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
If you haven’t been watching Golden State basketball recently, why? Seriously, why? They’re just as fun to watch as they were last year, only now they play defense as well (fourth in defensive efficiency). They just knocked off two of the East’s three decent teams in the space of two nights. The Blazers have made the West a little more crowded at the top, but Steph Curry and Co. are showing that they belong right up there with those top teams.
Word on the street today is louder than ever that Carmelo Anthony wants out of New York. How do we know this? Marc Berman and Frank Isola are writing it hard in the New York tabloids, and both of those fellas are as plugged into their team as any beat writers in North America. You can bristle at Isola’s anti-Berman’s tweets – a constant source of amusement for anyone who follows the Knicks – and you can bristle at Berman’s wardrobe, which
Amid its myriad injuries, its dozen teams below .500 and its 44-98 record against the Western Conference, there is a looming question regarding the Eastern Conference: Can the East even field an All-Star team? A year ago, Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, Tyson Chandler, Kyrie Irving, Brook Lopez and Jrue Holiday were among the East’s All-Stars. You can make the argument – irrefutable in some cases, strong in others – that none of those players should be invited back
While the news of the day is most certainly that Oklahoma City guard Russell Westbrook will be sidelined until after the All-Star break due to an unexpected arthroscopic knee surgery, life in the NBA must go on. And on it will go for the New York Knicks, who according to ESPN’s Marc Stein, will remain intact for the time being: [Read more…]
LOS ANGELES — Kobe to the rescue? Are you kidding? Kobe Bryant made his long-awaited return in Sunday’s 106-94 loss to the Raptors, well before Christmas projections, but still too late to lead the Lakers as in days of yore. Try four seasons too late, which is how long the days of yore have been over in Lakerdom. Nor is this That Kobe. If he will ever get close again—you can just see Jim Buss going, “It’s early, it’s early… isn’t it?”– it’s weeks
LOS ANGELES – Arriving in at LAX for Thanksgiving proved to be entertaining as usual. Kobe Bryant signed his two-year, $48.5 million extension Monday morning, so by the time my plane touched down late Tuesday, the irrational debate and cheap analysis was kicking into a higher gear among Lakers Nation. This group is one of my favorites because its members live in a self-contained universe where there are only two types of humans – those who are Lakers and those who