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.
