A huge snowstorm struck the Northeast United States on Saturday, and as a result beat writers covering the Los Angeles Lakers were all unable to make it to Detroit for Sunday’s Lakers at Pistons game (6 p.m. ET start time).
Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register reports (via blog):
Phil Jackson has cited the drain of travel distance to road cities being one reason why it’d be harder for the Lakers ever to go 72-10 the way the center-of-the-country Chicago Bulls did.
Well, here’s a reminder that cold-weather teams such as Chicago (and everyone else in the Eastern Conference who has to go more regularly to cold-weather cities) have travel issues brought on by snow and ice that the warm-weather Lakers rarely encounter.
The Lakers made it from Newark, N.J., to Detroit (or more accurately, they flew into Pontiac, Mich., to be closer to the arena in Auburn Hills) in the wee hours of Sunday morning despite an incredible snowstorm that began Saturday and grounded pretty much all commercial planes in the Northeast. It wasn’t an easy feat, and the club had booked hotel rooms in Newark for the night with the expectation that their plane might not be able to get in the air amid the still-descending snow.
None of the writers who travel separately from the team plane will make it to cover the Lakers-Detroit game, which is pretty much a historic development. Personally, I’ve never not been able to get to the next city because of weather.
I assume the reporters will still write game articles today, but from hotel rooms for a change.
