The Los Angeles Lakers surprised everyone when the season started by beating the Los Angeles Clippers 116-103 on opening night. Bill Simmons couldn’t believe what he saw, and many pundits questioned if the Clippers were really going to be contenders this season. On Friday, the two teams met up for the second time this season and the results weren’t quite the same: the Clippers routed the Lakers 123-87 – the largest margin of victory ever against the Lakers in franchise history. It
Carmelo Anthony has 30 million reasons to remain with the New York Knicks after he becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer. But if the Knicks don’t have his word that he’ll re-sign with them for five years at a max salary, can they afford to take the risk that he might leave? That is the question owner Jim Dolan and his tight-lipped lieutenants are asking themselves as New York struggles through the first half of the season, entering tonight’s game against
There is reason to believe that, after the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers stunned the NBA with last night’s Luol Deng/Andrew Bynum swap, that Deng was just the first domino to fall in Chicago. Well, I suppose that would actually be Derrick Rose, whose loss to season ending injury has given the Bulls a second chance to reassess their future. [Read more…]
Mitch Kupchak I have already made my thoughts known on the Luog Deng-Andrew Bynum trade in a column, the gist of whih is that the big loser in this deal was the Lakers. Go ahead and click through and give it a read as you listen to this audio from the NBA’s Sirius-XM radio channel, in which I go into further detail about why Mitch Kupchak blew a golden opportunity to set the Lakers up for having
Well, Lakers fans, you get to keep staring at Pau Gasol and watch him age before your eyes — until the trade deadline, that is. OK, maybe a couple months longer. And the rebuilding plan that coincides with Kobe Bryant’s two-year contract extension? Don’t expect the Lakers to be flooded with max players. They still need to stay under the luxury tax line for two seasons to avoid the dreaded repeater tax, and it doesn’t look like this season will be
Mitch Kupchak shouldn’t be playing hardball. In his desire to trade Pau Gasol, the GM of the Los Angeles Lakers should not have insisted on receiving Dion Waiters or a first-round pick from the Cleveland Cavaliers. Nobody has overpaid for a rental since Ernie Grunfeld sent Ray Allen to Seattle for Gary Payton — and that was a long time ago. Kupchak should have lowered his demands to match the team’s expectations. The Lakers are done for this season and should be
As an action packed weekend of basketball comes to a close, here’s the good, bad and the ugly of what took place. [Read more…]
As Sunday night winds down, the desired time that both the Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers had hoped to complete a deal involving Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol has almost expired. Bynum’s contract becomes fully guaranteed Tuesday afternoon at 5:00pm EST, so there is still time to complete a deal, but all parties involved would like such a transaction to happen sooner rather than later to allow time for everything to clear. Sometimes that process can take up to 48