Los Angeles Lakers vs Sacramento Kings 109-108

LOS ANGELES With apologies to Jerry West, the Lakers’ modern-day “Mr. Clutch” did it again.Kobe Bryant hit yet another buzzer-beating 3-pointer and finished with 39 points as the defending NBA champions overcame a 20-point deficit to beat the Sacramento Kings 109-108 on Friday night. The last time the Lakers won a game in which they trailed by 20 or more points was Dec. 12, 2006, when they erased a 21-point deficit in a 112-101 double-overtime win against Houston at Los Angeles.”It looked like they went into a zone coverage on the inbounds pass, and that side was wide open,” said Bryant, averaging 35.7 points in his last 10 games.”It was just a matter of me getting to that spot with enough time to get a shot off. Phil drew up a play for a 3. He wanted me to get a good look and knock it down. I think he wanted to get out of here.”

Lamar Odom had a season-high 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for the NBA-leading Lakers (26-6). Pau Gasol had 17 points, 16 rebounds and four assists – one of which set up Bryant’s clutch basket from in front of the Sacramento bench.”Kobe’s shooting the ball at a high percentage,” Gasol said. “But he’s not always going to shot like that. We understand that, and I think he understands that, too. But when he’s feeling it and the shots are going down, he’s going to keep shooting.”Spencer Hawes had a career-high 30 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for the Kings, Omri Casspi scored 23 points, and Beno Udrih added 19 points and 13 assists.

“I am so proud of our team – but at the same time, it’s disappointing,” Sacramento coach Paul Westphal said. “We’ve played well enough to beat those guys twice, but they have a knack at the end of games. We got everything we needed, performance-wise, from everybody that played, and we couldn’t close it out. That’s one of the things that makes the Lakers so good. Kobe is an unbelievable player, no question about it.”One night after scoring a season-high 44 points and getting a season-best 11 assists, Bryant added another chapter to his Hall of Fame resume. This miracle shot came exactly four weeks after his off-balance 3-point buzzer-beating bank shot that pulled out a win over the Miami Heat at Staples Center. On Dec. 16 at Milwaukee, Bryant hit a 15-footer as time expired in overtime to give the Lakers a 107-106 win.

“These players – I don’t know how they get themselves into those positions, but they do an unbelievable job of hitting shots that are remarkable shots, marvelous shots,” coach Phil Jackson said. “He’s right there with Michael in that kind of breath you look at.”The Lakers came out as flat as half-empty champagne bottles left over from New Year’s Eve, shooting 37 percent from the field in the first half and trailing 64-49 at intermission. Derek Fisher was the biggest offender, missing nine of 10 shots in the half while the Kings had the highest-scoring half by a Lakers opponent this season.

Fisher, who had six points, played 9 minutes in the third quarter without taking a shot, then sat out the entire fourth quarter.The sellout crowd let the Lakers feel their pain, booing them loudly after Jon Brockman’s layup gave Sacramento a 38-23 lead with 9:12 left in the second quarter. The Kings built the lead to 20 at 52-32 with a 3-pointer by Ime Udoka that capped a 26-9 run with 5:06 left in the half.

“I think we kind of took the pedal off,” Hawes said. “We knew they were going to make a run. It was inevitable. We knew that we couldn’t sit up by 20 points the whole game. And they chipped away and chipped away to put themselves in a position to win it at the end. That’s why he’s Kobe. He makes big shots at big times.”In their previous game, Tuesday night at Staples Center, the Lakers fell behind by 15 points to Golden State and gave up 60 points in the first half before pulling out a 124-118 win.

NOTES: According to Jackson, it looks as though Ron Artest will be back playing by early next week, following the fall at his home on Christmas night that caused a concussion, a deep cut on his left elbow and a slight loss of memory. “He’s improved significantly in the last two days, and optimistic that he’ll be able to practice soon – probably not a full-out practice with contact tomorrow, but will have non-contact activity with the team,” Jackson said. “There’s a number of checks they go through with concussions, like speech patterns. But with Ron, that doesn’t work.” … This was only the third time in the last 36 years that the Lakers played on New Year’s Day. Their overall record on Jan. 1 is 9-6. … It was the first time the Kings played on New Year’s Day since the vagabond franchise moved from Kansas City to Sacramento in 1985-86. They are 11-9 overall on this date (0-3 in K.C., 4-4 in Cincinnati and 7-1 in Rochester). … With 24,800 career points, Bryant is 16 points away from overtaking Patrick Ewing for 15th place.(AP)

Chicago Bulls vs Sacramento 98-87

Derrick Rose (1)

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – When the Chicago Bulls won in Sacramento on Nov. 14, they were hoping they’d get their next road victory before Thanksgiving. Instead, it took until New Year’s Eve. “I wasn’t thinking about the streak – I just wanted to get a win,” Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro said. “This was just a nice, solid win for us.” Derrick Rose scored 22 points, and Joakim Noah added 15 points and 21 rebounds to help the Bulls end a six-week road drought with a 98-87 victory over Detroit. “This feels good,” Noah said after Chicago won its third in a row overall. “I think we are just playing better basketball right now for whatever reason.” Rose finished with a point more than Ben Gordon, who joined Detroit from Chicago this summer. “Ben’s role is to score the ball, and I’m playing point guard, so no one said anything about this being me against him,” Rose said. “I’ll do whatever it takes for us to win, and today that took being aggressive.”

Chicago had lost eight straight on the road, but never trailed while handing Detroit its ninth straight loss. The Pistons (11-21) are 10 games under .500 for the first time since the 2000-01 season, but coach John Kuester was still encouraged. “I saw a number of positive things out there,” he said. “I’m sure people are going to hear that and say, ‘You must be kidding,’ but we did some good things. We lost Rip (Hamilton), Tayshaun (Prince) and Ben Gordon for extended periods of time, and there’s no chance that they were going to come right back in midseason form.” Tyrus Thomas added 19 points for Chicago (13-17), and John Salmons had 17.

Rodney Stuckey led the Pistons with 22 points despite leaving the game twice in the first half after spraining his left ankle. “The first time Stuck went down, I was really concerned, because the way he fell, I thought this was going to be another long-term injury for us,” Kuester said. “He not only went back in, he hurt it again and he still came back. No one would have blinked if he had taken the rest of the day off, so he earned our admiration.” Stuckey acknowledged playing through severe pain in the second half. “It hurt a lot – it always does when you sprain your ankle – and then it just gave out on me the second time,” he said. “I was going to play though it if I could even walk, though, because we need to get something going. There’s no way this group of players should only be scoring 87 points.” The Bulls led 44-39 after a sloppy first half that saw the teams combine for 22 turnovers. Detroit got to 46-44 in the third quarter, but Chicago led 69-56 at the end of the period. The Bulls led by 20 as the Palace emptied during the fourth quarter.

NOTES: Charlie Villanueva, who had stopped wearing the mask protecting his broken nose, put it back on for the second half, but only wore it for a few possessions. … Detroit has not led in the second half of any of its last six games. Their only lead in the last two games – at home against the struggling Knicks and Bulls – was 2-0 against New York. … Thomas had 10 points in the first three quarters without making a field goal. He was 0-for-2 from the floor and 10-for-12 from the line.

Steven Tyler is in rehab because of painkiller addiction

Steven Tyler

LOS ANGELES  Steven Tyler has entered a rehabilitation facility to treat an addiction to painkillers the Aerosmith frontman has taken to cope with 10 years of performance injuries.Tyler said he’s eager to return to work with his band mates.”I love Aerosmith; I love performing as the lead singer in Aerosmith. I am grateful for all of the support and love I am receiving and am committed to getting things taken care of,” the 61-year-old rocker said in a statement released Tuesday.

The band canceled a summer tour in August after Tyler fell off the stage during a performance in South Dakota and broke his left shoulder.Dr. Brian McKeon, who is treating Tyler, said in a statement that orthopedic injuries over the past decade have left the singer with severe chronic pain that will require surgeries on his knees and feet.

Tyler checked into rehab last year to recover from several foot surgeries and physical therapy. Tyler said the procedures were to correct longtime foot injuries resulting from his physical performances with Aerosmith.The singer for the blues-rock band was known for heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the 1970s and early 1980s, but completed rehabilitation in 1986, after which Aerosmith enjoyed a successful revival.

Refusing to faith dropped

Have you ever been in a difficult situation, and you look to God, but it became more difficult circumstances?In the three New Testament Gospels, noted a story of a father who may have lost his faith many times.First, the father brought his son who possessed the disciples, but they can not drive out demons. The father could have gone with grief and had to find another way to cure her son. But the father did not want to go, though the scribes began to question it with the disciples of Jesus because of their disability. The father persisted, and because of persistence, he met Jesus face to face.

For readers, the coming of Jesus at that moment was a turning point. But the father does not necessarily know this. When Jesus came, possessed by his son seems much worse. As soon as the devil who possessed her to see the return of Jesus, he slammed him to the ground, foaming at the mouth, teeth and berkertakan seizures. A father must have been painful to see her daughter. He had seen the devil who possessed her and threw her son injured in fire and water, is it possible to change the situation now? Nevertheless, the father still lived and asked for help to Jesus.

The events that lasted at that point would have shaken the faith of his father – and perhaps we can understand. Therefore, the father pleaded, “Therefore if you can do something, please help us and have mercy upon us” (Mark 9:22). The father was not too confident with the ability of Jesus to heal his son, because the followers of his (with embarrassment) failed. The situation was also not increased his promise. The father also might have doubted the love of Jesus. Luke records this event as follows: “Teacher, I beg You to visit my son, because he is the only son” (Luke 9:38). The father loves his son, but he did not know whether Jesus cared enough to help him. The father was hesitant, but he put it honestly. Eventually his son was saved not because the father had a perfect faith, but as a sincere call for help in dealing with doubts.

As a result, the demon shook the boy and left as if the child was dead. At the time people were whispering to say that the child was dead, Jesus did not disappoint the father of faith. When Jesus returned the child to his father, his son was not only healed, but also would never possessed again. Jesus has commanded the devil to never come back, so although it might shake the experience, the father no longer need to experience it.

We, like the father, perhaps also through moments that shake our faith in life. When we are in a difficult situation, and it was our prayers were in vain, if we still have the faith to continue to tell our troubles to Him? If the situation even more difficult, whether the pain and suffering make us leave God? Do we admit our unbelief and ask for help to God, pleading with tears as did the father? If we do this, we need to do is wait for his time comes. If things seem to arrive at the most difficult time, remember that it was not the end of the story.

motoman sda5d Hiro robot – a humanoid that can identify colours

For as long as anyone can remember, the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition has been a showcase for Japan at its wackiest: stern industrial machines lurked backstage as waltzing, noodle-making or ping-pong-playing humanoids stole the limelight.But in recessionary 2009, with Japanese industry writhing in pain, the national robot obsession has turned serious. For the first time, the show explained how the machines really are going to take over.A new mood was in the air: the downturn, said one Tsukuba University engineer, had honed Japanese robotics research and forced it to be more practical. Companies and universities that were once given unlimited budgets to push the boundaries of robotics were now being told to come up with something usable and commercial and fast.

Toyota’s recent decision to pull out of Formula 1 was a hot topic of discussion: would its next cost-cutting move be to close the robotics division or would it still throw millions into perfecting a trumpet-playing automaton?The fun stuff, accordingly, was downplayed while potential applications were pushed to the front. That gave many of the companies a chance to show that, quietly but steadily, the technology has been improving by leaps and bounds.Getting a cute humanoid robot such as Honda’s Asimo to go from walking to running took decades of effort, said one Tokyo University engineer, but the work of making a machine into a better pizza-maker than a human moved much faster.

Japanese robots are being built with open software codes, to encourage outside programmers to come up with ideas to make them even more useful. It is all working rather too well.Perhaps disturbingly for workforces around the world, there is a fast-growing list of human jobs that robots can do quicker and better.The show marked the debut of Kawada Industries’ Hiro robot – a humanoid that can identify colours, shapes and human faces and boasts some of the most dextrous mechanical paws ever created.

Asked what purpose it might serve, Hiro’s handler explained that at the Nissan factory, the production line already consists almost entirely of robots. However, occasionally they have to bring in a human. “This robot could replace that person,” the handler said.Kawada was not the only company whose work may soon inflate global unemployment numbers. Yaskawa, occupying the largest booth at the show, proudly touted its Motoman series of assembly robots. These, claimed the company, would soon be “replacing people without taking up too much space or requiring any change in the layouts of production lines”.

In the next booth, a representative of Yaskawa’s fiercest competitor, FANUC, said: “What’s amazing is their [the robots’] speed. They can achieve the speed of the most experienced workers. We don’t need to worry about the employment issue … When they’re not required to work, we just turn off the switch.”Kawada and Yaskawa’s main business until now has been producing robots for the auto industry. The priority now is to push the machines into more areas of the manufacturing and services industries. As well as spot-welding a Toyota Prius, Motoman can be retooled to perform routine blood tests faster than a team of nurses.

The service and nursing industries are the primary target. As the Japanese population continues to age, robotics companies have spotted a potential market. This year, developers touted an array of robotic guide dogs, nurses, cleaners, firemen and even robots that can fold and press towels.

A Kawada engineer speculated that human workers and robot workers may soon be working face to face; a practice currently prohibited by Japanese trade ministry regulations.“As things stand, robots and humans don’t work together and are separated by fences,” he said. “We are working on the assumption that those barriers will be gone in the future … our society has fewer children, and a lot of people want robots to do the hard work.”Robots that were once there for laughs are now being programmed to take jobs or, as the legend on one pair of steely hands had it: “Diverse performances of this dual-arm, multi-functioning robot enable the automation of human work.”