Dwight Howard is really bad, Pau Gasol is getting victimized. Once Nash is back they'll get better but not championship caliber. They made a quick coaching change and it's obviously not the answer. They've made player changes and it's obviously not the answer. With the giant tax coming in a few years, they're going to need to make the payroll work out now, and they are pressing to get there, but they're trying to move too many pieces too quickly.

Not to mention that Kobe has probably called his entire team out for their play even though he takes every game winner they have and hasn't hit one since 2010.

Without Kobe and Howard this team wouldbe the Wizards. Kobe cant do it all.

Yeah, Dwight's not been bad, but he's definitely not performed at the level they hoped. I don't know how well he fits into D'Antoni's scheme.

Frankly I don't know how Kobe can be blamed here. Kobe's the only thing keeping the ship from sinking. Nash is injured, which isn't helping, because he's the only guy on the roster that can run D'Antoni's scheme worth a damn. Gasol is just a poor fit.

Would have liked to see Phil Jackson run the triangle with Nash, Kobe and Dwight though. That would have been sick, especially with Dwight; since it's less up-tempo than D'Antoni's scheme, it encourages better defensive play, which plays to one of his two main strengths. And then he can do what Shaq did as the post player in the scheme.

Also, confirmed, Jerry Buss is actually a 12-year-old playing fantasy basketball. ESPN "sources" reporting, so it couldn't possibly be a thoroughly unsubstantiated rumor started by an anonymous fan on a relatively obscure forum in the bowels of the surface net.

I dunno...

But it's sort of fun watching my Laker fan friends crack! xD

They should be fine. They've got time to hop on the 49ers bandwagon, which should distract them into mid-to-late January at least. That ought to be enough time to know if the Lakers will be back or if this whole thing is as big a dumpster fire as it appears

I think it's really fun to watch superteams suck because they pay so much that guys don't work hard anymore. Then you've got teams like the Wizards that suck yet get motivated when they play a superteam and people all of a sudden realize that those guys made the league too.

Obi, you a Clippers fan or what?

Better question: Why do you hate LA yet live there?

Hey hey hey!

No jumping on the Niners bandwagon...we don't need any of that!

Ten long years we 49er Faithful suffered before lat year--and NOW people want to join the Niner Empire and root for us? No way!

I sat through 1-15, through Mike Nolan, Mike Singletary, everyone from J.T. O'Sullivan to Tim Rattay to post-Raven-success Trent Dilfer to pre-Harbaugh-success Alex Smith under center...whole years gone with absolutely no receiving core...years of watching 3-and-outs on 3 straight run plays up the middle for no gain...late leads blown and chances squandered--

We survived all that, we few, we happy few, we band of 49er Brothers!

No bandwagoners wanted or allowed! ;)

"because they pay so much that guys don't work hard anymore."

I don't like Kobe. But nobody works harder than he does. Absolutely nobody. He's spending all of his energy to get 40 per game because the opposing defenses key in on him because the Lakers lack a real point guard.
Also to hell with "small market teams". Always whining because they're too cheap to pay anybody.

"No jumping on the Niners bandwagon...we don't need any of that!"

Is Obi a sports hipster?

Would that really be surprising? He liked Shakespeare before Stratford-upon-Avon was founded.

Yeah, Putin, Kobe works his ass off. He's Kobe for a reason.

Small market teams can do big things if the NBA would put in a freaking cap, which they finally adjusted into a repeater tax, but that's still not quite there. Starting in 2015, you're going to see teams like the Heat either get their hopeful dynasties broken apart or players will have to take pay cuts. The Lakers and Spurs will go the same route. Either break it up or get players that are willing to work their asses off for less money. That's the route every pro sport should go.

I find it hilarious when some left-leaning people effectively argue for a maximum wage for workers when it comes to sports - the argument everywhere else is that the market fails because the worker class isn't paid enough by the owner class, but with professional sports, it's the big evil bad owners that are conspiring to undercut fairness and equity by... paying the worker class *too much.*

Keep 'em coming, bo!

"Either break it up or get players that are willing to work their asses off for less money. That's the route every pro sport should go."

So players ruin their bodies for your entertainment and the owners make more? How does this make sense? Especially in the NBA, where unlike other sports individual players pretty much make the entire product. I mean how valuable was the Cavs franchise without LeBron? It wasn't worth anything, as we've seen again this year. LeBron was the Cavs moneytrain all by himself. He should get paid like it. Without him the entire business collapses. Also, pro athletes pay a disproportionate amount of their income in taxes compared to people of the same income bracket. They have to file taxes in every city they play in. Meanwhile owners who mismanaged their franchises want the talent to bail them out of their bad decision-making. Every single sports lock-out has been caused by greedy owners of small market teams whining that the big market teams have the money to pay for the talent. The small market teams could pay that money if they wanted to, as we see in baseball all the time. The Indians at one point had the 6th biggest payroll. The Orioles were once right up there with the Yankees. But then they slashed payroll and complain when teams that don't.

The model is the MLB, not the NFL or NHL.

"Spurs will go the same route"

LOL. Duncan makes about a 1/3 of what Kobe makes. For the Spurs, 10 million a year is what they pay their big stars. 10 million is about what Metta World Peace makes.

PE, I'm economically conservative as a general philosophy, so I wouldn't call myself left-leaning in this thread, but hey, keep the random, irrelevant insults coming.

Putin, the MLB is a great model if you want an unbalanced league. Can't wait for that breed to lose its power.

How is the league unbalanced? Small payroll teams make the playoffs all the time. And different teams win the WS all the time. Look at the Orioles & Nationals this season, for example. The Patriots have been to how many superbowls recently, despite the cap? The NFL has the same handful of teams in the playoffs every year, with one or two minor changes. The NBA is even worse with only a couple of teams winning titles in the past couple of decades.

Wow. I have lived to see Putin construct a radically pro-free market argument and bitch about taxes.

Now I can say I have truly seen everything. I'm glad I didn't mute this thread (as I do with all the other sports threads).

The best indicator of why the Lakers suck this season:
They are 1-8 in games when Kobe scores 30 or more.

I have said for years that if Kobe can trust his teammates more and pass to them for open shots, they can be almost unstoppable. If Kobe could get 5-10 assists a game, there is no reason the Lakers shouldn't win 70% or more of their games.

Their defense is more of a problem than their offense generally though. Slow rotations, giving up too many offensive rebounds, etc. Fourth quarter collapses (see 40 given up to Houston, or 34 given up to Orlando) have become the norm, rather than the exception.

This schadenfreude is the same kind of thing that was happening two years ago when the Heat started their SuperFriend season as only 8-9 or such. Everyone was so happy that they weren't trouncing everyone. It is just exaggerated now since so many more people hate the Lakers.

With only six teams having won championships at all since 2000 (LA, Spurs, Celtics, Heat, Mavericks, and Pistons), there is some case to be made for lack of parity in the league. With two teams having won 33 overall championships between them (LA + Boston), the league could probably benefit from some measure of revenue sharing to give small market teams a chance.

Yeah, Putin, the teams that trade away all their best players for prospects. Once those prospects emerge, they get traded or become free agents, keeping the big market teams permanently great while small market teams are consistently in good and bad spells.

For example, the MLB's average player salary this year was $3.2 million (highest in MLB history, but hardly relevant). The Astros' - arguably the worst team in the league - had an average salary of around $640,000. The Astros made the World Series not too long ago behind the likes of Brad Ausmus, Roy Oswalt, Lance Berkman, and Craig Biggio, but now are left with nothing. On the other hand, the Yankees (lord smite them) had an average salary nearing $6.9 million. They get dynasty after dynasty because they can pay huge money to get players to come play in their hitter friendly park where contact hitters like Curtis Granderson can hit 40 bombs. Then they buy the best grounder pitchers for six or seven years to counter the home runs.

When you pay 10 times more for your players than another team, you're going to be better than them year in and year out. Sure, some low-pay teams such as the O's and A's can make the postseason and make waves. Heck, the Reds could be classified there too. It's the Yankees, Red Sox, Los Angeles teams, and the Rangers, paying tons of money,

…. that get there every year. ^

And before anyone says I'm just a sympathetic small market douchebag, no, I'm a huge Red Sox fan.

Red Sox - high payroll, crap team.
Mets - high payroll (most years), crap team (most years).
Cubs - always high payroll, always crap.
Dodgers - high payroll, hot & cold team
Angels - high payroll (this year especially), crap team
White Sox - usually high, very inconsistent

The Tampa Bay Rays have been good consistently and have a low payroll and an apathetic crap fan base. Ditto the As especially in the 90s. Small market teams need to be contracted for being in places that have no business having a sports franchise with crap fan bases and miserly owners.

"I have said for years that if Kobe can trust his teammates more and pass to them for open shots, they can be almost unstoppable."

This wouldn't happen if the Lakers had somebody who could distribute the ball. When Nash comes back this will change.

And you're right the Laker defense is surprisingly weak. Ditto the Heat. What happened to the stifling Heat defense of last year?

The strange thing about the Lakers is that they are so mercurial right now. They have nights where they look incredible, they have crisp passes and good defensive rotations to help out when Dwight is looking to block shots. Then there are nights when they can't hold on to the ball (20 turnovers or more) and never seem to be on the same page defensively.

Hiring Mike Brown wasn't the right idea, but if they were going to fire him, it should have been in the offseason. They really put themselves behind the eight ball, the way they handled things so poorly.

I don't blame Jerry Buss though. I think the problem is his son Jim making poor decisions, personally.