In The Refrigerator

The Boston Lakers

3 Members of the Celtics’ last championship team conspire to bring a new dynasty to… Los Angeles??!!?

Did anyone else think it was ironic that the 3 teams helping the Lakers in yesterday’s rumor du jour were run by Celtic icons?  Kevin McHale in Minnesota, Larry Bird in Indiana, and Danny Ainge in Boston.  The deal fell apart late in the day when Ainge decided that he wouldn’t part with Al Jefferson.  Maybe he just got jealous that Bird and McHale were siding with Magic and trying to play him as the sucker. 

As improbable as it seemed a week ago, I now think that Kevin Garnett is coming to Los Angeles.  He nixed the trade to Boston.  Although he’s never pulled a Kobe and gone on the record asking for a trade, “insiders” have been saying for months that KG wants to come to LA.  He’s a year from his opt-out, so now’s the time for him to exert his leverage.  If he wants to land in LA, he can make it happen. 

If I’m Kobe, and I’m serious about wanting to win, I’m on the phone to KG every morning **begging** him to come play with me.  Kobe and Garnett playing for Phil Jackson in LA is the best chance that Kobe has in this lifetime of winning another championship.  If Kobe still wants out after the Lakers acquire KG, Kobe will lose whatever credibility he has left with the fans. 

If I’m the Lakers, I do whatever it takes to get Garnett.  Trade the entire roster except Kobe if necessary.  Pay the luxury tax.  Take on a bad contract (Marko Jaric, anyone?).  KG is a superstar.  With two superstars, you can build a champion.  It’s much easier to find pieces to fit around 2 superstars.  Look at the Lakers last championship teams.  They won with AC Green, Horace Grant, and Robert Horry starting at power forward. 

Laker management needs to go the distance on this one.  Get it done, even if it feels like they’re over paying.  Remember 1996?  Jerry West renounced all his free agents, dumped the salaries of Anothny Peeler and George Lynch for nothing, and traded his starting center (Vlade Divac) to clear the cap space to sign Shaq.  Of course, the brilliance of Jerry West is that he netted the draft rights to Kobe in the process. 

Note that Jermaine O’Neil is **not** a superstar.  He’s a star player, like Lamar, maybe a bit better.  If you acquire him, you’d better find a way to keep Lamar in town so you have 3 pillars to support the team.  You empty the truck for Garnett, not for J. O’Neil. 

Phil Jackson: Step Up To The Plate

It’s time for this absurd standoff between Kobe Bryant and Lakers management to end.  It’s bad for everyone.  It’s bad for Kobe.  It’s bad for the Lakers.  And it’s bad for the league.  Has any other athlete ever fallen so far and then risen back to the top the way Kobe has?  Only to jeopardize his newly re-achieved global popularity by acting so immature?  Nuh uh. 

It’s bad for the Lakers.  They were going to have a hard enough time improving the roster this summer before Kobe went ballistic. Now, they’ve got so little leverage in the trade market, I’m willing to bet other teams are laughing at their misfortune.  Do you think Indiana is going to cave and do a deal for Jermaine O’Neil that doesn’t include both Lamar and Bynum.  Nuh uh. No way.  Not now. 

It’s bad for the league. Its premier franchise is a laughingstock. Its premier gate attraction is embarrassing himself.  Can you imagine Dr. J, Magic, or Michael Jordan behaving the way Kobe has this summer?  Nuh uh.  No way.  Not ever. 

Phil Jackson is supposedly the greatest coach in NBA history.  Well, it’s time for him to prove it.  He needs to step up and earn his $10 million annual salary.  In one sense, this situation is his fault.  If he had mediated a truce between Kobe and Shaq, instead of simply siding with Shaq and throwing Kobe under the bus, Shaq would still be with the Lakers and the Lakers would still be winning championships. 

I don’t know why Phil never stepped to the plate back then, but he has a chance to redeem himself now.  Phil, you need to talk some sense into Kobe. Settle him down.  Get him in a room with Dr. Buss and Mitch Kupchack. Drug him, if you have to.  Teach him to meditate.  Do whatever it takes to get Kobe back in the fold.  If you can do that, and you can teach Kobe to be a better teammate so that he elevates his peers instead of decimates them, you will truly be the greatest coach in NBA history. 

Kevin Garnett to LA in 3 team deal?

As improbable as it seems, KG may wind up in LA after all.  On the Loose Cannons talk radio show late in the week, Sonny Vaccaro stated forcefully that a deal is in the works that will reshape the Lakers.  It may be a Kobe trade, it may be a shake up in the front office, it may be a deal for a second superstar.  He wasn't specific.  But he was clear that it will happen in the next two weeks. 

Earlier in the show, Mychal Thompson passed on the rumor of a 3 team deal that would land KG in LA.  The Lakers would send Lamar Odom, Andrew Bynum, and Kwame Brown to Indiana.  Indiana would send Jermaine O'Neil and Ike Diogu to Minnesota.  Minnesota would send KG to LA.  Although they didn't mention this on the radio, I would expect Minnesota to get a draft choice or two in the deal to balance things out. 

The deal certainly makes sense for the Lakers.  A pairing of Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett would put them in the upper tier of western conference teams, especially if they re-sign Luke Walton and get a veteran point guard with the mid-level exception.  The deal also seems to make sense for Indiana and Minnesota.  Indiana gets the package they've been holding out for in exchange for Jermaine O'Neil.  Minnesota gets a superstar to replace Kevin Garnett (O'Neil) and a once promising young big in Diogu. 

Meanwhile, Rick Bucher was on the Mason and Ireland talk radio show stating definitively that Kobe has played his last game in a Laker jersey.  The standoff between Kobe and the Lakers has become personal, he reported, and implied that Kobe will sit out the coming season rather than play for the Lakers. 

The LA Times reported this morning that Kobe met with Mitch Kupchack yesterday for an hour at the Lakers El Segundo practice facility. Ironically, Andrew Bynum was working out at the facility while Kobe was there.  The article reports that Bynum and Bryant didn't speak.  Can you imagine the conversation, if they  did?  Perhaps the best thing that could happen for the Lakers would be if Bynum got mad and beat the hell out of Bryant.  This summer might be playing out differently if Bynum had shown a consistent competitive fire.  Do you remember when Bynum dunked over Shaq in his rookie year? 

Kobe Traded to Miami, Reunited with Shaq

According to sources deep inside the Lakers blogosphere, the Lakers have reached a secret agreement to send Kobe Bryant to Miami in exchange for Dwyane Wade and James Posey.  The deal will be consummated on draft day and will also involve the teams swapping first round draft choices. 

The move will satisfy Bryant’s demand to be traded to a contender and will simultaneously net the Lakers a superstar to replace him.  Wade is 3 ½ years younger than Bryant and nearly as well regarded, both as a marquee player and gate attraction. 

The deal will reunite Kobe with his erstwhile partner in arms and nemesis, Shaqille O’Neal.  The star duo won three championships in a row at the start of the millennium.  Their bickering, in-fighting, and eventual divorce was one of the most chronicled sports stories of our generation.

The two have publicly reconciled, starting with a hug at mid-court before a Christmas Day game between the Heat and Lakers.  During his recent spate of talk radio appearances, Kobe stated that he and Shaq are “cool”.  They’ve bonded over the birth of their daughters (who were reportedly delivered six minutes apart) and their now mutual disgust with Lakers management and ownership. 

Other members of the Lakers championship run are rumored to be preparing for a comeback in Miami.  Rick Fox was seen working out at a South Beach gym  and Slava Medvendenko, on his web site slavamedevac.com, stated “I play for free to have chance with Kobe and Shaq again – Strength and Honor, Slava…”  Apparently the only thing the 2002 championship team ever agreed on was that Gladiator was a good movie.

As I'm sure you’ve guessed by now, this post is a work of fiction and completely groundless.  The author opines, however, that it is just as credible as 99% of the trade rumors circulating the Internet this summer.  And you have to admit, it would be fun to see Kobe and Shaq together again!

Strength & Honor,

- Hersh

Theatre of the Absurd

They are more entertaining than any reality TV show, more thrilling than any summer Hollywood blockbuster, and more dysfunctional than any daytime soap.  As they say, you just can’t make this s__t up!  Ladies and Gentlemen, your Los Angeles Lakers:

• The Wealthy Owner.  He's a doctor, but not a medical doctor.  He made his money buying and selling real estate, but his real passion is keeping the company of long legged call girls who are 20 years younger than his youngest daughter.  When the s__t hits the fan, he’s off to Italy for a vacation.

• The Retired Star.  He is the greatest point guard to have ever played the game.  His smile lights up the city from the beaches to the mountains.  He is loved by all… Oh, and his post-game ritual involved sex in the locker room Jacuzzi with as many women as he could fit…  Showtime, baby!

• The Elder Statesman.  He built two generations of championship teams. His silhouette adorns the very ball with which the game is played.  He is universally praised and admired.  But he found the games so stressful, he couldn’t watch.  He chose, instead, to drive the LA freeways to relax.  How much of a freaking head case do you need to be to find the LA freeways RELAXING?

• The Big Police Detective.  The franchise’s former megastar center.  380 pounds of childlike exuberance, he chases down gay bashers and makes citizen’s arrests for fun.  Now exiled to Miami, he plays for the franchise’s former megastar coach who was once the inspiration for a Kurt Russell character in a major Hollywood motion picture (slicked back hair and all).

• Big Chief Triangle.  He’s a coach.  He’s a shaman.  He decorates the team’s inner sanctum with dream catchers and medicine wheels.  Yet he’s enlightened enough to rip his players in the media and compare their intelligence to that of earthworms...  Oh, and he lives with the owner’s daughter!

• Butterfingers. He’s living proof of Michael Jordan’s fallibility.  Built like Adonis, he stands a better chance of finding a cake to throw in a teammate’s face at 2 AM than he does of catching a teammate’s pass in the post when it counts.

• The Free Agent.  He’s as American as apple pie, but his father’s a 2 time NBA champion / ex-dead head hippie with a speech impediment turned nationally renowned broadcaster.  “Throw it down, Luke, throw it down!”  I wish the stories linking him romantically to Britney Spears were true.  It might keep him in LA.

• The Space Cadet.  He grew up in worn torn Serbia.  His jumpers, when they fall, arc through the air like mortar rounds.  When they don’t, they crumble to the ground like bricks.  He may be lacking something upstairs.  The best lie he could come up with for injuring his shoulder snowboarding was that he slipped on ice when he went for a coffee!

• The Owner’s Daughter.  She wants the coach to make her an honest woman.  She once posed nude in Playboy  (to get her father’s attention?).  And she designed the team’s Sunday white uniforms.  Is she the glue that keeps this dysfunctional train wreck together?

• The Dynasty Killer.  He’s the greatest ballplayer this side of Pluto.  He makes scoring 50 routine.  His 81 points against Toronto was the best individual athletic performance of this generation, maybe ever.  He sells more jerseys in China than Yao Ming.  He’d be a first-ballot Hall of Famer if he retired tomorrow, but his plaque in Springfield might read: Worst Teammate Ever.

• The Cupcake.  Right now, he’ll be remembered as the GM who traded the Most Dominent big man Ever.  If he doesn’t pull a rabbit out of his hat this summer, he may go down in history as the GM who traded away an entire dynasty.

Stay tuned, folks.  The NBA draft is coming up on June 28!