The trigger for firing Mike Brown was lightning-quick in L.A. Just five games into the season, a 1-4 start (and we suppose an 0-8 preseason) cost Brown his job. You can't view the dumping as anything but a panic move -- even after the Lakers insisted they weren't panicking right up until they fired him. *Winless preseason? No problem, said Dwight Howard: "Once we get it and everybody understands and trusts it, we'll be fine," Howard said. "I keep telling the guys, 'This is a process. We're not going to get this overnight. We're playing for June. We have to remember that.'"
*0-2 regular-season start? Shut up and let us work, Kobe said, and stop hating.
*After the Lakers fell to 0-3, sarcasm from Kobe: "We're hitting the panic button now," Bryant said in a somewhat obligatory manner after a reporter asked if the team was reaching for an imaginary knob. "That's what we're supposed to do. This is our job. We're not supposed to just kind of coast and just assume things are going to fix themselves. We got to push at it."
*A 1-4 record achieved YESTERDAY? Vote of confidence and more patience from Jerry Buss: "I don't know if there's an actual game total that would make me impatient. I know if we're 1-15, I don't think that would be very good. I'm sure that would be a panic button. But at this time, I'm fine with what's going on. It's a learning process for the players. As long as everybody is on the same page, I think we're fine."
Everything is going to be fine, they say, until someone gets an itchy finger and hits that panic button.
