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On the road, against the New Jersey Nets -- that’s where it started. Mitch Kupchak can still recall the details, even now. That’s the type of impact the Los Angeles Lakers’ newest player made on that February night in 2008. “It was dramatic,” recalled Kupchak, the Lakers general manager. Pau Gasol joined the Lakers a few days earlier in a trade with the Memphis Grizzlies. In his debut in purple and gold, the 7-foot Spaniard started and poured in 24 points on 10-of-15 shooting to go along with 12 rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes against the Nets. The Lakers won that game by 15 points, foreshadowing a river of success that soon followed. It seems so long ago today, with Gasol having departed the Lakers after six and a half seasons to join the Chicago Bulls over the summer. His new team will host his old one on Christmas Day, the first meeting between the two squads since Gasol left Los Angeles. “It’s going to be hyped up,” said Lakers reserve guard Nick Young, “because Kobe’s been talking about this since summertime, when I asked him about Pau.” But as he reminisced about Gasol’s initial days with the Lakers, Kupchak gazed up at their past two championship banners gracing the wall of the team’s practice facility in El Segundo, California -- the ones from 2008-09 and 2009-10. “We would not have those banners if it wasn’t for Pau,” Kupchak said. Nor, he added, would the Lakers have appeared in the NBA Finals at the end of Gasol’s first season with the team, when they fell to the Boston Celtics in six games. "From Day 1, he was terrific for this organization," Kupchak said. Gasol helped turn around a franchise still searching for an identity after Shaquille O'Neal left in 2004 via trade to Miami. In the first three seasons after O’Neal’s departure, the Lakers missed the playoffs once and twice failed to reach the second round. After Gasol arrived, they reached three straight NBA Finals. Beyond that, Kobe Bryant’s winning percentage in the three seasons after O’Neal left and before Gasol arrived was .520, but with Gasol by his side, that percentage rose to .689, including 13 playoff series wins. Gasol proved to be an ideal player for Phil Jackson’s triangle offense, a smart, skilled and unselfish big man who was formidable on his own but even more potent once he teamed up with fellow 7-footer Andrew Bynum to form a tough “Twin Towers” tandem. Yet Gasol’s legacy with the Lakers isn't without its complications. For as great as his early years were in L.A., his latter years were riddled with injuries and mixed results. Ultimately, Gasol took less money for a fresh start, accepting a three-year, $22 million deal from the Bulls while spurning a richer offer from the Lakers and a plea from Bryant to stay. “As much as I went through what I went through here the last couple of years, it kind of wore me out and drained me in different ways,” Gasol told reporters when the Bulls were in Los Angeles last month to face the Clippers. “And it was still difficult to make that call. Leave the city, the team and a franchise with the fans behind me. “I had just a gut feeling. I knew that I had to move on. I needed something different. I needed to be in a different position where I could be assimilated, where I could be motivated every single day. Where I could be rejuvenated. Where I could win and strive for greatness again.” Gasol, now in his 13th season, has indeed rejuvenated his career. He’s averaging 18 points a game, his best mark since 2010-11, and 11.4 rebounds a game, a career-high. He’s also blocking 2.0 shots per game, just shy of his career-high (2.1). “He felt he needed a rebirth,” Kupchak said. “Sometimes that happens to players, especially veteran players, and clearly that’s been the case with him. He’s playing great. I’m happy for him, for his fresh start, which is what he wanted.”  That was especially true after then-NBA commissioner David Stern vetoed a 2011 three-team trade that would have made Chris Paul a Laker and Gasol a Houston Rocket. Gasol was never quite the same after that.
“His last two, three years with us were wrought with rumor and anxiety,” Kupchak said. “I think it was really hard on him from that one moment when we had a deal that fell through. “From that point forward, it was just hard -- and understandably so -- on him. Very hard. He did not want that to continue.” In his book, "Pau Gasol: Life. Vida.," Gasol wrote that he was proud of how he handled the aftermath of that 2011 trade. “I was able to put everything in perspective and remind myself that I was fortunate to have played for the Lakers, to have won two championships, and to be part of this team,” he wrote. “I’ve had an incredible career, up to this point, and nobody can take that away from me, regardless of what happens tomorrow.” He also revealed last month that during negotiations the Lakers offered him a no-trade clause, which only six tenured players have, including Bryant. Kupchak declined to go into specifics about those negotiations, but he added that Gasol “wanted to pick a place and be in that place with some security.” By that point, though, the damage was done -- and Gasol was worn out in L.A. It still stings for the Lakers to have seen Gasol walk in free agency without them getting anything in return, which happened the summer before with another talented center, Dwight Howard. "Maybe if things would have happened in a different way maybe things would have worked out differently, but I don’t know," Gasol said during his visit to L.A. last month. "You've got to stick to what happened and reality, and now I just have to focus on the present." That's all the Lakers can do, too. They can only appreciate what Gasol brought them -- banners.
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