The Arrogant, Entitltled World Champion Los Angeles Lakers

[Johnette's Daddy]

From another Lakers board:

D12 is back on the basketball court!!

Mike Gabriel ‏@MikedupRadiocom
Dwight Howard has been working out at UCLA - doing some basketball drills. Taking things slow, but doing some light running. #Lakers

https://p.twimg.com/A0EubOSCAAATTwe.jpg

Word on twitter is he's been there all week.

GREAT NEWS!!

Ah, sookie sookie now!

[Jungle Rat]

and that's the hope. That they can gel and win a chip in one year (maybe two) before the wheels fall off.

Hopefully knock two off, Kobe rides off into the sunset (taking Pau with him) and LeBron slides right on into our Purple and Gold capspace.

Spoiled Bitch

[Bklyn]

Lakers or Lebron?

[Jungle Rat]

Yes

[T Dot O Dot]

I dont consider Jamison high usage, he either moves the ball or makes his move immediately, he's never been one to pound the rock or go Iso

[hedge]

I imagine Nash and Jamison will be following in their wake, which will mean even more cap space. The Lakers were Miami before Miami. How the hell did they nab Magic, win a couple of championships, and then also get Worthy? It would be like Miami getting Anthony Davis this year...

[T Dot O Dot]

well there is a thought put out there by the conspiracy theorist nba fans

all the top loading of talent forces teams like NYC, MIA, LA & now Brooklyn to run deep into luxury tax territory

all of which gets divie'd (sp?) out to the non-luxury teams at the end of the year, it's a nice lump sum that practically makes it worth it to keep off-loading your best talent to the "destination franchises"

[T Dot O Dot]

Malcolm Gladwell also wrote a piece during the lockout which gives an explanation of why Owners shouldn't be considered strictly "business men" when it comes to owning sports franchises

it's a well written piece, but I wonder what he'd think of the superteams, because it doesnt seem to fit his "sports owner" ideology

still a good read though

[T Dot O Dot]

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/687 ... ba-lockout

Psychic Benefits and the NBA Lockout

The author of The Tipping Point explains why owning a basketball franchise has always been a bad business — and ought to stay that way

The Boston Red Sox signed their first black player in 1959, a utility infielder named "Pumpsie" Green.1 This was 12 years after the Brooklyn Dodgers broke the color line with Jackie Robinson. No other team in baseball dragged its feet on integration like the Red Sox. It wasn't until 1965, in fact — 18 years after Robinson started at second base for the Dodgers — that Boston had its first full-time black player. Why?

The simple answer — that the Red Sox owner at the time, Tom Yawkey, was a racist — is not terribly satisfying. Lots of racists are happy to hire black people, particularly if they can exploit them as spectacularly as baseball owners exploited their players in the postwar years.2 There was a lot of money to be made by raiding the Negro Leagues in the 1940s. The talent pool was extraordinary: Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Willie Mays, among others. The Sox were well aware of this. They tried out Mays and Robinson — both of whom they could have used in the lean years of the 1950s, when the team was known as "Ted Williams and the Seven Dwarfs." In a recent academic paper, the economist Jonathan Lanning has also shown that almost without exception integration in the 1940s and 1950s had an immediate and significant positive impact on a team's attendance — even in cities where you might not think the fan base would be enthusiastic.3 Lanning calculates, in fact, that almost no team in baseball had as much to gain financially from bringing in black players as the Red Sox, particularly since they were losing money in the 1940s. Yawkey's bigotry left millions of dollars on the table.

Yawkey was not just a racist, in other words. He was a racist who put his hatred of black people ahead of his desire to make money. Economists have a special term they use to describe this kind of attitude. They would say that Yawkey owned the Red Sox not to maximize his financial benefits, but, rather, his psychic benefits. Psychic benefits describe the pleasure that someone gets from owning something — over and above economic returns — and clearly some part of the pleasure Yawkey got from the Red Sox came from not having to look at black people when he walked through the Fenway Park dugout. In discussions of pro sports, the role of psychic benefits doesn't get a lot of attention. But it should, because it is the key to understanding all kinds of behavior by sports owners — most recently the peculiar position taken by management in the NBA labor dispute.

The rationale for the NBA lockout, from the owner's perspective, goes something like this. Basketball is a business. Businesses are supposed to make money. And when profits are falling, as they are now for basketball teams, a business is obliged to cut costs — which in this case means the amount of money paid to players. In response, the players' association has said two things. First, basketball teams actually do make money. And second, if they don't, it's not the players' fault. When the two sides get together, this is what they fight about. But both arguments miss the point. The issue isn't how much money the business of basketball makes. The issue is that basketball isn't a business in the first place — and for things that aren't businesses how much money is, or isn't, made is largely irrelevant.

Basketball teams, of course, look like businesses. They have employees and customers and offices and a product, and they tend to be owned, in the manner of most American businesses, by rich white men. But scratch the surface and the similarities disappear. Pro sports teams don't operate in a free market, the way real businesses do. Their employees are 25 years old and make millions of dollars a year. Their customers are obsessively loyal and emotionally engaged in their fortunes to the point that — were the business in question, say, discount retailing or lawn products — it would be considered psychologically unhealthy. They get to control their labor through the draft in a way that would be the envy of other private sector owners, at least since the Civil War. And they are treated by governments with unmatched generosity. Congress gives professional baseball an antitrust exemption. Since 2000, there have been eight basketball stadiums either built or renovated for NBA teams at a cost of $2 billion — and $1.75 billion of that came from public funds.4 And did you know that under the federal tax code the NFL is classified as a nonprofit organization?5 Big genial Roger Goodell, he of the almost $4 billion in television contracts, makes like he's the United Way.

But most of all professional sports owners don't have to behave like businessmen. For every disciplined and rational operator like the Patriots' Robert Kraft or Mark Cuban, there is also someone like Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. Snyder was a brilliant entrepreneur, who at the age of 36 sold Snyder Communications — the marketing company he built from scratch — for an estimated $2 billion. He has subsequently run the Redskins like a petulant 14-year-old fantasy owner. Snyder Communications was a business. The Redskins are a toy. The former he ran to solely maximize profit. The latter he runs for his psychic benefit — as a reward for all the years he spent being disciplined and rational. And it is one of the surreal qualities of professional sports that they are as welcoming and lucrative for those owners who chose to behave like 14-year-olds as they are of those owners who chose to behave like grown-ups.

The Financial Times recently interviewed Diego Della Valle, the chief executive of the Italian luxury goods manufacturer Tod's. Della Valle owns the celebrated Italian football club Fiorentina. "I ask if the decision to buy the club was made from the heart, or for business reasons," the Financial Times interviewer writes. Della Valle replies: "With football, business reasons don't exist." Exactly. Yawkey did not have "business reasons" with the Red Sox either. Why did he care that keeping the club lily white cost him millions of dollars? He inherited $40 million from his grandfather when he turned 30 in 1933 (which is roughly $700 million in today's money). He fell in love with baseball growing up in Detroit. Ty Cobb was one of his best friends. The Red Sox were his heart's desire, and in his case his heart's desire — so the story goes — included things like running out on the field during Jackie Robinson's tryout and yelling "Get those [expletive] off the field." In case you were wondering how this kind of thing goes over with the baseball establishment, Yawkey was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1980.6

The best illustration of psychic benefits is the art market. Art collectors buy paintings for two reasons. They are interested in the painting as an investment — the same way they would view buying stock in General Motors. And they are interested in the painting as a painting — as a beautiful object. In a recent paper in Economics Bulletin, the economists Erdal Atukeren and Aylin Seçkin used a variety of clever ways to figure out just how large the second psychic benefit is, and they put it at 28 percent.7 In other words, if you pay $100 million for a Van Gogh, $28 million of that is for the joy of looking at it every morning. If that seems like a lot, it shouldn't. There aren't many Van Goghs out there, and they are very beautiful. If you care passionately about art, paying that kind of premium makes perfect sense.

Pro sports teams are a lot like works of art. Forbes magazine annually estimates the value of every professional franchise, based on standard financial metrics like operating expenses, ticket sales, revenue, and physical assets like stadiums. When sports teams change hands, however, the actual sales price is invariably higher. Forbes valued the Detroit Pistons at $360 million. They just sold for $420 million. Forbes valued the Wizards at $322 million. They just sold for $551 million. Forbes said that the Warriors were worth $363 million. They just sold for $450 million. There are a number of reasons why the Forbes number is consistently too low. The simplest is that Forbes is evaluating franchises strictly as businesses. But they are being bought by people who care passionately about sports — and the $90 million premium that the Warriors' new owners were willing to pay represents the psychic benefit of owning a sports team. If that seems like a lot, it shouldn't. There aren't many NBA franchises out there, and they are very beautiful.

The big difference between art and sports, of course, is that art collectors are honest about psychic benefits. They do not wake up one day, pretend that looking at a Van Gogh leaves them cold, and demand a $27 million refund from their art dealer. But that is exactly what the NBA owners are doing. They are indulging in the fantasy that what they run are ordinary businesses — when they never were. And they are asking us to believe that these "businesses" lose money. But of course an owner is only losing money if he values the psychic benefits of owning an NBA franchise at zero — and if you value psychic benefits at zero, then you shouldn't own an NBA franchise in the first place. You should sell your "business" — at what is sure to be a healthy premium — to someone who actually likes basketball.

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and most recently, What the Dog Saw. He is a consulting editor for Grantland; this is his first piece for the site.

[T Dot O Dot]

one of the very rare cases where I found something to be an excellent read, but absolutely disagree

[Bklyn]

Yep. I remember when he wrote that. It was an interesting theory...but I couldn't get behind it.

[sotola]

yep, it's a theory. But wouldn't the concept of making a lot of money off a black player's ability to be the ultimate "psychic benefit" for a racist? to actually make a ton of money off a person you despised and knowing (especially in the 60s) that you could discard him when he wasn't performing?

but I must admit I almost fell off my chair with this quote.... "For every disciplined and rational operator like the Patriots' Robert Kraft or Mark Cuban".

Kraft, yes. Cuban? maybe recently but using that statement to describe Cuban early on was like saying that Bobby Knight had occasional outbursts as a coach.

[Johnette's Daddy]

Kobe plays celebrity game in China, sits out the first half, scores 68 in the 2nd half (15 minutes, with a running clock)

http://bbs.hupu.com/4172750.html

He looks like me against my nephews when they were in middle school.

[Johnette's Daddy]

Lakers' TV Deal was falsely reported as $3 Billion over 20 years.

Actually, it's $4 Billion over 20, with an option to extend another Billion/5 years, or $5 Billion over 25 years, total.

Supposedly, it's a flat $200 million per season.

In context, the Lakers' TV revenue goes from $30 million to $200 million annually, so if they pay $50 million in revenue sharing and $80 million in luxury taxes when the penalties kick in (2013-14), they're STILL FORTY MILLION DOLLARS AHEAD (ceteris paribus). As has been pointed out elsewhere, If they amnesty Metta, they cut the luxury tax bill in half (save $38 million) or if they want to keep the championship core (assuming we win in 2012-13), they can amnesty Blake and save $20 million.

[Johnette's Daddy]

http://clnsradio.com/2012/08/21/damn-lakers/

The Lakers Continue Their Winning Ways by Following the Same Plan

Damn Lakers.

Oh yes, that’s a reference to the famous old musical about the New York Yankees; the team that dominated professional sports for so long during the first half of the 20th century.

But really, how else can we react? The Lakers have done it again.

This is not a recent phenomenon either. For the past 40 years, every time it looks like the Lakers’ star is beginning to fade, they pull a rabbit out of their hat to not only get back in the mix, but to re-cement their status as the dominant team in the NBA.

So excuse me for being a little, shall we say, peeved.

I said I wouldn’t reveal any form of my agitation either. After the Lakers made yet another signature move for basketball’s elite big man (a Lakers staple for 40 years running now), I said to myself, “No column on CLNS Radio for this. Just stick to the Bob Ryan piece. Life is good. Life is positive. There is no need to be afraid of a basketball team. After all, fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to …ah whatever. Just don’t let those Angelenos see us infuriated over them acquiring another superstar again. That gives them more glee than their actual acquisition of Dwight Howard anyways.”

(Excuse the incessant rambling based on frustration.)

The emotions have gotten the best of me, however. This writer cannot get over the Lakers fortune over the last forty freakin’ years. And to put it lightly, that fortune has played its part in the Lakers being unequivocally the best franchise in all of professional sports since the 1970s.


***

For Celtics fans like myself, the Lakers establishing themselves as arguably the best franchise in the NBA has been tough to handle over these last 15 years or so.

While the Lakers have been the most dominant franchise in the league since Bill Russell walked away from the game in a Sports Illustrated column in August of 1969, it still seems like yesterday where the Boston Celtics were unequivocally the crown jewel of the National Basketball Association. They were still the Yankees of the NBA. Heck, for a while they were the Boston Celtics of everything, winners of multiple championships in four consecutive decades. The only franchise in American sports to achieve such a feat for the second half of the 20th century.

In the early, and even mid 1990s, the Celtics were given a bit of an extended grace period following the tragic and sudden deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. The Celtics had two franchise guys that were going to carry the winning tradition of the franchise cruelly taken away from them.

However, by the late 1990s, the Celtics had plenty of chances to, at the very least, get back on the NBA map after they had been dormant for much of the decade.

But they never did. All while the Lakers were continuing their winning ways; continuing to cement their legacy. Not just as a premier franchise, but their ways and means of getting to where they already were and wanted to be. Those damn Lakers had firmly established a trend of being the haven for the game’s greatest stars.


***

There’s a very simple answer to the Lakers dominance over the last 40 years.

(Drum roll …)

They always have the preeminent big man in the game during their championship years.

But what makes it truly excruciating is the Lakers have spent the last 40 years fleecing other teams to acquire their franchise centerpieces. Observe …

Back in the summer of 1968, four-time and reigning league MVP Wilt Chamberlain grew unhappy in his hometown of Philadelphia. The reasons still are abound as to why Chamberlain was unhappy. Wilt never said definitively because as us historians know, Wilt was always worried about his public image. Some said he was unhappy about his team’s coach, Alex Hannum, leaving the team.

However, Wilt’s biographer, Robert Cherry, said in his book Wilt: Larger Than Life that Chamberlain felt he was too big for Philadelphia and wanted to be somewhere where he was a celebrity amongst celebrities. Hmmmmm …

Voila! Wilt was sent to Los Angeles in the summer of 1968, joining Hall of Famers Elgin Baylor and Jerry West and the rest of the champions of the Western Conference Champions after being traded for Darrall Imhoff, Jerry Chambers, and Archie Clark.

At this point, the LA Lakers were a very good team. But they were the Buffalo Bills, before the Buffalo Bills, to the factor of about ten. After leaving Minneapolis, where the Lakers captured five championships with George Mikan as its star big man, the Lakers made the Finals six times in the 1960s prior to the trade for Chamberlain.

And all six times they lost. All to the Boston Celtics.

The Lakers would not win a championship with Chamberlain until his third year with the team, always getting one-upped by another team’s top center – Russell, Willis Reed, and Lew Alcindor in succession.

But in 1972, the Lakers captured their first championship in Los Angeles, establishing themselves as one of the greatest single-season teams in NBA history by winning 69 games coupled with a legendary 33-game win streak (uh, that’s not just an NBA record, that’s an American professional sports record if you didn’t know.) Those damn Lakers finally put Los Angeles on the NBA map.


***

Once the Lakers were finally able to grab a championship in LA, it seemed as if they were going to fall into the dreaded purgatory of the NBA – mediocrity. Wilt retired after the 1973 season, and Jerry West retired after the 1974 season following a contract dispute.

In the 1975 NBA season, the Lakers won just 30 games, and did not have one notable superstar on their roster. This was also at a time when there were only 18 teams in the league, so therefore there was plenty of talent to go around for everyone.

But sure enough, during that 1975 season, there was another disgruntled, best-in-the-game big man making a stink about getting out of a small city.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who at the time was a 28-year-old three-time league MVP and a one-time world champion, wanted out of Milwaukee. This was despite winning a recent championship, as well as being a game away from another crown the season prior.


The Lakers seemed down and out in 1975 before they heisted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from Milwaukee that summer. (credit: Getty Images)

But Kareem wanted to play in a city that better suited him personally. Whatever that meant. To be more blunt, he only wanted apart of America’s two super cities: New York or Los Angeles.

Sure enough, Milwaukee obliged and The Big Ninny (copyright: Bill Simmons) got his way. The damn Lakers scored far and away the best player in the league for a rack of basketballs (Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, and the recently drafted Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgemen.) In other words, arguably the greatest player of all time in the absolute prime of his career for four guys named Fred. Wonderful.

Now this was, and still is, the only case where the Lakers were not much of an established team before they heisted a superstar big man. Kareem joined a roster of who’s-who (remember, the ‘75 Lakers were just a 30 win team, which made the Lakers being able to put a package for him that much more ridiculous.)

But Kareem’s presence single-handedly brought the Lakers back into the title contending picture immediately, as any team with a legitimate dominant big man can win.

While the Lakers were back to competing, for the rest of the late 1970s, the Lakers were never really able to get over the hump because they never had much of a team around their superstar big man.

However, something really important occurred during summer of 1976. The New Orleans Jazz signed an aging Gail Goodrich from the Los Angeles Lakers. Following the signing, an arbitrator (who had to have been a Laker fan) criminally awarded the Lakers three first round draft choices for the remnants of Goodrich.

Those damn Lakers.

Those first rounders enabled the Lakers flexibility where they could focus on other moves to improve the team. Oh, and before we get there. Take a wild guess who one of those New Orleans first rounders turned out to be? Yes, one Magic Johnson. With Magic and Kareem, those damn Lakers now had a championship tandem heading into the 1980s.

But they weren’t done. Jerry West, who by that point had become the Lakers GM, snookered Ted Stepien for another draft choice. Stepien is arguably the most maligned owner in the history of professional sports, never focused on winning a championship – just getting to the post-season as inexpensively as possible. Early in the 1980 season, Stepien sent a future first rounder for the ever-mediocre Don Ford. That choice once again become the first overall draft selection, and the Lakers picked James Worthy.

The Lakers, and their stacked team throughout the decade became the Team of the 1980s, as they won five championships and appeared in eight NBA Finals. The Lakers success in the 1980s completely annihilated their perennial underachiever/choker aura.

The ‘acquisition’ of Abdul-Jabbar started it all. It got the centerpiece in place. His presence instantly made those damn Lakers a very good team again, and in turn, that made Los Angeles an even more attractive destination. Throughout a good seven to eight year stretch, the Lakers were able to sign great players such as Jamaal Wilkes, Bob McAdoo, Maurice Lucas, among others.

Then, once they got the breaks to go their way (ahem! Gail Goodrich compensation!), that catapulted those damn Lakers to extraordinary heights.

Also, here’s another quick caveat that this writer feels is worth rambling on about: During the 1987 season, the Lakers and Celtics were spending much of the entire year battling it out for home court advantage for their inevitable match-up in the NBA Finals.

However, the Lakers had one weakness against Boston – they could not stop Kevin McHale. McHale had always been the Lakers kryptonite. So right before the trade deadline, and right before a ginormous Sunday matinee national television match-up with those very Celtics where both teams had identical records at the time, the Lakers scooped up Mychal Thompson from San Antonio. Thompson was the number one overall pick in the same draft as Larry Bird, was still a very capable center, and more importantly, was the only player in the league who could guard McHale. They acquired him for Frank Brickowski, Petur Gudmundsson (who?!?!?!), draft considerations, and ‘cash.’ Said Larry Bird of the trade, “If San Antonio needed money, we would’ve sent them money. But to go and help the Lakers like that is just terrible.” The Lakers ended up losing only five more games the rest of the regular season (cruising to home court advantage), and then defeated the Celtics in the Finals for their fourth title of the decade.


***

Despite Abdul-Jabbar’s retirement after the 1989 season, the Lakers were still very much in the championship picture. Magic Johnson was the team’s leader and one of the three best players in the league, and the supporting cast was still very strong.

The Lakers posted the best record in the West in 1990, and reached the Finals once again in 1991. While the Lakers were far from the favorite going into the 1992 campaign (there was a team from Chicago around), they were still one of the four best teams in the league.

But one of the great tragedies in the history of sports struck their team, and the franchise suffered a colossal blow. Magic Johnson had contracted the HIV virus and was forced to retire right before the start of the season. The Lakers were built around Magic, but without him, the rest of the team looked mediocre – and they were.

LA seemed destined for mediocrity for years to come. They were old, they were overpaid, and they just weren’t very good.

But at the time, the organization was very smart, as they had Jerry West at the apex of his managing abilities.

This writer briefly discussed LA’s ascension back to the top in the 1990s and how they gradually improved their team through shrewd and under the radar free agent signings, and quality draft choices despite not being in prime draft position.

That led them to be in prime position in the summer of 1996 – just four years after Magic shocked the world and seemingly left those damn Lakers in a pretty precarious position.

And whaddya know, just in the nick of time, a 24-year-old man-child behemoth named Shaquille O’Neal, a man who had not even reached the apex of his game, (despite physically dominating his peers not seen since the days of Wilt Chamberlain), was on the free agent market and was weary of his current location.


Once the Lakers signed Shaquille O’Neal in the summer of 1996, another Laker dynasty was inevitable. (credit: USA Today)

In his first four years in the league, O’Neal averaged 27.2 points per game, 12.4 rebounds per game, and 2.7 blocks per game. He was the focal point of the Magic’s Eastern Conference Championship in 1995, and oh yeah, it’s worth repeating, he was only 24 and was also 7’1”, 280 lbs of steel, and could run the floor like a gazelle.

During the summer of 1996, the Magic and Lakers were involved in a heated bidding war for O’Neal’s services. During that summer, Shaq was teased by fellow Olympians on the 1996 Men’s US National Basketball team that he was not even recognized as the face of the team, (Penny Hardaway was), despite being far and away the best player on the team.

After the Orlando Sentinel posted two separate fan polls by Orlando residents where the fans at a 90+% clip stated flat out that O’Neal was not worth 100 million dollars, nor worth firing then-coach Brian Hill for, O’Neal took his talents to Hollywood in a matter of days, signing with a Laker team that had just traded for Kobe Bryant and had won 50+ games the prior two seasons. Those damn Lakers had done it again. They were back.

This was especially excruciating for us Celtics backers because at this time the Celtics were moribund. Their title drought had not only reached ten years, but there didn’t seem to be any hope in sight. Meanwhile, their hated rivals from Los Angeles had reloaded once again, and more championships with their newest iconic big man seemed inevitable.

And they were. Three in a row to be precise.


***

Things did not end well in Los Angeles for O’Neal. He was bitterly traded to Miami in the summer of 2004 for something that, at the time, seemed like a very weak deal. The same type of deal that the Lakers were always making for themselves. The deals where THEY acquire the big name, not to trade them away. The Lakers traded Shaq to Miami for Lamar Odom, Caron Butler (traded away a year later for Kwame Brown), and Brian Grant (who was cut after one season.)

So there it was, finally us haters of those damn Lakers were going to see some extended mediocrity from the purple-wearing tank top men. They had one superstar in Kobe Bryant, who at the time was an immensely talented yet belligerent ball hog, and a team cluttered with overpaid and overrated crappola. From 2005 to 2007 the Lakers missed the playoffs outright, and lost in the first round in two consecutive seasons. And there seemed to be no chance for those damn Lakers, because outside of Kobe Bryant, there was no one on their roster that any team wanted.

Or so we thought.

By now, you should not need me, this is recent history and the scars are still visible. But here’s a quick refresher: The Lakers started out the 2008 season well, but were seemingly not anywhere significantly better than their 2005-2007 predecessors. They were ‘good enough to make it, but not good enough to win it.’ Which is where no NBA team wants to be.

On this occasion, those damn Lakers blindsided the whole basketball world, swiftly stealing Pau Gasol from a basketball Siberia in Memphis for parts at the time that amounted to little to no value (Kwame Brown, Aaron McKie, Marc Gasol, Javaris Crittendon, and two first round draft choices.)

The deal’s egregiousness sent ripples throughout the NBA world, with members of the media and fans of the league criticizing the lunacy of the trade on Memphis’ end. Anonymous team executives got in the act as well. And four-time World Champion head coach Gregg Popovich actually went on record and went as far as saying that the trade should have been vetoed by the league.

Once the Lakers acquired Gasol in February of 2008, LA won more games than any other team for the rest of the season. They won the Western Conference before losing in the Finals, then repeated as NBA Champions in 2009 and 2010. In the seventh game of the 2010 NBA Finals, Gasol outrebounded his power forward counterpart Kevin Garnett 18-3 in what proved to be a decisive matter in their championship game victory over the Boston Celtics.


***

However, following the Lakers back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010, (where they won the 2010 title by the skin of their teeth, or in other words, a couple of rebounds by Pau Gasol), the Lakers fell back to the pack a little bit. During the 2011 and 2012 seasons, the Lakers won a grand total of one playoff game past the first round.

Worse for the Lakers, they were seemingly a franchise in turmoil. Under the leadership of Jim Buss, the Lakers were cutting costs as if they were a small market team, worrying about profits over wins. The Lakers had fired long-time coaches, long-time members of the front office, long-time staffers, and oh yeah, they hired Mike Brown to coach their team.

They also were not as aggressive as they normally were with free agents and trades, which only seemed to reiterate their new perceived mantra that spreadsheets mattered more than banners.

And then, of course, those damn Lakers blindsided their haters with yet another haymaker. Dwight Howard to LA, while the whole basketball world’s eyes were on the Summer Olympics in London.

Howard came to LA via Orlando, following the same path of Shaquille O’Neal. In a four-team trade, the Magic got in return for Howard Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington, Nikola Vucevic, Moe Harkless, and three (late) first round draft choices. Hey, at least it was more than what they got for Shaq.

Those damn Lakers caught us sleeping again. They always do. That’s how they do it.

Some are going to say, “Well, Dwight really wants to be in Brooklyn. He’s not signing an extension with the Lakers! They may not keep him!”

Oh, puh-lease.

The Lakers, those damn Lakers, have Dwight Howard as their centerpiece for the next seven to eight years. Dwight will re-sign in Los Angeles eventually. He won’t leave a world-class organization in a world-class city with great business opportunities outside of basketball, America’s most beautiful women, as well as “75 and sunny” for 355 of the 365 days of the year, for anywhere. Take it to the bank.

Listen, Howard is a prima donna. That is safe to assume after watching his shenanigans the last few months. He will go to free agency not to seek a long-term deal with another team, but to seek the luv from other franchises and their fans. He wants to see team executives make lavish presentations towards him, and receive the same kind of hero-worship treatment that one LeBron James got in the summer of 2010. His free agency will be nothing but a carnival act for his ego. Dwight is, and will be, a Laker for his prime years, just like Kareem, Shaq, and Gasol were – you can count on that.

But Howard is a mammoth on the basketball court. And the Lakers know that. Hell, everyone knows it. Or at least they should.

Despite changes in styles of play throughout the league (like many teams trying to mold their teams after the Phoenix Suns during the mid 2000s), or catchy trends like the acceleration of advanced quasi-statistics, the Lakers have stuck with one plan. While teams embark on ‘Three Year Plans’ (whaddup Mr. Ainge!) or ‘Five Year Plans’, or ‘Nowhere Plans’ – the Lakers have stuck with their ‘40+ Year And Counting Plan.’ That is, get the best big man in basketball and go from there.

And you keep asking yourself how they do it. You keep wondering how in the blue hell can they continually stack their rosters and land the current best big man in the game. Especially recently when they sport a total of two first round draft choices in the last TEN years (Andrew Bynum and Toney Douglas) that are still on NBA rosters. My goodness.

You tell yourself to stop wondering. You tell yourself to not get agitated over it. But you can’t. Those bastids have done it again. The same redundant process has repeated itself. The cycle goes on.

Damn Lakers.

[Johnette's Daddy]

This will get JD a little euphoric...

I just got an email from one of my people (yeah, those people) who confirmed to me that D12 told his agent to make the Los Angeles move happen; however it needs to be done.

Whether it happens, who knows. But he's saying the right things publicly...but is all about coming West.

Brook:

Don't forget to give that guy props.

[Bklyn]

Forgot about that...the text is going out now.

[Bklyn]

But here’s a quick refresher: The Lakers started out the 2008 season well, but were seemingly not anywhere significantly better than their 2005-2007 predecessors. They were ‘good enough to make it, but not good enough to win it.’ Which is where no NBA team wants to be.

Bullshit revisionism. LA was the #1 seed in the West the day before they got Gasol and battled it out against CP3's Hornets through the rest of the season. The 2008 Lakers were MILES better than the previous year(s).

[Bklyn]

TORT REFORM!

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball- ... --nba.html

[Owlman]

$5,000 to $10,000 nuisance damage, enough for the lawyer to say something. I guarantee you that if i were Kobe's lawyer, the lawyer for the fan would have already spent at least $25,000 in costs over 7 years.