Lakers report: Oh, to be a pro-basketball player

Call me Walter Mitty, but we all have our secret lives. Forget the presidency, George Soros-like wealth or the Nobel Prize for Literature, mine has always been to be able to hit the game winner of the NBA finals. [Wow. Talk about Walter Mitty indeed. You have less chance of that that doing all three of the others at once squared.-ed. That’s why it’s a secret life.] Anyway, that is why I shook off my persistent jet lag to watch game five of the Lakers-Jazz and see Kobe go ‘unconscious,’ as the saying goes. [What are his Walter Mitty dreams?-ed. Being Kobe Bryant?] Did I feel for the Jazz? Not a bit. I’m a Laker fan, of course. But I also know – considering their salaries – that these poor fellows are headed for villas on the French Riviera or wherever after they fold their tent next week. Any Walter Mitty wants that kind of consolation prize. Meanwhile, in the real world, the rest of us struggle.