MJ in a Wizards uniform. Hakeem suiting up for the Raptors. Ewing in anything other than orange and blue. Now after 40 years in various capacities with the Lakers, Jerry West is taking the reigns of the Memphis Grizzlies.

The Grizzlies will announce the hiring of West as the team's president of basketball operations Tuesday, ESPN's David Aldridge reports.

A news conference is planned for 3:30 p.m. ET in Memphis, and according to Chris Broussard of the New York Times West is expected to receive a multi-year deal reportedly worth $5 million to $8 million per year.

West will take over a rebuilding situation in Memphis with hopes of turning a franchise considered the worst in the NBA since entering the league in 1995.  He will hope to quickly transform the Grizzlies in a similar fashion that he did the Lakers in 1996 when he signed Shaquille O'Neal and traded Vlade Divac for high schooler Kobe Bryant in the same off season.  But those Lakers had history and glamour behind them as drawing cards, all Memphis has is.. well.. West and the franchise-best 23-59 record it earned this season.

West will not actually start with nothing.  He will have a high draft pick, providing the Grizzlies do not drop to sixth (the lowest they can drop to ? need Chicago, Golden State and themselves to all fall out of the top three).  He also has Rookie of the Year Pau Gasol, the Spanish sensation who stunned the NBA this year with his well rounded play, and fellow All-Rookie first teamer Shane Battier.

With West now aboard current team president Dick Versace will now become the team's General Manager, slotting into the place vacated by the firing of Billy Knight earlier this month.

The Los Angeles Lakers have done it again.  With four seconds left in the third game of their series against the Portland Trail Blazers, the team leading 2-0 but down 91-89 in this one, Kobe Bryant found an unmanned Robert Horry all alone in the corner who rose and nailed the game winning three.  The shot not only one the game for the Lakers but also closed out another sweep of the Blazers, their second straight in the opening round and third overall ousting of league?s most expensive team.

"I guess we have (the Blazers') number," Bryant said.  And on Horry?s shot?

"Cash," Bryant said. "It's hard to describe what it feels like when the ball is floating through the air like that, and you know it's going in. All I was thinking was, `Cash.' "

"I was kind of scared, I just threw it up there," Horry said, smiling the whole time. "It was actually designed for Kobe to try to penetrate and get a 2, we were just trying to tie the game up. But Pippen bit a little too far and Kobe kicked it to me

Throughout the first two games the Portland Trail Blazers plan has been to get the ball inside to Rasheed Wallace.  So far the players have failed to listen to coach Maurice Cheeks? instructions, instead settling for jumpshot after jumpshot as the team dropped the opening two games to the defending two-time Champion Lakers.

"Jump shot after jump shot," Cheeks told the Oregonian newspaper. "For three days [between Games 1 and 2], we practiced posting up, then the day comes for us to actually do it and we don't do it. We shoot jump shots. That part is puzzling to me."

The team has made 62 of 162 shots (38.3%) with Bonzi Wells and Damon Stoudamire being the biggest factors.  Wells is seven for 23 in the first two games of the series and Stoudamire is two for 15.

"They have had wide-open shots, but they just haven't made them," Cheeks said. "All you can do is keep putting the ball in their hands and keep letting them take the same shots."

This post season Shaquille O?Neal has taken a different approach.  His place in history may already be set, but in the past he has gone out there during the playoffs with the sole focus of trying to win championships, an effort which would help seal his legacy just as Michael, Larry and Magic did before him.

But he now has his championships, and Shaq is out there having fun.  O'Neal was upbeat and playful before and during the first two games reports Vincent Bonsignore of the Daily News.

O?Neal can often be seen smiling and joking, even taking a few moments to play up to TV cameras after sinking a pair of free throws in Game 2, first staring at the rim when the ball didn't fall through cleanly, than dabbing the side of his face after another make as if he were putting on after-shave lotion before a big date.

"It's all about marketing," O'Neal joked Friday after the Lakers practiced. "I'm just out there having fun, just trying not to worry about all the other stuff."

They didn?t look like last season?s 15-1 Lakers, but Los Angeles will certainly take the win.  It is the deadly duo who struck again to conquer the inconsistent Portland Trailblazers, with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O?Neal leading the way with 34 and 25  points respectively.

"I think it just took a while for us to get adjusted," said Bryant. "It was a grind. We tried to get a 15-point lead but could never really do it."
"Everything about their game stepped up in the second half," said Blazers Coach Maurice Cheeks. "They are a seasoned team. The second half is indicative of the way this team wins championships."

The Lakers have eliminated the Blazers the past two seasons, including the now infamous choking in the fourth quarter of Game 7 in 2000.  Last season the Blazers were routed in the opening round, going down in straight sets.
"It was a fine game," Jackson insisted, writing the number 14 on the whiteboard with a black marker indicating the number of wins the team still needs, just as he did last year.

Los Angeles won the game 95-87, with game 2 scheduled in L.A. Thursday.

Let's sum up the NBA playoffs with a five-word question: Can anybody beat the Lakers?

Wait a minute, here's a better question: Can anybody in the West beat 'em once?

Lest we all forget, nobody beat them last year until Game 1 of the Finals. And we all remember how the Lakers responded to that, right? They won the next four, finishing with a 15-1 postseason record that was the best in NBA history.

A whole new season begins this weekend, and a good way to start is by throwing out everything that happened during the regular season. OK, not everything.

Shaquille O'Neal had 41 points and 11 rebounds, and Kobe Bryant scored 15 of his 19 points in the decisive third quarter Monday night as the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Seattle SuperSonics 111-104.

O'Neal shot 16-of-21 from the floor and 9-of-11 from the foul line as the Lakers (57-24) won their 14th in a row at home and surpassed their victory mark of the regular season last year, when they won their second straight NBA championship.

A win over the visiting Sacramento Kings on Wednesday night in their regular-season finale assures the Lakers of a first-round date with Portland and homecourt advantage against everyone except against the Kings, whose 60-20 record is the league's best.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that a poll taken last week with 20 writers, 10 from the East and 10 from the West, had New Jersey?s Jason Kidd taking the MVP award on 10 ballots, Tim Duncan from San Antonio just behind him with 9 and Shaquille O?Neal registering one.

While hardly conclusive, it does show that this year?s MVP voting will be extremely close when 127 writers around the country cast their votes for real.  Each writer will be asked to give their preferences in a 5-4-3-2-1 format, 5 being the top score.  The results from the poll had Kidd finishing with 83 points, Duncan with 82, O'Neal with 66 and Orlando's Tracy McGrady fourth with 33 points.

"My case is, we're 24, 25 or 26 games better than last year," New Jersey coach Byron Scott said, naturally leading towards his star Jason Kidd.. "That's a big difference. We have a lot of the same players. The one major addition is Jason. I think that's argument enough. We weren't supposed to do anything. Going from 26-56 to 50-plus wins, I don't think there's a better argument."

The heritage always was implicit in the nickname. No way would any team born in Los Angeles have been christened the "Lakers," a dead giveaway of the proud Minnesota roots.

Yet after the franchise moved to Los Angeles, new management essentially ignored the Lakers' tradition: the NBA's first dynasty, five championships from 1949 to '54 and some of the league's early legends such as George Mikan, Jim Pollard and John Kundla.

Finally, more than 40 years later in a tribute Thursday night at Staples Center, the new Lakers honored their predecessors. A title banner was hoisted to the rafters, another went up in honor of that group's Hall of Famers, and Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and the rest of the current edition wore retro uniforms, baby blue numbers with a gold "MPLS." across the front.

Some of the most revered names in Minnesota basketball history -- Mikan, Kundla, Slater Martin, Vern Mikkelson and Clyde Lovellette, along with Pollard's widow -- received commemorative championship rings in the halftime ceremony. Representing the L.A. version of the Lakers were Magic Johnson, Jerry West, James Worthy, Elgin Baylor and Michael Cooper.

"We're tickled to be part of it," Mikkelson said. "But ask the people back in Minnesota not to be too hard on us. We love the Lakers, but the Timberwolves are pretty close."

Ed Prohofsky, a special assistant on the Wolves' staff and native of Minneapolis, recalled attending Lakers games at the Auditorium and the Armory. He even recalled playing for an amateur city championship in the preliminary to a Lakers playoff game.

"This is a great gesture by the Lakers," Wolves coach Flip Saunders said. "Sometimes, some of the older players feel, maybe, the new age doesn't appreciate them. . . . They are part of the tradition."