Ok, so the disaster that was the season undone of the Los Angeles Lakers is now over. It ended pretty much how most fans expected it to, once Kobe Bryant went down with that Achilles injury. Now that the train wreck if finally over, what should Lakers fans, KB8 fans and NBA fans expect? The unexpected, of course.
Now, obviously, I'm no GM. Many people have weighed in on what the Lakers should do or will do. As we all have seen, the Lakers have done pretty much the exact opposite of what basic logic would deem they should have done from the moment they hired Mike D'Antoni. There have been suggestions that the Lakers should/ will amnesty Kobe for financial relief, since they will be heavily penalized under the new luxury tax structure due to take effect next season if they go over the salary cap. This wouldn't be such a bad idea, if not for one inexplicable fact: THIS IS KOBE BRYANT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE, FOLKS! The same Kobe who found the fountain of youth and willed this rag tag bunch of battered bodies, egos and psyches through a season that wasn't supposed to be that tough. The same Kobe who put the franchise on his back and made sure HIS TEAM didn't suffer through the embarrassment of not making the playoffs. The same Kobe who played way more minutes than he should have because there simply was no other choice. The same Kobe that, after tearing his Achilles, got up and walked back to the bench under his own power then walked back to the free throw line, shot and made those free throws and walked back to the bench a second time under his own power! I could go on and on with the "same Kobe" references but I think the point is made. Kobe Bryant IS the Lakers and to amnesty him for cap relief would not only be the biggest PR blunder since the NY Yankees offered Joe Torre a ridiculous 1 year "take it or leave it" deal (or, at the very least, since they decided not to re-hire Phil Jackson), it would also be the biggest slap in the face to the man who helped the franchise to 5 NBA titles. You don't amnesty the best player of his post Jordan generation for ANY reason, not even if it saves the franschise a few million dollars.
You also don't re-sign Dwight Howard. I just don't feel the "leader" vibe from him. Don't get me wrong, D12 is still the best big man in the game when 100% healthy. If the Lakers are looking for a face of the franchise after Kobe retires (sooner than later?), he's not your guy. Dwight has shown he needs another established veteran NOT named Kobe Bryant to be the impact player that he was in Orlando. While it's still a mystery that he has not been able to take advantage of being the little brother to Kobe's big brother, it is no mystery that Howard is not mature enough to take a large market franchise on to greener championship pastures. Although the Lakers front office knows the importance of putting a championship caliber team on the Staples Center floor, watching the Lakers struggle this year should show them that this seasons results would have been about the same without Dwight Howard. Although you don't want to lose a player of Dwight's caliber for nothing in return, they may not even have a choice. That brings me to my next point.
Dwight Howard should spare everyone who has an interest in the Lakers the drama of not living up to a huge contract and sign somewhere else. The LA Experiment did not and will not work. He's not built for the bright lights that a big market team comes with. He showed that in Orlando, and that's not even considered a "big" market city. There's no shame in not being a big market player. Howard is 27 years old and I'm sure once his back heals fully, along with his shoulder and other nagging injuries, he'll be back to playing with the dominance that made him so attractive to the Lakers. But he's not Hollywood material. He's not even Brooklyn material. He might be better suited in Atlanta or even Milwaukee, if they're looking. Cleveland could also be a good fit for him since their biggest star, Kyrie Irivng, is still up and coming. Maybe pairing D12 with a budding superstar can help him with his leadership abilities, thus maturing him to where he can bear the responsibility of carrying a franchise on those broad shoulders of his without the burden of lofty expectations.
But the Lakers can keep everyone on board and try again next season if they do this one thing. It would take an extreme amount of crow eating, but it would be the best thing that they could do to make keeping Howard, Bryant and Nash together for the immediate future make sense. The Lakers have to fire Mike D'Antoni. Listen, big market teams waste millions of dollars every year trying to swing for the fences and when they come up short they have to pay the bill. The Lakers' decision to hire Mike Brown was a mistake but the least they could've done was let him get to the All-Star break to see if the team would gel under his direction. If all else failed, they could've either let him finish the season and fire him if it was a disaster (as it turned out to be anyway) or let Bernie Bickerstaff take over at the midway point and try to steady the ship. While waiting on D'Antoni to be physically able to patrol the sideline, Bernie did a good job of holding the team down, going 4-1 during that brief stretch as interim coach. Needless to say, the Lakers could not have done any worse, aside from missing the playoffs altogether (and that may have been a better result than to see Dwight Howard foul out during an elimination game when he was the only superstar left to defend the pride of a team very short on it). They need a coach that can reign in superstar egos, manage minutes to aging veterans and know when to take responsibility for the teams successes and failures. Too many times, Mike D'Antoni resorted to excuses instead of answers. Regardless of who's playing or not playing, the coach is the leader of the team and he has to lead. Trying to pull rank on a superstar of Kobe's stature isn't easy and if you're the right head coach, it isn't even necessary. D'Antoni never made it to the Finals in Phoenix, even though he enjoyed a measure of playoff success there. He failed miserably in New York with Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire (even though it was pretty much a given that he would) so to think he would have been successful in Los Angeles was a joke from the beginning. He's a point guard's coach (as can be seen by the success that he had in Phoenix with Nash all those years and, to a certain degree, the brief success he had when Jeremy Lin saved New York's season last year while 'Melo and STAT sat out for an extended period of time). With the personnel the Lakers had, they were built to dominate the post and be somewhat of a defensive force in the paint with the 2012-13 version of the twin towers in Howard and Gasol. D'Antoni chose to overlook what he had, tried funnel the offense through Nash and Kobe, wanted Gasol on the perimeter as a facilitator and a shooter with no real role in the offense and, in the process, ran Kobe into the ground until the wheels literally fell off. To me, that's poor job performance. In the real world, that would garner a pink slip and D'Antoni should have gotten his as soon as Kobe crashed to the floor grabbing his Achilles.
But my opinion is neither here nor there. Coaching options are in short supply currently and unless Phil Jackson decides to give coaching another shot (which, reportedly, is not going to happen since he is looking to return to the NBA in a front office role) the Lakers could be faced with another season of unmet expectations. But Lakers management has to take responsibility for their failures as well, in that they chose to put together this aging roster with essentially the wrong coach. The best thing for all invested parties would be for them to at least admit to the coaching failure, take the offseason to rectify that mistake and try one more time. At least then, the onus to perform would squarely be on the team and the right coach.
(SN: In the EXTREMELY RIDICULOUS case that the Lakers do, in fact, amnesty Kobe: If he returns anywhere between 85-100%, I would totally LOVE IT if he signed with the Clippers for the veteran minimum on a 1 year deal, just for the hell of it AND to prove my initial point. You don't amnesty the Black Mamba.)
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