So this is how it ends for Kobe Bryant, huh?
A top-10 all-time player, Bryant will spend his last four years as the face of arguably the most storied franchise in NBA history, watching it plunge into unprecedented irrelevance.
What has happened to the Lakers happens to a lot of successful family-owned businesses. It was handed from the patriarch to the next generation, which was in over its head. It took its brand for granted and treated the competition with disdain rather than respect. It mortgaged the future with bad deals that had very little foresight.
The Lakers have gone the way of land lines, watches and Yahoo’s search engine. Yeah, they’re still out there. And it wasn’t long ago that they were really important. But they’re virtually obsolete now.
When the fireworks stopped Saturday night – both literally and figuratively – the Lakers were one of just two NBA teams yet to make some sort of move this offseason. The other was the Utah Jazz, another family-owned business recently handed from the patriarch to the next generation that was 17 wins better than the Lakers last season and has a roster and cache of assets that the Buss family would kill for right now.
Even the Sixers, whose approach to free agency under GM Sam Hinkie has resembled a trip to the Salvation Army, already have made a move, acquiring three players, a first-round pick and the right to swap two others from the Kings. The Sixers!
The Lakers? They spent the first four days of free agency with the same misguided approach that they have since their last championship five years ago: falsely believing that their brand – whatever that is – would be irresistible to the league’s elite. What they have really put out there is a pile of horse dung with a stench so strong it has sent stars running in the opposite direction.
The list of rejectors reads like future Hall of Fame inductions. Dwight Howard. Carmelo Anthony. Pau Gasol. LaMarcus Aldridge. DeAndre Jordan. All of those stars have either walked away from the Lakers or decided not to join them, apparently unimpressed by their brand.
And why would they be impressed? The Lakers have gone from 45 to 27 to 21 wins in the last three seasons, making three coaching changes along the way. Jim and Jeanie Buss may share a last name, but don’t share much else when it comes to running an NBA franchise. The Clippers, who were a generational laughingstock as next-door neighbors, are now the glamour team in a city that runs on glamour.
All that remains is Bryant, an injury-prone, fading superstar whose supposedly magnanimous pay cut of two years ago curiously still ensured that he would remain the league’s highest-paid player – which has hindered GM Mitch Kupchak’s ability to rebuild around him.
Of course, Bryant has done some hindering of his own with his trademark stubborn belief in his will. His remarkable extended platform of greatness had everyone from fans to ownership drinking the Kool-Aid and buying the ridiculous notion that a guy with 50,000-plus minutes on his odometer could bounce back from a torn Achilles tendon as if it were a high ankle sprain.
Bryant even bought into it, continuing to sell himself as the alpha dog and letting prospective free agents know that the biggest honor they would ever receive in Hollywood would be Best Supporting Actor. That definitely drove away Howard and Aldridge and may have impacted Anthony as well. For someone who has illustrated a firm grasp of the game’s history, Bryant seems to have overlooked what Tim Duncan and Dwyane Wade have done in recent years.
However, Bryant is merely an accessory after the fact. This seemingly irreversible spiral into irrelevance began three summers ago, when the Lakers mortgaged their future with the trades for Howard and Steve Nash. In addition to crushing their cap, those deals still have payments due in the form of first-round picks to Philadelphia (next year) and Orlando (two years later).
The Awesome Foursome of Bryant, Gasol, Howard and Nash was supposed run roughshod over the NBA, trump Miami’s “Big Three” and return the Lakers to their customary place atop the basketball world. Instead, the Lakers changed coaches twice before Thanksgiving, alienating Phil Jackson in the process; didn’t get two games above .500 until March 10; watched Bryant literally collapse under the weight of expectations; and were swept out of the playoffs as Howard ended his brief stay in LA with an ejection in Game 4.
That squad was the most underachieving team in NBA history. Yes, bigger underachievers than the 1960s Cincinnati Royals, who at least had the dynastic Boston Celtics blocking their path. Yes, bigger underachievers than the Julius Erving-George McGinnis Sixers, who at least won division titles and playoff series. Yes, bigger underachievers than the 2004 Lakers, who at least got to the Finals before imploding.
The Lakers have been plummeting ever since, sent hurtling along by nearsighted mismanagement kicking the can down the road, false bravado and ill-equipped big-game hunting. Sunday’s flurry of activity – Roy Hibbert, Lou Williams and Brandon Bass are reportedly on the way to save the day – may look better than last summer’s troika of Ed Davis, Jeremy Lin and Carlos Boozer. And it is. In fact, alongside a healthy Bryant, that Not So Big Three should be good enough to avoid a plunge into the true depths of the NBA – and trigger the conveyance of those draft picks.
The Lakers are going to miss the playoffs again next year. It will be their third straight without a trip to the postseason, the longest for a franchise whose history predates the Korean War. They will be without their first-round pick in two of the next three years. The face of the franchise will be strongly contemplating retirement. And they will still be taking a back seat to the Clippers.
Yeah, I could see Kevin Durant jumping on that in a heartbeat. And Russell Westbrook the year after that. (No, I am not serious).
So here’s some parting advice for Jim, Jeanie, Mitch and even Kobe.
Wanna rebuild your brand? Start with rebuilding your team.
Chris Bernucca is the managing editor and a featured columnist for SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.
Chris,
This is not an insightful article. This is what you type when you are getting your information from sports talk radio.
As Roye put it why are the Lakers so dysfunctional for not convincing Aldridge to basically leave the Spurs? Everybody knew he was going there since last year and if you didn’t you should not be writing on these topics.
I feel you should explain how the Lakers are so horrible for missing the same free agents a lot of other teams did. Please explain why the other six teams that Aldridge did not choose are fine but the Lakers oh my the Lakers screwed up and the world is ending in Lakerland. That would be an article worth reading.
The Nation has a great view of our situation, great rebuttals. We need not worry, we’ve been here before and we’ll rebound again. I mean if you were watching the Lakers when I was a kid, man times were hard. Magic had retired, Sedal Threat was running the point, Elden Cambell was a prospect. I think we’re in a much better situation going forward today then we were back then, the biggest contributor to some fans panicing is the 24 hr. news cycle,
omg! The Lakers haven’t made a move! R-E-L-A-X! I know this is where you make your bread & butter so it’s in your best interest to spark conversation and you did.
I’m headed to Summer League next week to watch the future, Clarkson,Randle,Black, Brown & hopefully #UPSHAW.
This whole article is nothing that any true smart laker fan doesn’t already know. It’s always fun to critize a great team whenever you have a chance. I.e the Patriots right now. Hind sight is 20/20 at the time no one was really critizing getting Nash and Howard. A lot of experts has us in the finals, they all can’t be idiots can they? The Howard deal to me still was a smart move in the sense at least we had him for a year, we traded Bynum away and he’s never played again. The Nash trade was risky but we all know you the window to win a title is small so they went for it. Yes it back fired. But at the time givin up first round picks wasn’t horrible since we all thought we would be a playoff team for next few years, so those picks would be mid to late first rounders, not lottery picks and thus not as big as a loss. It’s easy to gloss over the fact the Stern and the NBA did a unprecedented move by blocking the Paul deal, and they got what they really wanted, to cripple us for competitive balance.
Let me ask you this. How many first time owners come in making every right move from day one? Look at Michael Jordan, he can’t stay out of his own way, from Kwame to Adam Morrison to frank the tank now. But who’s killi him in the media? You can blame Jim and Jeanie all you want but trying to come out of Dr.Buss’s shadow is hard enough to go along with the growing pains with trying to learn how to run a NBA franchise. All I can agree with from this article is that we went about attracting FA all wrong especially this year. We should have went after the B stars like a Carroll or Monroe to go along with the young talent, the. You look much better to the Durants and Westbrooks of the world. So hopefully they have learned some valuable lessons from all of this.
And why is it that every other team in the league can have down years but us? Boston has only been relavant for a hand full of years since Bird retired but that’s ok right? For the first time history the lakers won’t make the playoffs for three consecutive years and you want to make us out to be worse franchise moving forward. Go troll some other team please.
Chris,
Thanks for a nice and though provoking article. There are a few things I would disagree with. For example, I don’t think the Lakers’ top brass thought that Kobe would rebound completely from his achilles. They thought, correctly, that he would bounce back better than what most expected, though not fully, and more importantly, they wanted to honor him for all that he had done for the organization, basketball-wise and from a financial perspective, and that is something papa Buss did likely instill into his children. They weren’t wrong to offer so much money to him, but I wish he had made a gesture like his friends Duncan and Nowitzky to offer to take less for the sake of getting other strong people. But perhaps it’s in his DNA to do that. In the wild, lions and wolves hunt with others but tigers hunt alone. One is not better than the other, and there shouldn’t be social engineering to prefer one over the other.
My problem with the Jim Buss/ Kupchak tandem is that they are uneven, The fact that they didn’t pay enough attention to Pau Gasol’s hurt feelings shows, at a minimum, a failure to pick up on social cues. I think they were right to try to get Chris Paul by offering Pau and Lamar, but once it didn’t work out due to Stern’s intervention, they should have told Pau that it was a once in a lifetime deal but they weren’t going to trade him away after that; they could have even offered a no trade clause which would have soothed him. The Laker fandom is partly to blame for Pau’s feelings getting hurt further, because I remember not a day passing without a whole bunch of fans strongly suggesting a trade to replace Pau by someone or other. Now that Pau has moved over to Chicago, I can’t but notice that none of those others became an all star like he did. In my opinion losing Pau was a major blow, much like the Clippers now losing DeAndre Jordan and the Blazers losing Aldridge. It’s hard to bounce back from that.
I am definitely in the minority, but I am very glad, even ecstatic, that we didn’t get Carmelo (last year) and Kevin Love (this year), because they don’t play defense and want to be ball centric without having an iota of Kobe’s talent. I was also not in favor of going after Aldridge because he wants to be a power forward and not play center even part time, and that means his playing will cut into Randle’s time, which is a No-No in my book; he’s not a good fit! (It seems that of all the sports analysts in southern California, only Brian Kamenetzky seems to have this view.) DeAndre Jordan was my first choice among all the free agents, whom we didn’t get, and I am okay with Hibbert who is an excellent rim protector and who will not stunt Randle’s growth.
Finally, while the people at the top are repeating their mistakes and posturing to the world that they are going to get this big or other, and failing at it for the reason you mention, namely that they haven’t paid enough attention to improving the team, there are other people in the organization (such as Ryan West and other nameless people) who are doing excellent work identifying top prospects. I am really happy with the coterie of young talent we have now, such as Russell, Randle, Clarkson, Black, Jabari, Nance and Anthony Brown, and I hope we keep them with us and develop them without trading away the future for someone like Cousins who is a head case and will ruin the chemistry; he will definitely not listen to Scott. It will take time for this young team to develop and gel together, but I am hopeful it will happen, just like it did for Golden State whose top four players were drafted by them.
Thanks for reading. It’s nice to hear from sane people. I really like Clarkson and I think Jabari and Tarik can be NBA players (deep rotation guys). As another commenter pointed out, having the Paul deal scuttled was a tough blow. I just think they gave away way too much in the Nash deal; everyone knew the miracles Phoenix’s training staff was working with him (and others). And yes, Kobe should have taken less and not insisted on being highest-paid NBA player. That said, there is a lot of pressure on Kupchak to have a big summer in 2016 (not necessarily Durant, but someone significant) and to get the 2017 first round pick right. If he doesn’t, they are going to be a non-factor for a while.
I agree with your point about giving away too much for Nash. It’s even worse; I can’t help feeling that they chose D’Antoni over Jackson because they wanted to showcase Nash’s talents. Too bad, because the wizard Phil would have known how to give courage to Dwight and might have also managed to soothe his relations with Kobe.
You are also right about Kupchak (and Jim Buss) needing a big summer next year. Perhaps the best way to achieve it is to try and win 40 + games this year, which I think is a possibility, due to the talented youngsters, with or without Kobe. Then, and only then, some good free agents will think of coming here.
the real issue was when stern rejected the chris paul trade
Certainly another factor as a precursor. Thanks for reading.
It is articles like this that made me wish, irrationally on hindsight, that the FO had hit a home run in FA even if it means a potential cornerstone (Randle) either comes off the bench or plays out of position just so that we can snag Aldridge. I wished that in FA we could have snagged a big fish, if only to shut up the know-it-alls of the media who are eager to pronounce the death of the Lakers luster.
But things could work out for the better.
If Howard had signed, we would be mediocre, a step ahead of horrid, but good enough that we would not snag Randle and Russell.
If Melo had signed (forget Lebron, even we Lakers fans are not THAT delusional), we would be faced with ~$50m on 2 aging wings who would not, at this stage of their career, sniff all-defense fifth team.
If Aldridge had signed, we would be playing Randle less, or out-of-position, and still not solve our defensive woes. DJ would have been a good sign, but he wanted to be the focal point of the offense and if that is the case, I rather we pass.
So we roll. Even if we strike out next season, and by striking out I mean missing on the biggest prize-KD, is a Russell/Randle/Clarkson core really that bad a thing? Could we not add a SF and a C with $60m of cap space?
This has nothing to do with the lack of allure of the Lakers brand, stars want to be with stars, not “soon to be retired stars” and not “future stars” but bona fide stars. If Russell and Randle live up to their potential, if Mitch swings a trade for a star, you think we would whiff next season?
GMs around the league know it, nothing is more terrifying than “Lakers with cap space”, that was why last summer Rubio got that extension, that was why Klay, despite not having proven it then, got near max.
Say what you want, but the Lakers return to prominence is only a domino away. One piece will lead to the rest.
The Lakers have gone through these dry patches a number of times since the franchise moved to Los Angeles. And that’s the point, it’s still Los Angeles. No top free agent wants to be a broken down Bryant’s whipping boy in the first place. I heard the same nonsense in every decade but the 80s. It’s reactionary and plain dumb. If Adam Silver had been the Commissioner several years ago, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, because Chris Paul and who knows how many more top-shelf players would be wearing a Lakers uniform right now.
I guess this article is one way to look at things in Lakerland. Another way would be to look at reality. Under the leadership of the great Dr. Buss, the ’90s brought us the likes of Eldon Campbell, Devean George and Nick Van Exel – and those were the starters.
While the last few years have also been a struggle, it’s important to remember the Lakers won a title just a few years ago (2009 and 2010). Just imagine what they would be doing had the league not blocked the Chris Paul trade nor upped the luxury tax penalty. Yes, we miss Dr. Buss and haven’t attracted free agents this year like we’ve hoped, but as a former Laker once said, “there’s a bank in every city.” As a lifelong fan, I’m here to say the future looks bright.
I’m not the type to post comments, but the idiocy of this piece compelled me to do so here. Here is a simple question for the writer: what exactly is your point? So the Lakers swung for the fences with the Howard and Nash moves (moves that were lauded at the time), and things didn’t work out. Yes, free agents have passed on joining a Lakers team that features Kobe Bryant and a bunch of unproven (but very talented) rookies and second-year players. So what? Wow, the Lakers lost out on Carmelo Anthony. Guess what? So did the Bulls. And the Rockets. Wow, the Lakers also lost out on LaMarcus Aldridge. Guess what? So did the Rockets. And the Suns. And the Mavericks. Players go where they want to go. It doesn’t mean the teams to which they don’t end going to are somehow “mismanaged.” The Lakers are looking to do what they have done in the past — build through the draft and supplement the roster with trades and/or free agent signings. That process takes time. Chill out, and find something else to write about.
Is there an alternate reality where better roster management could’ve maintained the Lakers as a strong team from 2012 to 2015 as Bryant, Gasol, Odom, Fisher, & Bynum all aged or got injured? I thought the two trades in the summer of ’12 positioned them well to be title contenders for two more seasons, which was a pretty good way to extend their championship window. Unfortunately, Nash suffered a freak, basically career-ending injury in his second regular-season game with the team. Then Bryant tore his Achilles at the end of that season. What else could management have done to prevent that?
Anyway, Clarkson, Randle, & Russell is a nice core of young players to start with. That’s how most title contenders — including the Warriors — get started. Signing a superstar in his prime like Aldridge or Carmelo wouldn’t even make sense. People go nuts when the Lakers have to go through a couple lean years, even though nearly every other team has to do the same.