You can’t do good news/bad news lines about the Lakers any more. Even if there is good news, it comes with bad news, worse news and in this case, really bad news.
But, hey, Kobe Bryant’s back, still looking like Kobe Bryant, sort of! He scored 19 points in Tuesday’s opening game, his first in 10 months. He looked mobile, if not as explosive, but he’ll get some of that back as his legs get stronger.
So much for their good news. In the bad news, Dwight Howard came back with the Houston Rockets and bombed them in a game that wasn’t as close as the 108-90 score.
In the worse news, No. 1 pick Julius Randle broke a bone in his right leg in his 14th NBA minute... that being all coach Byron Scott had let him play before going down in garbage time.... and was lost for the season.
In the really bad news, the Lakes, who didn’t have enough NBA players last season, have fewer now. If Bryant is back, Pau Gasol, Jodie Meeks, Steve Blake and Jordan Farmar, all legitimate starters or rotation players, are gone. If Laker fans forgot the worth of Gasol, the seven-foot three-time All-Star, as he flailed around without Kobe, they remembered Tuesday, watching center Jordan Hill and his small forward-size backup, Ed Davis, try to deal with Howard.
Kobe and Teddy Bear, er, Dwight Howard, discuss philosophical approach to game (Associated Press... [+]
The Lakers used to get their share of breaks--how about the NBA changing the rule that would have let Orlando match their offer to Shaquille O'Neal in 1996?--but fate, and Dwight, are rubbing it in. Howard, who declared "I'm not afraid of Kobe Bryant," after Laker coach Byron Scott suggested he left because of the demands of playing with Kobe--elbowed Bryant in the face, was called for a flagrant foul and, asked about it afterward, said, "That's a stupid question."
"He's a teddy bear," said Bryant, insisting he likes Howard. "You can't help but like him. I really mean that. He's a really nice kid. But when you're competing and you have a goal in mind... certain times we don't see eye to eye."
Or, put another way, Bryant could be seen on the floor, yelling "Soft!" at Howard.
Forget mere humiliation. In the worst news of all for what had been the superstars’ destination of choice since Wilt Chamberlain forced the Philadelphia 76ers to trade him here in 1968, the Lakers can no longer offer their fans anything more certain than blood, sweat and tears this season and next, after which Bryant will be 38.
Before, stars aligned, or lined up. Wilt retired in 1973, followed by Jerry West in 1974, to be followed into town in 1976 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who forced Milwaukee to trade him to the Lakers.
Kareem retired in 1989, followed by Magic Johnson in 1991, followed into town in 1996 by Shaquille O’Neal, who signed as a free agent, and Kobe Bryant, whom GM Jerry West hornswoggled Charlotte out of.
As dire as it looked in the summer of 2007 with Shaq gone and Bryant torching everyone from owner Jerry Buss down to force a trade, they were only months away from acquiring Gasol, making the first of three Finals in a row from 2008-2010 and winning the last two.
Hope didn’t merely spring eternal for the Lakers, it was a way of life. In 2011, a year after beating the Celtics, 4-3, in the 2010 Finals, they traded for Howard, assuming they had landed the latest in their line of all-time great centers.
This one was different. Los Angeles-based agent Dan Fegan warned GM Mitch Kupchak that his client was leery about coming; Dwight had a thing about following in the footsteps of Shaq, a frequent critic.
Anyone in the Lakers’ position with those great centers’ retired numbers on the wall would have gone ahead. Making it a no-brainer--they thought--the new rules would mean taking $30 million less to go to another team. What great center left? Who wouldn’t want to play in Los Angeles, with Bryant, contending for titles?
Howard stunned them with his answer. Actually, by the time he left, his intentions were so clear, Bryant, who had leaned over backward to accommodate him, all but challenged him to go rather than fawn along in the Lakers' presentation.
Happily for the Lakers, they had a fallback plan if Howard left. Unhappily, it didn’t work either.
Almost the entire payroll was coming off their salary cap in 2014, giving them two maximum salary slots, at least one of which they figured to hold to 2015 for Kevin Love, who had eyed the Lakers since leaving UCLA for Minnesota.
For the superstar atop the sundae, they would keep one maximum slot for 2016 and the next great free agent class, headed, possibly by... drumroll... Kevin Durant!
Last season was not only bad but dispiriting. Mike D'Antoni, the coach, was not only the wrong man at the wrong time, and a non-Laker at that, he was the one they had passed over Phil Jackson for. Jeanie and Jim Buss not only decided to extend Bryant, they gave him $27.7 million per. That left only one maximum slot in 2014 with nothing left over to upgrade the roster... meaning they were all but out of the running to land a superstar who would have such a humble supporting cast.
If their basketball people knew 2014 was a long shot with only two big guys –LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony―on the market, ownership looked frenied. The team lurched into a campaign to woo Melo, then had Kupchak hop a plane to Cleveland for a last-minute pitch to James.
Amazingly, the Lakers came close on Anthony (they were never a factor with James), only because Melo is close to Bryant. All the Lakes got out of that was Henry Abbott’s recent ESPN story asserting that free agents won’t come because of Kobe. If winners don't write history, it's written on their behalf so as far as perception goes these days, the Lakers are history.
Love then forced a trade to Cleveland, leaving Al Jefferson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Goran Dragic at the head of the 2015 free agents. All are major pieces to add but none would mean going back to contending for titles.
And if Durant leaves Oklahoma City in 2016, there’s no obvious Laker tie. O’Neal garaged a Mercedes here while playing in Orlando to have something to drive on West Coast trips. Abdul-Jabbar is a UCLA grad. Chamberlain was a beach volleyball enthusiast. Speculation about where KD might go centers around a Washington D.C. homecoming.
Given enough time, the Lakers’ laws of attraction should kick back in. With the league's 280% network TV raise, the salary cap will head to the sky. As one of their people once told me, “Someone is going to take our money.”
The trick is not tying up their money in the interim―as they did with Bryant―and not turning on each other. Jim Buss is a notch above former Clipper owner Donald T. Sterling in local esteem. To reassure the fans, the popular Jeanie, who isn’t close to Jim, has pointed out that she, not he, is in charge.
There’s always the Clippers, not that fans care. The Lakers, who get eight times more internet traffic on local newspaper sites, are still runaway leaders among local teams. A Laker exhbition beat one of the Dodger-Cardinal playoff games.
So there's no question of who has the biggest show in town. Unfortunately, the feature presentation is now "Titanic."
