The Audible: Reggie gets his Heisman back, and what to make of the Clippers and Lakers?

Columnists Jim Alexander and Mirjam Swanson discuss some of the week's sports issues.

Jim Alexander: Breaking news this morning – Reggie Bush will get his Heisman Trophy back. And my first reaction was: It’s about damn time.

The Heisman Trust announced that after what it termed “a deliberative process” in determining that the landscape had changed, it saw no more reason to deny Bush his due because of the outdated, arcane and unevenly enforced (italics mine) amateurism rules that were then in play.

Actually, it shouldn’t have been that “deliberative.” When Caleb Williams, the presumptive No. 1 pick in tomorrow night’s NFL draft and USC’s most recent Heisman winner, cleared around $10 million in NIL earnings this past season, I think the contrast and the unfairness should be obvious.

Three minutes of Reggie Bush USC highlights to start your Wednesday pic.twitter.com/jCObNJg1oM

— Overtime (@overtime) April 24, 2024

And I have to think that the Heisman Trust at least consulted with the NCAA before making this announcement. So there are two steps I think should still be taken: Un-vacate the 13 on-field football victories involving Bush – you know, the ones we saw with our own eyes, including the 55-19 victory over Oklahoma in the 2005 Orange Bowl that won USC a national championship – and somehow find a way to compensate the school for the four years of probation, two year bowl ban and 30 lost scholarships that basically set the program back for the better part of a decade.

You want fair? That’s fair.

Anything I forgot, Mirjam?

Mirjam Swanson: That sounds like a reasonable plan, Jim. I guess here at home, USC can go ahead and re-retire Bush’s No. 5 jersey, hang it up in the L.A. Memorial Coliseum next to Williams’ when it goes up. (Williams, on social media this morning, quote-tweeted the news and added his two cents: “Yes sirskii. It’s timeee.”)

Let Bush lead the team out of the tunnel soon too.

And let us – please and thank you – stop obfuscating reality. Finally, we’ll have an end to the annual absurdist presentation, wherein ESPN’s Chris Fowler would announce the Heisman winner and note during the broadcast that USC had eight of them, but the Heisman Trust would relay that the school had seven – the same number that Yahoo Sports used, and CNN. Even though the Guardian and us, the Southern California News Group, got it right: The Trojans had eight. HAVE eight.

Yes sirskii.

I bet there are some folks who wonder what the big deal is, of course. And, sure, in the scheme of things, an individual sporting award is just that, even if it’s THE award in a particular sport.

But if you ever heard Bush talk about how much it meant to him, and how wronged he felt, you’d understand why it matters: “Every day we worked our butts off,” Bush said at a news conference at the Coliseum last year. “I showed up to work, put my helmet on, and everything that was asked of me, I did it. Every time that No. 5 was called on, I delivered, and I kept delivering. And it’s unfortunate that that hard work that was put in, that was built – not only by me, by coaches and teammates, we all helped build this thing here – it’s unfortunate that it was all torn down so easily.”

And put painstakingly, deliberatively back together, at last.

Jim: Meanwhile, we still have playoff series to obsess over. And from the tenor of your column this morning from last night’s Clippers-Dallas Game 2, can we suggest that the Clippers –in spirit, anyway – lead the series 1-1 even after losing to the Mavericks 96-93? Kawhi Leonard is back, and the pride of Moreno Valley (and Riverside, and let’s face it, a good slice of the Inland Empire) should be a difference-maker as soon as he shakes off the rust.

And amid this saga of injuries and missed opportunities, the nugget you unearthed last night floored me: This was the first time, since Kawhi joined the team in the fall of 2019, that he had participated in a home playoff game with a real, live, full-throated Clipper-partisan crowd in the building. It’s another reminder of how weird the 2020 and ‘21 postseasons were.

Kawhi Leonard getting introduced to a fully packed Clippers postseason crowd for the first time in Los Angeles. pic.twitter.com/VODzy5SFDO

— Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite) April 24, 2024

Two questions: How good, really, are the Clippers when Kawhi is healthy and at peak performance?

And just what was it that Luka Doncic was screaming at the fans after his big-time 3-pointer late in the game last night? I have an idea but my lip-reading skills aren’t that great, and this is a family website, right?

Mirjam: I don’t know whether the Clippers will win a championship this year with Kawhi, but it’s at least in the realm of possibility. I do know, though, that they can’t win without him. So it was important to bring him back and let him go – even though he wasn’t particularly great Tuesday night.

Rusty and more winded than he’d normally be after 23 days without basketball – and he dove head first into the playoff fray, anyway. Played 35 minutes. Put up 17 shots. Tried to force the action. Stalled sometimes, sure. So it was sort of a strange situation: His presence on the floor didn’t win them this game, but his presence on the floor could help them win more games, and the thing I’ve always appreciated about Coach Tyronn Lue is how he has a handle on the big picture. And he had a little twinkle in his eye that I’ve seen before, so I believed him when he suggested he’s feeling great about where things stand.

But we’ll see! Right now, I think Clippers fans should be rooting hard for Leonard’s previously stubbornly inflamed knee to behave itself for a few more precious weeks.

Jim: It’s like walking a tightrope at this time of year. You’ve assembled your team, put the pieces where they belong and should best fit, and now you just hope you can get from start to finish without the whole thing falling apart. Is it any wonder why the playoff process is at once so enticing and agonizing?

I think we’ve both agreed all along this season that the Clippers are far more capable of winning a championship than the Lakers as long as they’re whole. The Lakers’ Game 2 loss at Denver the other night, in which they frittered away a 20-point lead and lost on Jamal Murray’s dagger at the horn, only reinforced to me the idea that there just are not enough dependable pieces on their roster. For example, how many fans are ready to throw a brick through their TV screen the next time Rui Hachimura misses a shot from inside two feet?

Didn’t catch this live

As if Rui blowing the layup wasn’t torture enough, this man hangs on the rim for a full 1.5 seconds, which results in the entire backboard/rim shaking once he let go

And that prevented AD from converting the Putback

This is hell man pic.twitter.com/McO7OIpEwM

— LAbound (@LAbound2) April 23, 2024

The other takeaway? The Nuggets might not be the Lakers’ daddies, as the Denver crowd loves to chant, but right now Michael Malone owns Darvin Ham as completely as Kyle Shanahan has owned Sean McVay in recent years. One defensive switch shouldn’t be kryptonite, but when Malone switched Aaron Gordon onto Anthony Davis in the second half the other night it might as well have been because the Lakers seemed to have no counter.

The bottom line: A 39-year-old LeBron James can’t do it by himself. Davis’ consistency … well, comes and goes. And the supporting cast, which went AWOL in Game 1, isn’t as good as that of the defending champs. The series resumes in downtown L.A. tomorrow night, and quite frankly I don’t see it returning to Denver. I’d be happy to be wrong, but I just don’t see it.

Tell me I’m wrong, please.

Mirjam: You’re wrong … about the supporting cast, Jim. And about A.D.

But whether they’re going back to Denver? Well, when you’ve run an experiment 10 times and gotten the same result every time … it’s hard to feel good predicting anything different the 11th or 12th times.

The Lakers can absolutely play with Denver. And A.D. absolutely could muster monster second halves too, if he got the ball.

But credit Denver and, well, Malone and his staff, because the Nuggets seem always to manage to make adjustments that leave the Lakers discombobulated – Davis: “We have stretches where we just don’t know what we’re doing on both ends of the floor” – and that costs them.

Our colleague Khobi Price just wrote a great breakdown of the recent breakdowns that I highly recommend.

If only the Lakers could gather their late-game wits, come up with some countermeasures that would continue to put pressure on Nikola Jokic, continue to give Davis opportunities to impact the game like we know he’s capable, continue to keep Austin Reaves involved in playmaking in a way that takes some of the burden off of James, so it isn’t all exhausted and often ill-conceived hero ball down the stretch. …

They have the manpower. I think they do. What they seem to be missing is the strategic chops to make the most of their potential, because yes, they’ll need to maintain a level of excellence for a full game to beat Denver. And we haven’t seen them do it yet, so it’s hard to imagine them doing it … but they have it in them.

Jim: I think I remember suggesting this before, that even though management seems to still have faith in Ham there’s a sense he may be coaching for his job now. I’d love to see him pull a few rabbits out of his hat in this series – it’ll take more than one against this bunch, I’m afraid – and I really believe he can grow into an outstanding strategic coach. This is just a tough matchup in a lot of ways.

But here’s my suggestion for Lakers fans at this point: I don’t think you’re going to win that 18th title this year, so you may want to root for anyone who plays the Celtics to keep them from an 18th banner.

(And if that means you wind up having to root for the Clippers in the Finals? Well, suck it up.)