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• Just Like Football: USC 67, UCLA 46 #
• RT @Lileks: To recap: if you drink in the morning, you're an addict. If you drink in the morning near an athletic facility, you're a fan. #

Here’s the link to Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom’s gift registry at Geary’s Beverly Hills.

Least expensive item: a $90 fish fork. Or how about a $1,140 soup ladle?

[Dwight] Howard has also expressed the desire to have his own reality show.

Here’s a suggestion: The show should focus on Howard’s learning how to make savvy passes when he’s doubled, how to shoot a short-range jumper and how to make free throws.

That’s the kind of reality that the young man should be interested in.

— Charley Rosen

My 15-year-old kid has created a custom NBA 2K9 roster consisting entirely of 7-foot-11 point guards.

“It creates some real matchup problems,” he says.

“Mom, can you drop me off at the park for basketball?”

“Not now, honey, I’m on a business call.”

“People are waiting for me! YOU’RE KILLING MY TEAM!”

Today was the last day of school here in Irvine . . .

“Can I get a ride to Orchard Park?” my son asks. He has friends that he meets there to play basketball.

“Did you check with Mom?” I ask.

“I don’t have to check with Mom,” he says. “I’m out of school now.”

“So you don’t have to check with Mom?”

“No. Not any more.”

After he checks with his mom, I drive him over to the park. Actually, he drives to the park and I ride along.

As we’re approaching a red light at Jeffrey and Trabuco, he says, “I’ll stop the car so you can’t even feel it.”

This is something I showed him how to do. I’m pretty good at it, but he goes through so many slow-motion false stops and starts that by the time he’s done, the car is almost entirely in the crosswalk.

“We’re in the middle of the intersection,” I point out to him.

“I did it though,” he says.

As we drive past the Arco station, I notice that gas prices are up over $3.00 again for a gallon of regular.

“Obama needs to stop playing basketball and deal with these gas prices,” the boy says.

“You’re right.”

It was like a ghost town yesterday. The Lakers were playing a close-out game. It’s Finals Week at the local high schools. Everyone young and old had something to do.

My own 10th-grade boy spent 12 hours Saturday studying at the Barnes and Noble cafe at the Marketplace, followed by an Extreme English Breakdown session yesterday at Starbucks on Culver . . .

Good luck, students!

I was shooting some hoops at the park this afternoon with my boy, sort of guarding him so he could try out some moves.

I suggested that when he drives past a defender, he should cut back into him to keep him from reaching out and making a play on the ball. He tried it again but still didn’t cut back into me with enough gusto.

The third time, he overcompensated. Before he even got past me, he drove his shoulder into my solar plexus and knocked me off the end of the court.

Did I mention he’s the same size as me and a lot younger? Ouch . . . I’m still feeling it right now.

• RT @VJnator: The only time Obama is not using the teleprompter is when he uses the word “Look” beginning his sentence.That is the indicator. #
• Forgot my sunglasses, had to drive 2 work w/out them. Turns out to be overcast, no sun. It’s a good day… #
• Buy Ichiro’s house – $1.75 million: http://tinyurl.com/ddvkqj #
• @VJnator He does…it’s an arrogant way to start a sentence. in reply to VJnator #
• RT @PeteCarroll: Best of luck to Coach Floyd and the Trojans in Minneapolis! Beat the eagles!! #
• My brother’s visiting from the Pentagon. Not on official business. Nephew’s wedding this weekend. #
• Building credibility by admitting that you don’t know the answer: http://tinyurl.com/ctyq6s #

• Really looking forward 2 my 1st ski lesson this weekend! Wait, WHAT?! http://tinyurl.com/cx97xu #
• RT @THE_REAL_SHAQ: Best Dunk ever? http://tinyurl.com/d68vr5 #
• Embracing elegant solutions w/ a philosophy of doing far more w/ much less. #
• How have U changed the way U perform your work in the last week? http://tinyurl.com/cpuuru #
• F’ing gerunds… #
• Dashboard inspiration w/ sparklines: http://tinyurl.com/cdry8t #
• At the rink for IHF finals #

It’s 7 p.m. and my son’s ready to make a deal . . .

“If I study for an hour,” he says, “can I go play basketball at 8?”

His mom is skeptical. “You just played Xbox for five hours,” she says.

He shakes his head vehemently. “Four-and-a-half hours,” he says.

To give you an idea of how pathetic the NBA’s Eastern Conference is this season, The Cavs and the Celtics have both clinched playoff spots!

I know what you’re thinking: Wasn’t the All-Star Game just last weekend?

Cleveland still has 22 games left to play. They could lose all of them — a 22-game losing streak — and still make the playoffs . . .

We were watching the NBA All-Star Game yesterday when someone — Marv Albert, I think — said that Pau Gasol was acquired in a “steal” by the Los Angeles Lakers.

My son takes exception.

“That wasn’t a steal,” he says. “It was a trade. Javaris Crittenton is a very capable player.”

My son’s dribbling a basketball in the family room, working on some moves. His mom comes in and tells him to knock it off.

He responds by posting her up and backing her down . . .

Wednesday was national signing day for college football. Looks like UCLA got a good group of kids.

One of my Facebook friends, a UCLA grad, updated his status to say that he thinks UCLA will now rule the city in basketball AND football.

I posted a comment on his status: What about SAT scores?

And within minutes he had dropped me from his friend list, after sending me an angry email saying that USC is getting smart kids internationally and out of state while UCLA has to take California kids and besides that they’re manipulating the stats and blah blah blah . . .

To fully appreciate that, you need to know that traditionally the perception has been that the rich SoCal kids go to USC while the smart kids go to UCLA. In recent years though, USC has moved ahead in SAT scores, GPA, National Merit Scholars, etc., and continues to widen the gap.

So now the USC kids are richer AND smarter and the Bruins aren’t taking it well. Not at all.

FIGHT ON!

My son and I went to the Lakers game last night, a pre-season game against Utah . . .

Pre-game

As we were walking in, he pointed out an Asian girl with a spiky-haired Asian guy wearing an Olympics jersey and said, “That guy with the Olympic jersey pulled a hotter Asian woman than you.”

The girl was hotter than my wife is now, but not hotter than she was at that age.

“You don’t know anything,” I said. “Mom was pretty hot.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Game

Pretty good game! The starters played more than I thought they would.

Andrew Bynum is back. He looked good!

Jerry Buss was there. He looked terrible. Thirty minutes before the game, a guy rolled him out in a wheelchair to the end of the court. It took him several minutes to hobble from there to his courtside seat. My son said he had a leg injury. I thought he was just too old.

The girl sitting next to him — his date or his great-granddaughter, I’m not sure which — looked really good.

The Laker Girls totally set the bar for whatever you call these kinds of groups — cheerleaders? Dance teams?

I realized that what’s missing from my workplace is hot girls in extremely short skirts who jump around and cheer whenever something noteworthy happens.

We check in a bug fix? Gooooo team!

Then at halftime — or “lunch” as we call it — they’d change into tight pants and belly shirts and jump around in the new outfits all afternoon.

Good times!

Post-game

On the drive home, my wife called my son’s cell phone. The conversation was focused on exactly where we were and how long it would take us to get home.

“Why does she care about that?” I asked.

“She’s probably up to something and wants to make sure she stops doing it before we get there.”

“These women look worse than the Australian basketball team,” the boy says.

“Some of them would be cute,” I say, “if they lost about 150 pounds.”

An eHarmony commercial comes on . . .

We prescreen candidates for compatibility . . .

“Good,” the boy says, “because I don’t want to date any women weightlifters.”

The Australian team has some rather unfortunate-looking women on the roster . . .

“Crikey!” the boy says. “Wot an oy-sore!”

Related Links

• Whistle disparity in Game 2 leaves Lakers feeling foul — ESPN.com