I’ll be honest; this is nothing more than an excuse to flash some serious bling. Glad to get that out of the way. Hey, a guy’s gotta rep his team, right? Besides, look at it. 14 diamonds for the 14 previous championships, 15-karat gold(???) to symbolize the 15th. All the players’ faces are engraved on their individual rings. And it looked even better in HD.

During tonight’s season opening win over the Clippers, MVP chants could be heard after Kobe’s first basket. Kobe will keep things moving this season, I have no doubt about that. I think the main goal though is to keep Andrew Bynum healthy so he can get into a groove and actually, you know, score some points. It’ll also be interesting to see how this whole Ron Artest experiment works out. Go Lakers!