Whither Kobe?

I'm a big Lakers fan and always have been. When my wife and I lived in the Boston area, I intentionally kept my Lakers license plate holder. We went to the yearly Lakers-Celtics game where my wife would ask if we were going to get out of there alive as I was wearing plenty of Laker gear. I'll always remember going to the last game the Lakers played at the old Boston Garden. Nick van Excel drained a 3-point shot to win the game. The Gahden was very quiet, except for the few of us wearing purple-and-gold.

I won't go all the way through Laker history, but we are clearly in a down cycle. When the Kobe-Shaq window closed, it shut hard. Whether you believe the Lakers' owner, who said they traded Shaq because he didn't want to pay Shaq the maximum salary that he wanted, or the press that claimed that Kobe went to ownership and said that he would bolt if Shaq was re-signed, the Lakers did not get full value for Shaq and are now in a bad way. They are over the salary cap, so they can't really acquire a great free agent. They don't have many good players, besides Kobe, and the ones they have are losing trade value because they've had off-season surgeries. In other words, they are fucked for a while.

So, the latest tiff started when Kobe suggested after this season that he's frustrated that the team's not particularly good and he wants to play with some better guys. OK, fair enough, though the media's not really the best place to be airing that kind of shit. Then, it morphs into Kobe suggesting that Jerry West (an all-time Laker and NBA great who was their general manager during their recent success) come back as a 'consultant' to help the team make trades, etc. A couple of days later, some guys who cover the Lakers start writing stories saying that if Kobe doesn't like things they should just ship his ass out. Kobe feels that all these stories are being planted by Lakers management and asks to be traded (and soon retracts it). Christ.

The bottom line is this. Kobe is one of the three best players in the league. The Lakers could never get anywhere close to equal value if they traded him (see the Shaq trade) and would suck for years to come. Theoretically, the could get enough draft picks to rebuild (assuming that Mitch Kupchak, their current GM, would know what to do with the picks).

My feeling is that Kobe isn't going anywhere. It would cost the Lakers too much on the court and in the stands to trade him. Hopefully, everyone is pissed enough that they'll do something to make the team better. Otherwise, there's gonna be a lot of bitching and moaning next year.