Sasha Vujacic, true villainy never knew ye.

I've long dreamt that Phil Jackson would one day play Sasha Vujacic more. You can take your Kobe. For me, there’s little that’s as entertaining on the Lakeshow as when Dr.Phil inserts the skinny Slovenian, and turns him loose for a few mere minutes per half. Not merely because Vujacic's puppydog approach to the game fills me with a quiet joy, but because the role Jaxxx has carved out --wait, that should sound more spiritual/intellectual... um... the role the Zenmaster has imagined-- for one wee Aleksandar Vujačić is a conceptual kind of high-comedy. Blessed/cursed with a Laker roster wholly lacking a Rodman-like buffoon or Fox-like ham, Lucky Phil’s choices for token ‘goon’, these days, are thinner than Sasha's legs. So, when the greatest-coach-that-ever-whistled wants to do something so blacktop as annoy the opposition, he turns to his babyfaced, 23-year-old, metrosexual European point-guard. Really. Vujacic, in return, gets right up into the grill of his opposite number, playing the run-with role once filled, in LA, by the immortal Tyronn Lue. Vujacic's defence is, in a purely basketball sense, more liability than anything else; it more personal harrassment than solid containment as part of a working five-man unit. Sasha V's over-aggressive, over-pursuing defence actually means that he gets burnt, often, especially by better guards. Steve Nash, famously, has a quizzical look on his face each time he beats the up-too-close Vujacic off the dribble. Yet, even the Nasty Nash gets a little, um, nasty with Sasha up on him, and this is par for the Vujacic course: he totally pisses off the opposition.

To that end, I've often long'd for Vujacic to hit the court more often; to have more moments in which theoretical, self-styled gangstas like Allen Iverson flip out that this white weenie is all up in their inherently macho faces. This would have the appealing trickle-on effect of making Sasha at least some sort of fantasy player (for he does take a lot of threes). I can only imagine that opposing GMs would be Nash-like in their annoyance if you had Sasha Vujacic sticking it to them in a head-to-head showdown. These dreams of mine resurfaced yesterday, when Vujacic went for 15 points in an impressive 23-minute turn in the run-and-gun game in Hawai'i against the Warriors. I know that such is a pure fantasy mirage --15 points is a higher total than Sasha post'd in all but two games last year-- but, for a brief moment, I was left to remember my dreams of having Sasha V on hand as an annoying villain; both for the Lakers, and, more fondly, for my own fantasy squad. Alas, alas, when the morning-after comes, once more dreams die, crashed upon the rocks of reality.