evil sitting courtside next to Jack.

Ted Green: Are the Lakers the new Celtics?

Please excuse the fact I watch an implausibly ridiculous TV show seemingly conceived by the writers of “Lost“ on acid, but I’m about to have a Flash Forward.

(Pause 2 minutes 17 seconds for the GBO, the Global Blackout.)

OK now, Flash Forward to Friday in Okie City, when the Lakers are sent home, having been impaled on their sword, knocked out of the playoffs by first-time playoff novices in the opening round.

Flash Forward to the first great column by name your favorite columnist, then others, on how a championship team grew suddenly old, and how they now have a bunch of over-30 guys with fat, untradeable contracts, and what in the name of Dr. Jerry Buss are we Lakers fans gonna do now?

Well, win or lose Game 5 Tuesday night, win or lose this series, escape the Thunder or not, I’m not waiting to put this idea out there.

Not even 137 seconds.

So here it is: The Lakers now have a bunch of over-30 guys with fat, untradeable contracts.   

Take a quick, painful look at the Boston Celtics West, and replace the names Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, one-and-done winners, with…

• Kobe Bryant, 32 in August, but about to enter his 15th NBA season, his body broken and now betraying him. But his contract?  Newly renewed for three more years at the going golden parachute rate of  $83 million large ones. That’s almost LeBron James money. But unless Kobe spends the summer in a hyperbaric chamber, stays miles from a basketball and returns resembling at least something of himself, he’s nowhere near LeBron anymore. And he’s the Lakers’ franchise piece through 2014.

• Lamar Odom, 31 in November, entering his 12th year. Not broken physically yet, but with a long history of up-and-down performance.  A great, long X-factor when focused and enthused, but just as apt to spend games, even weeks in his own personal Bermuda Triangle, now co-occupied with Khloe, nowhere to be found except on reality shows. Contract status: Two more years at $8.2 million and $8.9 million. Total encumbrance to the franchise: $17.1 mil.

• Ron Artest, 31 in November, entering his 12th year.  Still a premier defender, but floor-bound now, no hops left, too willing to let his unpredictable triples fly, and a seeming poor fit for the disciplined structure of the Lakers’ triangle offense.  Plus,  he took a team that was growing slower and made it REALLY slow and lumbering. (Trevor Ariza, we hardly knew ya.)  Artest just finished first year of new five-year Laker deal worth $32.25 million.  Total dollars remaining: $26.7 mil.

• Oh, and Andrew Bynum. It’s true he’s just 22, but entering his sixth season and still owed $40 million, is the big kid brittle, and is he ever going to play close to a full season, much less average even 15 and eight?  Was he, too, a $52-million dollar overpay?

You can throw in Luke Walton, 30, and Sasha Vujacic, Luke owed $12 million for two more years, Sasha $5 mil for one more, despite each making barely meager contributions.

So fair to ask:  In locking almost everybody up, calculating (one of Dr. Buss’ favorite words) that the Lakers were about to repeat or even go back-to-back-to back, did our Dr. J make his first very serious miscalculation in personnel and finance since buying the Lakers 32 years ago?

Is the very quality we admire him for, generosity with his players and a genuine desire to win championships, which he has done splendidly en route to the Hall of Fame, going to turn out to be the very trait that will leave the Lakers stuck with fat contracts they can’t move, like Kobe’s, Lamar’s and Artest’s?

Are the Lakers also about to become a glitzier, more successful and entertaining version of the New York Knicks, with heavy, unmovable payroll issues?

Or, as he moves toward his late 70s, does the poker-playing good doctor have one more ace up his sleeve, like biting a big luxury tax bullet to take a run at LeBron James or Dwyane Wade?

If we’re staring the Lakers’ future in the face of the way they look today, they’re going to desperately need a big jolt of youth, along with an infusion of enthusiasm and athleticism to upgrade the aging group that seems to be falling apart right now.

Now I have to say, to balance the story, if Kobe comes back even almost like Kobe for the 2010-11 season, healed and healthy and the best fadeaway jump shooter on the planet, the beginning of his final career phase, the Late Michael Jordan Phase, then all bets are off.  Meaning, the Lakers can still matter and compete for titles.

But if he can’t, if the brilliant thoroughbred named Twenty Four has run his last great race, then the Lake Show is in deep trouble, Phil Jackson could be gone and this little blog is going to require some serious re-reading later this week, even if it seems like little more than a Flash Forward right now.   

-- Ted Green

Green formerly covered the Lakers for the L.A. Times and is currently Senior Sports Producer for KTLA Prime News.

Photo: Kobe Bryant reacts to a foul call during the Lakers' Game 3 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday. Credit: Larry W. Smith / EPA

Ted Green: Lakers are beat up and weary

You mean that was the playoff switch the Lakers threw?

Uh-oh.

I’m not saying Oklahoma City is deep enough or experienced enough to beat the Lakers four out of the next five, even with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and whoever that Hakeem Alonzo Manute Eaton Ibaka guy is who was throwing everything out of there in the middle. But if that looked anything at all like the fast, fluid, dynastic-looking Laker team that won the 2009 title less than 12 months ago, we’d all better get our eyes checked.

Two words come immediately to mind: old and weary.

A third word, this one hyphenated: beat-up.

Even at home in Staples Center, and even with Kobe Bryant willing his broken body to a fairly incredible 39 points, the Lakers were no match athletically for the young OKC thoroughbreds who blocked 17 of their shots.

The difference in athleticism between the Thunder and Lakers actually shocked me. I wonder if it shook up the Lakers too?

Seventeen blocks? Usually one must flirt in high school to experience that much rejection.

Block party? I haven’t seen that kind of blocking since John McKay’s USC teams were running Student Body Left for O.J. Simpson.

Now my great friend Harry, a Laker fan to the very end, points out that the mighty (and fully healthy) best-in-the-NBA Cavaliers had two similar struggles at home in Cleveland against the pedestrian 8-seed in the East, the Chicago Bulls. Harry says the Bulls are nowhere near as good or talented as OKC and he’s right. So Harry says: Stop making such a fuss over two narrow, nervous Laker home wins. They won, didn’t they?

Yeah, they did.

But fess up, Laker fans, you can easily see them getting hit by Thunder and lightning in the next two in Okie City, can’t you?

And finally this: I predicted a Laker title after the ’09 winter roadie when they ran the table in six cities. It wasn’t especially brilliant. You could feel their championship vibe. But right now you’d have to be a borderline whack job to predict a re-peat today.

And unless Ron Artest and Derek Fisher start shooting their threes toward a ZIP code that starts with a “9” or 731-something in the case of Okie City, hitting some triples, and until Lamar Odom snaps out of his latest Khloe coma, I don’t see the Lakers winning 14 more games playing the way they are, in the physical shape they’re in.

Be honest: Do you?

-- Ted Green

Green, enior sports producer for KTLA Prime News, formerly covered the Lakers for the L.A. Times.

Photo: Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, left, tries to get off a shot past Oklahoma City's Serge Ibaka, top, and Thabo Sefolosha during the first half of Game 2 of the Western Conference quarterfinals on Tuesday. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Ted Green: Is the Ache Show heading for a hard fall?

You hate using injuries as an excuse. Bo-ring! Besides, no one is going to commiserate with the Lakers when they're crowning a new NBA champion in June.

And if you're the Lakers, you hate giving up your title even more because you're just not healthy enough to defend it. That hurts too.

But look at them. They're a real mess. Truth is, the Lake Show has become the Ache Show.

Kobe Bryant ... the grotesquely swollen finger on his shooting hand, the sore knee he had to rest at the end. The poor guy’s a train wreck, finally off the rails. A high-mileage mega-star now possibly showing his age.

Andrew Bynum ... down for a third time in his roller coaster career with a significant injury. Will the Achilles hold up, and how much of a factor can he be if HE has a bad wheel too?

Shannon Brown ... bum thumb, and he's one of the healthy ones.

And now Sasha Vujacic ... one limping Slovenian, ankle sprain, out maybe a few weeks.

Ted Green: Is Kobe Bryant getting old?

I can tell you one thing about Father Time from personal experience. The guy plays no favorites.

In other words, everyone gets old.

The question at hand here, and, boy, is this a touchy one for Lakers fans: 

Is Kobe Bryant getting old?

Well, of course we know that. At 31, he's getting old-er. Fourteen seasons of NBA mileage, coupled with long playoff runs and representing our country on the world stage will do that to anyone. He's already played more career minutes than Jerry West when Mr. Clutch retired at 36. The old grump Kobe has been really great, and really fun to watch, for a really long time, but now I'm beginning to wonder, just how old is he?

Sure, I know. The six buzzer beaters this season. Incredible. The guy is still the Eighth Wonder of the World at the end of games. And, yes, he could be beat up and hurt. For sure, despite his brave and consistent denials, that busted finger wrapped in heavy black gauze has got to be affecting his shooting.

Most Lakers fans will adamantly insist: C'mon, he's hurt and he's still fourth in the league in scoring.

It's all true.

But I'm not looking at the finger. I'm not even looking that hard at the 5 for 24 against Utah the other night, followed by the 8 for 24 against the Spurs on Sunday. Or nights like the 14 for 37 at Portland (ball hog, anyone?)  All volume shooters have those nights; Michael Jordan did, too. And they're gonna pop up with Kobe, who truly relishes taking shots with high degrees of difficulty, if not off the impossibility chart altogether.

Ted Green: Deciphering the Lakers' championship hopes

One passionate Lakers fan I know, my buddy Harry, sees the league-best talent, the pedigree, and, hey, the team has Kobe Bryant, and so for him, even if LeBron James and the Cavaliers do genuinely scare him, winning the 2010 NBA title is still almost as simple as cueing Chick Hearn.

Slam dunk.

Another friend of mine, a displaced New Yorker and closeted Bryant critic named Warren, drinks the Hater-Aid, saying the Lakers’ uppity sense of entitlement, lack of urgency and sporadic rock-star work ethic will get the team thrown off the stage in the Western Finals.

These two disparate points of view make my friends bipolar opposites. It’s why they get along so well.

Truth is, this Laker team, with all its precocious gifts, leaves too many unanswered questions for anyone to know what’s going to happen once the playoffs start at the end of next month.

Trust me, I bet even Yoda himself, Coach Phil Jackson, isn’t sure which way this thing is gonna go.

Myself, I don’t have a clue.

This list of questions is as long as Lamar Odom’s and Khloe Kardashian’s receiving line at the wedding.  Take a look at just five:

1. The Big One, the one no one dares talk about or ever brings up: Are you seeing things game in and game out now where Bryant is starting to really show his NBA age, the 14 long years of mileage? Nine turnovers here, getting his shot blocked finally, having trouble breaking guys down as easily as he once did … or maybe the Mamba just dials it up for postseason.

2. Will Pau Gasol hold up physically? He played year round and his hamstrings balked, both of them weakening during two separate injury timeouts this season. The Lakers are hoping, of course, but no one knows how much the Big Spaniard really has left in the tank right now.

3. Can Andrew Bynum be a factor? The Lakers are too big, too long and too much for everyone else (except maybe Cleveland) with Bynum active and healthy, but that Achilles strain is a worrisome injury. Your season, in Bynum’s case, teetering on one thin, little tendon in the back of your foot staying in one piece for nearly two months while you’re putting 290 pounds of G-force on it playing NBA basketball. A productive Bynum could make an enormous difference in May and June, but that Achilles scares me to death -- and no doubt the Lakers too.

4. Is Odom’s half-frozen, injured shoulder (another taboo topic in Lakerland) going to inhibit the Walking Mismatch from having the kind of massive effect he had in the late rounds a year ago? If L.O. is limited, so are the Lakers.

5. And when push comes to shove, which it always invariably does in the playoffs, can Ron Artest at least half-control Carmelo Anthony, if Denver gets through, and then gear up again for James, if the Cavs can get by Orlando? Don’t kid yourself, Anthony and James are the reasons -- and really the only reasons  -- why the Lakers picked Artest over Trevor Ariza.

And so if there's a split among Laker hierarchy over whether Artest/Ariza was the right move to make, as has been reported, we may find out which front-office faction was right concerning the biggest off-season decision the Lakers made.

Bottom line: Having watched and covered every one of the Lakers’ 10 championships in Los Angeles, I’m leaning toward thinking they’ll get through the West, but I’m nowhere near convinced that LeBron James and a hungrier Cavs team won’t get them in the Finals.

For sure, if you’re a realistic Lakers fan somewhere between my friends Harry and Warren, you’re going into this postseason with more uncertainty, more questions and a greater sense of dread and mystery than you did a year ago when the stars were aligned, the team wanted it badly, and the championship somehow seemed almost preordained.

-- Ted Green

Green formerly covered the Lakers for the Los Angeles Times. He is currently senior sports producer for KTLA Prime News.

Photo: Kobe Bryant. Credit: Derick E. Hingle / US Presswire.