Even in a season in which the Lakers have languished at the bottom of the NBA – far from their customary perch at the top of the sport – they still have managed to dominate the headlines.
Kobe Bryant’s return from tearing his Achilles – and the subsequent injuries that have limited him to six games this season. Steve Nash’s mostly losing battle to get back on the court. A succession of all-time lopsided losses. The Lakers have had their usual share of drama, even if it’s in a different form than the usual debates about how far a loaded Lakers team can go in the playoffs.
So where did things go wrong? Well, for starters, go back to July, when Dwight Howard decided to turn down more money from the Lakers to go to the Rockets. Howard was chastised in plenty of quarters for running from the spotlight and not being willing to handle the pressures that come with playing in Los Angeles.
Some of that may be true, but the reality of the situation was this: Look at the team Howard joined in Houston. The Rockets featured a blossoming superstar guard just turning 24 in James Harden, a young, athletic roster full of improving talents (Howard, at 28, would be the second-oldest player) and upcoming payroll flexibility to continue to make improvements to the roster.
The Lakers had none of those things entering this offseason. They could only offer up a 35-year-old Bryant coming off the most serious injury a basketball player can have, a breaking-down Nash, an aging Pau Gasol — who already had struggled to fit next to Howard — and whatever other low-cost signings the Lakers could cobble together until they finally began to have money come off the books the following summer.
From a basketball standpoint, the choice was easy for Howard, and he made the right one. And with Howard leaving a team that last season had to sneak into the Western Conference playoffs as he averaged over 17 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks per game, it was hard to see how the Lakers could come anywhere near duplicating that result this season.
Those who did – and there were plenty – based their predictions on a belief Bryant could come back better than basically anyone ever has from a torn Achilles. Though Bryant has an indomitable spirit and an incredible drive to succeed, that was always an unreasonable expectation.
After coming back early from his injury, he averaged 13.8 points, 4.3 rebounds and 6.3 assists in six games before suffering a fractured lateral tibial plateau of his left knee, an injury the team this week finally announced would rule him out for the rest of the season.
It made it all the more confusing why the Lakers, before Bryant came back and played one minute, agreed to sign him to a two-year, $48.5 million extension that will pay him more than any player in the NBA over the next two seasons. Bryant is going to play those seasons at 36 and 37 years old, and it seemed as if the team was bidding against itself. Could anyone truly see Bryant playing elsewhere at this point in his career?
Instead, the Lakers gave away a massive amount of the cap room they had available for this summer and next in order to appease a player clearly on the downside of his career, whose physical capabilities moving forward were a complete unknown.
With Bryant and Nash – who is set to make more than $9 million next season in the final year of his deal – out practically for the whole season and the rest of the roster other than Gasol composed of players signed to one-year deals, the Lakers have plummeted to the bottom of the NBA. At least that given them a chance to land one of the elite talents in this year’s very deep and talented draft in one of the rare instances they own their own draft pick.
But it’s hard to see how this team is going to get much better next season. Even if they use the stretch provision on Nash’s contract, the combination of the $3 million in dead money that would leave on the roster, Bryant’s $23.5 million salary and the few million it will cost to sign their first-round pick and account for the remaining cap holds on the roster will allow them to chase after one big-time free agent this summer.
And why would anyone want to sign up to join a team in that situation?
That’s what made this past week all the more difficult for the Lakers’ hierarchy. On one side you have Bryant calling out the front office, boldly declaring, “How can I be satisfied with [this season]? We’re like 100 games under .500. I can’t be satisfied with that at all. This is not what we stand for. This is not what we play for. A lot of times it’s hard to understand that message if you’re not a diehard Laker fan. It’s hard to really understand where we’re coming from and what we’re accustomed to, which is playing for championships and everything else is a complete failure. That’s just how it is. That’s how it was explained to me by Jerry [West] and all the other great Lakers who have played here and that’s how I grew up thinking. So that’s just how it is.”
Bryant went on to say moves need to be made to make the team more competitive next season.
“Oh yeah, let’s just play next year and let’s just suck again,” Bryant said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It’s my job to go out there on the court and perform. No excuses for it. Right? You got to get things done. It’s the same thing with the front office. The same expectations they have of me when I perform on the court is the same expectations I have for them up there. You got to be able to figure out a way to do both.”
Here’s the problem with Bryant’s logic: The contract extension he signed is going to make it incredibly hard for the Lakers to do that over the next two years.
Then there’s been the ongoing drama surrounding Phil Jackson, who while he was putting the finishing touches on an agreement to run the Knicks was being publicly courted by Bryant and Magic Johnson to return and save the Lakers.
“You know how I feel about Phil,” Bryant said. “I have so much admiration for him and respect and I have a great relationship with him. Personally, it would be hard for me to understand that happening twice. It would be tough. I don’t really get it.”
Johnson unleashed a series of tweets about Jackson – who is also engaged to Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, making the situation all the more complicated – including this one:
None of this has been helped by the NBA, due to the Lakers’ massive drawing power, placing them in a ton of prime-time nationally televised games. Though they have managed to come up with some wins – beating the Clippers on Opening Night comes to mind, as does beating the Thunder this past weekend – more often than not the Lakers have been blown out, as they did in embarrassing fashion against the Clippers last week, when Lob City nearly beat them by 50 points.
At least when the Lakers are plastered all over national television next year, they can hope Bryant, with the extra time off, is back fully healthy and they will be able to show off their high draft pick.
But even then, unless they can make dramatic improvements this summer – only Carmelo Anthony is a truly attractive top name to bring to Lakerland – the prudent thing to do would be to mostly roll over the cap space until the following summer, when Rajon Rondo, Kevin Love and LaMarcus Aldridge, among several other stars, are slated to become free agents.
It remains to be seen, however, whether Bryant would sit quietly by and wait for that to happen. No one is better at getting his message across loud and clear like Bryant when he chooses to do so.
On top of all of this, there’s the matter of deciding whether or not Mike D’Antoni is the right coach. If he is, the Lakers need to start populating the roster with players better able to play the way he likes. If not, they need to go out and find a new coach, adding a wrinkle to what already is an incredibly complex situation.
The bottom line is this isn’t going to be easy for the Buss family and general manager Mitch Kupchak. After spending virtually each of the last 30 years competing for championships, it’s finally time for a rebuild in Lakerland.
It remains to be seen if they can do it as successfully as Jerry West reloaded the Lakers in the past, but one thing is clear: It won’t lack for drama. The Lakers still do that better than anyone.