This rough stretch for the Lakers just what they need

• This is a good thing for the Lakers. Losing three in a row and needing a rescue jumper from Kobe Bryant to squeeze by a Toronto team on the bubble for the East playoffs may have sparked panic in the streets in Los Angeles and new hope everywhere else, but it's exactly the shock treatment the defending champions can use. No consistent title contender of the last few years has so routinely needed shaking, the way Boston won the 2008 crown by getting in the Lakers' face, and the way the scare from Houston in the '09 second round became the wake-up call for the Lakers that led to a parade. This is no repeat coming apart before their eyes. This is just who they are.

• Remember. It's taken the Mavericks playing their brains out -- 13 in a row -- and the Lakers wandering around just to make the race for No. 1 in the West interesting. Dallas is legit and Donnie Nelson should be in the conversation for Executive of the Year, Jason Terry for Sixth Man of the Year and Rick Carlisle for Coach of the Year. Denver is legit. But there's still no question who is the team to beat.
• One more Lakers: Losing three of four, including to the Bobcats and Heat with poor efforts, isn't the real siren going off. It's Pau Gasol and what has become a series of comments about how the offense needs better ball movement and better balance by going inside some. Code for "Somebody is shooting too much."

• This is how Larry Brown gets himself in trouble. Playing musical jobs is one thing, because a lot of coaches do it and LB has had his share of stability in recent years, contrary to the caricature. But it looks really bad to be making eyes at other teams as his Bobcats enter the most important four weeks in franchise history. Asked about a SportsIllustrated.com report that he called the Clippers as a potential exit strategy, Brown told the Charlotte Observer that it's up to incoming owner Michael Jordan, the kind of non-answer answer that will only increase speculation. Something along the lines of "I am not interested in any other job" would have been much, much better.

• What else increases speculation: Brown loves L.A. and the Clippers have an opening for a coach and general manager. And Brown loves Philadelphia, and this is the week reports came out that coach Eddie Jordan is not long for the 76ers world and that GM Ed Stefanski could be on his way out as well. Brown's wife and two kids still live in Philly as he works in Charlotte. Los Angeles and Philadelphia are two of Brown's favorite places.

• Prediction time. The next coach of the Clippers is ... Byron Scott.

• This is the closest thing the Spurs will see to a soft spot the rest of the way, making it critical they capitalize to at least get a tighter grip on No. 7 in the West and possibly even move up. The pocket in the toughest finishing schedule among the top eight teams is the stretch that began Wednesday, six games against the Knicks, Timberwolves, Clippers, Heat, Magic and Warriors that will either give San Antonio a running start into the final 15 outings or become a failed opportunity. The next nine after that: two against the Lakers and one each against the Hawks, Thunder, Cavaliers, Celtics, Nets, Rockets and Magic.

• And One from the mailbag: "Thank you for not being just another American sports writer out there saying Chris Bosh is already gone. People are so surprised down there that staying in Toronto might actually be an option for him. I love reading the articles about how Chris wants, and needs to go to a bigger market. There are three bigger markets in the States. This might also be news to a lot of Americans. Toronto not only has a population of close to six million but also has an entire country following the Raptors and many from across the country picking up games. So where is there a bigger market for him to play in? We can only speculate at this point where he might end up. But it is refreshing to finally hear a view other than Chris leaving town."
-- Curtis, Hamilton, Canada.

Staying in Toronto is absolutely an option for Bosh. I don't think it's been decided, but there is definitely a comfort level and an understanding he can be the unquestioned star of a franchise that will spend to keep him and spend to surround him. The problem is, management has been aggressive with trades and signings and the Raptors are still not close to being a contender out of the East.

It's also easy to see why the city would be an appeal, not a place to escape. Toronto is tremendous, a cosmopolitan financial center, diverse, clean, with nightlife to appeal to young athletes and neighborhoods with character. It is worldly, not some final outpost on the way to the North Pole. Don't worry that too many Americans may not realize it. A lot of Americans don't realize things about their own cities. And it's probably a good guess that a lot of Canadians have bad misconceptions about parts of the United States.

Forget Kobe-LeBron, the best Finals would be Melo-LeBron

If we polled every NBA fan out there and asked them for their dream Finals matchup, I'm guessing about 90 percent would say "Lakers-Cavs." This has been the case for the past two seasons. Once we got nostalgia out of the way with the Boston-L.A. Finals in 2008, everyone's attention turned to the Kobe-LeBron battle for the "best player alive" title. I'm not knocking a potential Lakers-Cavs Finals. I'm just saying that we might be ignoring a better series.

Did you watch last Thursday's Cavs-Nuggets game? LeBron James casually threw up a 43-point, 15-assist, 13-rebound triple-double, only to be outdone by Carmelo Anthony, who hit the game-winner, right in LeBron's mug for a 118-116 overtime victory on the road at The Q. It wasn't just a good game, it was an epic game -- about as good and dramatic and riveting as a regular season game can possibly get.

It was so good that it had players like Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul tweeting about it a few minutes after it ended. After the game I remember thinking, "What could possibly be better than watching seven games of a high-stakes Bron and Melo duel for the championship?" The answer is: nothing.

What made last Thursday's game such an instant classic is that LeBron and Melo were both tasked with checking each other. That is key. Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain was a great rivalry not only because Boston and Philadelphia were always battling for league supremacy, but also because Wilt and Russ fought from tipoff until the game-ending buzzer. It's something we can't say for Magic vs. Bird. It's also something we can't say about a potential Kobe vs. LeBron battle. Save for maybe the last five minutes of the game, we wouldn't see Bron and Kobe squaring off against each other too often. Nothing can approach a Lakers-Cavs Final when it comes to star power and the drama of the world's two best players trying to settle the "Who's The Man?" debate. That's abstract stuff, though. I'm talking about something very tangible, I'm talking aesthetics. A Cavs-Nuggets Final means that we'd get Bron vs. Melo -- literally -- for 40 to 45 minutes a game over an entire series. Think about that.

Six years ago, around this time, Melo and Bron were rookies battling each other for the Rookie of the Year award. It was the rivalry that was supposed to transfix the NBA public for the next 15 years. LeBron vs. Carmelo. They would have been picks 1 and 2, if Joe Dumars hadn't made the worst Draft selection of the new millennium. It never happened, though. Gradually, LBJ kind of left Melo in his dust. It became a LeBron vs. Kobe or a LeBron vs. D-Wade thing. Melo's Denver squads were always competitive, but he was always out there in the margins, sort of hovering right outside of the "elite of the elite" club. This is the first year that someone could argue Melo as the league's MVP and do it with a straight face. This is where we always thought we'd be: LeBron and Carmelo leading elite teams and playing better inidividual basketball than just about every other human being on the planet.

Last Thursday's game was a bit of a coronation for the LeBron-Carmelo rivalry, because, to be honest, their head-to-head games up to that point had been underwhelming. Before Melo's 40-point gem, he averaged just under 20 ppg in his previous 11 games against the Cavs. LeBron wasn't much better, averaging a pedestrian (for him) 23 ppg in those same 11 games. Neither of them shot particularly well and none of the games was as hyper-competitive as last week's classic. Thursday's game featured two virtuosos engaging in one-upmanship that we haven't seen in a while. Take any position battle -- whether it's Kobe vs. Wade or Chris Paul versus Deron Williams -- and it'd still fall short of the epic battle LeBron and Carmelo waged. Each time down the court in that fourth quarter we saw two of the league's three best players stare at each other and go to work. One was saying, "I'm not going to let you score on me" and the other was saying, "There's nothing you can do to stop me." And it's true isn't it?

Late in the fourth quarter, Melo had Bron isolated on the left wing. He jab-stepped toward the lane and then, on a dime, spun back to his left and dropped in a finger roll. The play was mildly embarrassing for Bron, but he casually jogged up the court with a "What am I supposed to do? He's Carmelo" look on his face and tried to get him back. There's something very compelling about two of the best players to ever pick up a basketball being virtually helpless when faced with the task of stopping each other. I want to see that as often as possible.

Imagine a seven games of Bron vs. Melo for all the chips. It could happen. It should happen. It needs to happen. Now let's get Melo a puppet and start the campaign.

No matter the trade, teams still looking up at Lakers

Even if the Lakers aren't expected to make a deal this week, they will be a big deal this week. That's because any and all trades conducted by other contenders prior to Thursday's deadline will be done with one team in particular in mind.

As in: Does this make us better than the Lakers?

With a precarious eye toward the postseason and realizing a trip to the NBA Finals perhaps must pass through Los Angeles, a batch of championship dreamers are looking to Laker-proof themselves. Some teams will trade for bigs to counter Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. Others will go for defense to throw at Kobe Bryant. Either directly or indirectly, this week is all about the contenders taking stock and figuring out what's needed in order to keep the Lakers' championship streak at one.

"I'm aware of that," said Kobe, during All-Star Weekend, before flashing a smile.

Consider it flattering. Kobe does, Phil Jackson does, the entire Laker organization does. The Lakers are doing their usual brisk walk through the regular season, showing few signs of cracks, except for the one in Kobe's damaged finger. Even with Kobe in a splint, the Lakers haven't suffered much. Besides, everyone's aware of what they're capable of doing once Kobe heals completely. So the arms race is on, with just a few days left before the bidding is closed and we get to see what everyone's taking into the postseason.

By getting Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood from the Wizards, the Mavericks admitted their pre-trade team, in the edited words of owner Mark Cuban, "stunk." As a title contender, anyway. The Mavericks believe they can throw triple 7-footers (Dirk Nowitzki, Haywood and Erick Dampier) at the Lakers and even up the size issue. They like the idea of rotating Haywood and Dampier next to Nowitzki. You can understand why. Damp and Haywood can grab 10 rebounds each. They can block shots and use up fouls. And they can make it hard for Gasol and Bynum. Haywood is playing for cash this summer, too, so he has that little extra something going for him.

Here's the red flag, though: Haywood has never in his professional life been put in a position of real pressure. And the Mavericks are also the first team to count on him for anything special. Forget Gasol, for a moment; can Haywood deal with Tim Duncan? Kenyon Martin? 

Butler brings a shooting touch, which is important because whomever guards Kobe needs to make Kobe work harder on the other end. Butler dropped 18 points on the Lakers recently and he's capable of forcing Kobe -- a great defender when he wants to be -- to spend precious energy as a stopper (unless Ron Artest checks Butler). But, here comes another red flag: Butler and Haywood have two months to mesh with new surroundings and prepare for April and beyond. Meanwhile, the core of the Lakers has been intact for nearly three seasons.

Who else? The Cavaliers are the hottest team in the league and still feel the need to load up. Obviously, the priority is to surround LeBron James with enough talent to make it tough for him to walk away this summer. But their talks with the Suns over Amar'e Stoudemire are also an attempt to throw another big in the direction of Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett first and, if successful, have something for the Lakers should L.A. reach the Finals. The general feeling within the organization is this: LeBron can neutralize if not conquer any non-center in the Cavs' path. Adding a quality big man who can score could put them over the top.

Another red flag: Stoudemire is hardly known for his defense, and anyway, how's that going to work out with he and Shaquille O'Neal, given that it didn't when they teamed last year in Phoenix?

Nutshell, then: On the assumption that Kobe's body is finished betraying him for the season, the Lakers remain well equipped to deal with, if not defeat, the small handful of contenders trying to improve on the fly. The only true tender spot with the Lakers is the point guard position, where Derek Fisher, can we delicately say, looks better in a crisp suit as leader of the players union than starting point guard of the defending champs. And yet, given his history of clutchness, Fisher tends to save his best for last.

"We try not to worry about what other teams are doing," Kobe said. "We feel if we play the style of basketball we're accustomed to playing, then people have to adjust to us. Not the other way around."

What Kobe is saying to teams anxious to deal is this: Make your move. And make it a good one.