Benny Blanca
I agree with you.
We might have to take on a bad contract to bring Ron Ron in.
Hey, we're on the clock in terms of winning.
Why not bring on 1 contract to get Ron Ron?
I don't think it would hurt us anymore than how we hurt ourselves with the Vlad Rad deal and giving Luke 6 yrs.
Jerry Buss, say hello to luxury tax for a little bit. All of this will begin to clear out for the most part at the end of the decade.

With going the Kobe route, we have to look at contending before 2010 so therefore we have to align ourselves properly.

Luke and Vlad Rad will be on the books for a long time but there will be chances to get folks off the books early like what Ainge did with WALLY S and ISIAH did with FRANCIS.
It comes around.

Get the RON RON deal done.
Or atleast get to the front of the line for him.

I think Golden State with all those young players are ahead of us for Kevin unless he does not want to go play with Baron.
They have Brandan Wright, Patrick O-Bryant and they can throw in a Biedrins to make it happen.
We can't do nothing with that youth package. Socks is not enough unless KG says behind closed doors I want L.A. since I can't go play with the Suns.

Jon K,
"It must be hard to be known so well by others who you don't know."

That is part of the problem with sports. We fans like to think we know the players, because we read about them in the paper every day, and watch them on TV for up to a couple of hundred hours a year. But in probaby 95% of the cases, we really don't have a clue what the players are really like. Kobe, who has always been very private, definitely falls into that 95%. When we think we know them, and they do something that doesn't match the (almost always) idealized picture we have in our minds, then we get confused, and start looking for other entities to blame for the problem. The reality is that we don't know these individuals. The more we stick to just appreciating what they do on the court/field/rink/track, and stop projecting our desired image of them onto them, the better off we are.

Miguel

I like that trade post.
It's realistic and not in dream land

James Posey might be available.
I'm sure Bartelstein wants the mid level or higher for him but if he comes for OUR price this would be a steal.
This guy has the warrior's heart that a lot of our Laker role players don't have.

Giving Up On Posey?
Jul 7 - "James Posey is acrobatic, energy, will make threes, make cuts to the basket, but he's not a playmaker, that's not his strength, has never been his strength," Pat Riley said. "He's not one of those guys that can play pick-and-roll basketball. He doesn't have a real high offensive skill level.
"That's not a criticism; that's a reality."

Agent Mark Bartelstein said he does not sense the Heat giving up on his client.

"Everything I've heard is how much they treasure James and how much they want him back," he said. "We're talking every day." -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Exhelodrvr,

Yeah, some of the best taco's are in Mexico. Best and cheap. You cross over the border into TJ and you get three for $1. Those three al pastor for a buck were easily the highlight of my trip to Mexico. What are the best tacos in California? I'm in Indiana, and the Mexican food here is particularly sad. Luckly we do have a mexican grocery store that also has a resturant insie that serves real mexican food.

What is the name of that famous taco resturant in Costa Mesa, by the DMV?

TACO MESA! That's it. They have a killer blackened chicken taco...totally wonderful...

Go Lakers!

Wes

he Kobe Show,

"That is your job. And as hard as you say it is why are other teams making moves to get better? Teams are making small and very significant moves. Mitch is just useless because I know what he is going to do."

Kobe made peace, I guess you're right nothing will happen. Just like the summary of last season, we didn't get Al Harrington, C-Webb and then Jason Kidd. Previous to that we missed Ron Artest and remember that summer wherein every player chosen by Mitch, they always went to other teams. Many people here give him credit for getting Farmar, Luke, Turiaf and Bynum which are fairly alright but where are the two pieces of mid level stars or superstars that Lakers need to contend. It seems that the new strategy is to wait for KG before making any kind of personeel move. Ok, is that a good management strategy put all your eggs in one basket?

And for Jerry Buss, isn't it all this noise from Kobe started when he was asking for Jerry West to be our F/O consultant? Day 7 JW is free from Memphis management what our decision? Is it continue the plan to make your son the new King while the laker fans suffer in disgusts? What's your next strategy? Ah another one, put more new bloggers here in this Lakers Blog to defend the management as a counter flow to Kobe haters and F/O haters. That will be new Lakers strategies no more basketball just purely ALL TALK, NO ACTION.

Just like Zackee another version of Laker fan, we will not stop until we see changes.

A lot of fans were confused by Kobe's vague statements during his "apology" press conference. Well, let's clear things up a bit.

1) Why did Kobe apologize to Mitch Kupchak and not Jerry Buss?

Because the truth is Kupchak is not responsible for the Lakers' lack of action in the last 3 years... Buss is. Buss hold the keys th the Lakers' safe, and no trade or deal will be finalized without his approval... and frankly, Kupchak doesn't have the influence and power that Jerry West had.

West was a Hall-of-Famer and part of the Lakers for 20 years before Buss came around, so when he spoke, Buss listened. Buss pretty much let West run the Lakers without interruption. However, Kupchak came into the Lakers front office under Buss' reign, and so he doesn't have the swaying power that will part Buss with his money and turn the Lakers into a champion.

But wait... didn't Kupchak sign Karl Malone and Gary Payton?.... Yes, because they agreed to come to the Lakers for chump change.

The Busses would rather hold on to Andrew Bynum than finalize any big-name trade because they care about money more than winning. If the Lakers maintain the status quo and don't spend money to get any big name player, they will still make tons of money next year because fans will always want to see Kobe Bryant do the amazing things he does on the court. Thats why the Lakers were still able to retain most of their season-ticket holders after they got bounced from the playoffs by the Suns.

2) Why is Kobe still demanding to be traded?

Kobe cares more about winning more than anything else. Thats why he publicly demanded to be traded... because he realized that the Busses care more about money than winning. Kobe wanted West back because he has the power to convince Buss to make big trades and sign big names. The only other entity that can do that is... us, the fans. Without Kobe, the Lakers will lose most of their fans, and without the fans, the Busses will lose money.

Kobe apologized to Kupchak (and supposedly to Bynum as well) which is all we needed to do. If he goes one step further and agrees to stay, the Busses will see no reason to spend money on better players, and Kobe's greatest years will be spent on a mediocre team.

So, Kobe should not rescind his demand to be traded until Buss finalizes a big name trade, because if he says he'll stay with the Lakers before a big trade occurs, he has lost, and so have we.

Hi LongTime Laker Fan :
This is in reference to your response to my piece about how teams improve. You offered very thoughtful rebuttal of my article and your knowledge about basketball showed in the historical perspective you rested some of the rebuttals on.
Some of your viewpoints and mine are different. It is healthy though, since both of us are being subjective in our evaluations. I appreciate the fact that we disagree and you do not resort to name calling and other uncultured behavior like those I sometimes see or read.
One comment I would like to explain is in the fans involvement in the draft. I am not thinking of pooling the fans on the draft night ("the 22nd pick belongs to the Lakers. They have 5 minutes"). I am thinking of sometihing in line with fans balloting process fo the All-star games. That the process would take place during the early part of the year during some home games.

The whole exercise is to make the front office think "outside the box" and not to exclusively look at players who appear on TV. The beauty of this thought is that the collective wisdom of the fans is highly more impressive than the scouts from the front office. At minimum, the fans can make the front office aware of other players. It is the front office's responsibility to make the decision. Information is always good.
Remember John Keynes. "I change my mind when my information changes"

Good luck. We will have the occasion to exchange ideas in the not too distant future.

summer League!

SunYue 9 assists on second half against Conley, Lowry, Gay!

SunYue showed excellent ball handling skills played pinot guard the whole second half, excellent court vision and very good defense (blocked Conley's fast break lay up). The kid is tall and athletic, he is the same size as Rudy Gay. SunYue was guarding Mike Conley most of the time and did a good job! WOW! Easily a point forward in Lakers traingle but can also play point guard.

Memphis also looks very promising next year, Conley, Lowry, Gay, Gasosl, Warrick, Miller. Rudy Gay is awesome! Conley and Lowry played together and Memphis were super quick with Rudy Gay finsihing! This team is a playoff contender if they get to keep Gasol!

Yi JianLian looked terrific as well.

Aldridge has been hiitting mid range jumpshot like lay ups and Oden so strong inside..

NBA TV!

Ajax,

Tito's Tacos. Good stuff.

AK

There are only three teams better than the Lakers! Spurs, Suns and Mavs. At the start of the season last year before injury took its toll, Lakers were better than the rest of the western conference. With Smush out, Kwame almost out, Bynum third year, Farmar second year and Wlaton gets better every year as we all know. Odom gets more comfortable every year plus our best player in the league! We are already a much better team than last year!

In the West the big threes are .. Spurs Mavs and Suns
the next... Lakers, Jazz, Rockets, Nuggets
then we have the Griz, Warriors, Wolves(Garnett, Korey Brewer, Randy Foye)
then the Clippers and Kings
Portland will take three years before they get to the playoffs. Seattle will take four five years!

In two years I expect Nash to slow down.. which means Lakers and Jazz will take over. Mc Gardy and Iverson will age as well therefore you can count Rockets and Nuggets to get on the top.

Lakers are in a position to be dominant in two years! This coming season will show what the Lakers can do with their young establishing roster. We could have gotten more playoff experience if we did not have Kwame and Smush the last two years. By thw way Crittenton and SunYue fills up the need of athletic long versatile perimeter players we need.

We will have a superstar in Braynt, veteran leadership of Odom and Walton, young athletic talented roster in Bynum, Farmar, Crittenton, SunYue. Role players in Mihm, Gasol, Turiaf, Evans and Vlad. Cook and Sasha are really the odd man out.

So with the winning performance earlier last seasom minus the Smush, Kwame, Cook and Sasha this is a new Laker team..

There is already talent at the point guard (Farmar, Crittenton, SunYue ) and Center position (Bynum, Mihm, Gasol).

What we need is a young athletic small forward... to back up Walton and Vlad. I just saw undrafted 6'8" athletic SF Brandon Wallace playing in the summer league for the Celtics. If he does not get signed he would be a great project at that position. He penetrates, shoots and defends well. If he is not invited in the Celtics summer camp, our Laker should invite him.

hobbitmage- it's all subjective. my original point was that kobe shouldn't air his displeasure in public. do it behind closed doors. nothing more, nothing less. i think it's getting a little too personal, but i recognize it's my fault, so, if i offended you, i apologize. and i have chosen to take the high road because of what DEAR said in his post earlier. he made me realize that we are all after the same goal, and that is to be successful. it's ok to disagree. but, if one wants to sling mud, i can get down and dirty as anybody and i won't hesitate to spit venom. but what i am passionate about is forming an opinion independent of talk radio or any other message that is put out there in the media. i don't want to hear that same bullshit over and over again.

willie,

I get what you're saying about Kobe keeping matters behind closed doors, but the bottom line is if Kobe didn't demand to be traded publicly, Laker fans wouldn't be as upset with the F.O. as they are right now.

Jerry Buss has refused to spend money to get quality players because people will continue to watch and attend Laker games as long as Kobe's there. Now that everyone knows that Kobe wants to leave, Laker fans are pressing the F.O. to do something this off-season to improve the team.

Kobe DOES want to be a Laker for life, but not if it means playing on a mediocre team. That's why he publicly demanded to be traded. He could have just made his demands behind closed doors and said nothing to the public, and then one day we would wake up and find that Kobe was traded to another team or opted out and signed with someone else. Now that he has the fans demanding that the F.O. does something, there is a chance that Buss will spend some money to get a big name player in L.A. Nobody has more power than the fans, and now that we know what is at stake, we must insist that Buss stops sitting on his money and allows Kupchak to make the trades and signings that will make the Lakers a contender again.

Since Jerry West's departure, Buss has refused to pay big bucks to bring star players to the Lakers, and if the trend continues, he will be the new Donald Sterling of the NBA and the Lakers and Clippers will be indistinguishable. Kobe doesn't want that to happen. Do you?

gunner24 and KLBeast,
I would just like you both to know that changing your names to gunner24!# or !KLBEAST! is utterly stupid.

If you ever have taken any computer science class, you would know that adding a symbol or extra character to your name is just useless.

Any credible blocker would detect the base name and any derivation of those names.

Sorry for bustin' your bubble.

lol.

Staples24:

"There is already talent at the point guard (Farmar, Crittenton, SunYue ) and Center position (Bynum, Mihm, Gasol)."

I don't know about you, but I would not call a player 'talented' if they wouldn't start on any other team in the NBA... and none of those six guys you mentioned would start. Sure, some of them have potentail, but none of them have done anything that makes me say 'I want that guy on the Lakers."

Could somebody tell Jeanie Buss to go to Las Vegas, so he can bring Phil Jackson and watch SUNYUE his 40th draft pick playing heavy mintues!

Does Phil even know SunYue exists?

i have spoken with Kobe during the camp in Loyola Marymount and he said that "deep in his heart he would not leave the lakers much more with the life in LA LA Land". he will die as a Laker...got it kobe haters

exhelodrvr,

re: me & the front office.

The acquisition of Vlad & the retaining of "Half-Pipe" began to make me doubt them.
The failure to acquire Jason Kidd given the performance of Bynum was disheartening.
Finding out that management had picked Vlad, to me a duplicate of Cook, while passing
on Boozer, Artest, put me on the presipise Finding out that we passed on Baron
Davis && couldn't make room for Scottie Pippen put me over the edge. Scottie Pippen???

Put the entire Front Office in Burger King! Ninnies the lot of them!

We all tend to forget what this team accomplished a year ago when healthy !

Lee,

Have you actually seen either Derrick Byars or Sun Yue play?

I watched Derrick Byars in the NCAA Tourney last year and he definitely has some talent and
would have been a decent pick. I watched Sun Yue in the summer league game against
Memphis, and I think he's also pretty good. He guarded Mike Conley and did a fairly good
job of it and dished out 9 assists in a little over a half. I think Sun Yue will be the better
NBA player.

ex:

You would have to say that the glass was really half empty last year. lol. Too much reality!

In retrospect, I was obviously one of the more vocal proponents of last year’s roster and team. Notwithstanding the injuries, I really blame the front office and coaching staff for the disaster that was last year. In my mind, our demise was sealed by two major management mishaps: Phil refusing to bench and punish Smush for his anti-team behavior and antics, which led to him losing control of the team, and Jerry and Mitch for not pulling the trigger on the Jason Kidd trade, which was the last straw that sent Kobe ballistic and destroyed any hope of regaining the chemistry and momentum of the first half of the season.

Add the circus that the front office turned into at season’s end and Kobe’s impetuous tirade and trade demand and a bad half season turned into a full blown franchise threatening crisis. Jerry Buss obviously realizes this and has now taken over the reins of the organization and is hell bent not only on not trading Kobe but also making the smart moves to surround him with a cast of players that would enable the Lakers to compete for an NBA championship. Kobe also realizes that he overreacted and has subsequently calmed down and taken a more productive and patient approach, while still not lessening his demand that Buss improve the team.

To answer you directly, Bynum may not be the next Kareem but I still believe he will become a superstar center in the NBA. In the same vein, I still believe that Farmar has the potential to become an outstanding NBA point guard, although Phil basically wasted an entire year of his development with his stubborn and ill-advised support of Smush. The biggest disappointment in my mind was Kwame Brown, who continued to prove he was soft and injury prone. I think he basically quit on the team when he learned that he was going to be traded as part of the Jason Kidd deal. Phil’s second biggest mistake in my mind was taking the starting job away from Bynum and giving it to Kwame, regardless of what Mike T. may think.

Bottom line, I don’t share the now universal belief that our early success last year was an illusion or that we don’t have a lot of the components to enable us to compete for the title. We were probably never one player away from being an elite team but without the front office management and coaching errors, this team could still have won 55 games. If we could replay the season with a couple of variable changes such as not starting Smush and giving up on Andrew after the first month and not suffering the abnormal wave of injuries, I would still bet that this team could have won 55 games.

More importantly, I think the current crisis has already helped improve the situation in the front office. So far, I have no complaints over the moves they have made or not made. Jerry knows he has to find a way to upgrade the team’s talent to keep Kobe happy and the franchise among the best. I also think that Phil learned a lot from last year’s debacle and will do a much better job next year of coaching the team. My hope is that we can somehow add Derek Fisher and Ron Artest to the existing corps of players. With an improved Andrew Bynum and healthy Luke Walton and Lamar Odom, Kobe and the Lakers would then have a team that could seriously compete for an NBA championship.

Tom

Vman,

"
If you get a standing O every time you walk outside, you don't develop like the rest of us. It's safe to say all the attention they garner gets them used to dominating their air space, some of them complete with a posse of air traffic controllers. The star part is meant to be seen not known.
"
"
I'd pick Kobe on my 5. I don't need to know more than that about him.
"

Vman, you are a wisened veteran who does not confuse talent with heroism. But most younger people cannot make that distinction. If not Kobe, then who will be their hero? Kobe hasn't the right to be like Joe Camel -- he has an inherent responsibility to society and its youth. If he's going to be seen as a hero, he must forge himself into one!

LAKERS TRADE FOR YI!

Not really, but it might not be a bad idea. Yi at power forward and Lamar at small forward? China will not allow Yi to sign with Milwaukee. They would pull him back to play in China. The Bucks will be forced to trade him to one of his preferred teams, which are:

“Seven or eight teams could be on Yi's wish list, but it's unclear whether any of those teams is pursuing a trade actively. Those teams are the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors and, possibly, the Philadelphia 76ers.’

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=629445

This is another situation like Derek Fisher, where the Lakers may have an advantage over any other team. Maybe that was why Jerry Buss went to China?

Tom

I heard Bucher on ESPN today, he said some things that actually make some sense and helped to put things in perspective. He said all the major moves will revolve around KG. The Lakers are waiting to see if they can still make something work - if not, then we move on to JO and determine if that is enough improvement, if not - then a Kobe trade would become much more likely. Once McHale get's back from vacation and arrives in Vegas for the summer league games, either this weekend or early in the week - things should start to happen. The next three weeks could tell us alot. He went on to mention possible Artest deals - saying that the Sucramento wants young talent, draft picks and an expiring contract (all three are way too much for Ron-Ron). He identified several destinations, and the Lakers were not one of them.