The Lakers:
- One of the biggest issues with the Lakers last year was their lack of toughness, when they played the Rockets they had 3 things that crippled them: the Rockets beat the shit out of them, the Rockets had two players who could effectively guard Kobe, and the Rockets had a fast point guard who made Derek Fisher look like he had just had a couple of hip replacements.
- If you’re thinking about it, the Lakers addressed two of those three issues with this “trade” Given the stigma about Ron Artest being a complete psychopath, noone will ever flagrant foul the Lakers again out of fear of Ron Artest making a crude shank out of a water bottle and murdering them on the court. And guess what? Ron Artest is the best individual defender in the NBA (Now that Bruce Bowen is the dirtiest corpse in the NBA), leaving 3, maybe 4 players who can guard Kobe well in the NBA (Shane Battier, Lebron, Carmelo, and then a bunch of borderline players like D-wade, Caron Butler, etc.)
- So the Lakers resolved two of the major problems that almost wrecked their title run this year, but what else did they get? Well, first lets address this whole Ron Artest crazy thing. Yes, he is crazy. No, he is not “run into the stands and punch a fan, ruining a potential title winning season” crazy. He’s going to work to keep the peace on the Lakers, he’s not going to mess it all up because he’s unhappy with his shot selection.
- So he brings 10+ pts a game to the Lakers over Ariza, he’s a better rebounder, defender, axe-murderer (oops), and he’s the most intimidating player in the NBA, the Lakers now have 3 (yes, 3) all star caliber players willing to take a backseat to Kobe to win a title.
- OH! And I almost forgot, guess who doesn’t have to exhaust himself guarding the best player on the other team for 82 games and the playoffs anymore? That’s right, Kobe, the best scorer in the NBA, the guy whose legs are the only thing that limit him, he gets to rest for the entire season (barring suspensions and such) because Ron Artest can guard everyone from Bron Bron to D-Wade better than Kobe could.
The Rockets:
- Yeah, they lost everything I listed above, and gained a smaller, weaker, slightly younger, VERY average swingman.
- “But Bill, without Trevor Ariza the Lakers wouldn’t have won the championship this year!” Yes, this is very true, but with Ron Artest this year they would have absolutely steamrolled people. And Trevor Ariza was as much of a liability as players like Derek Fisher and such. He was brought in to defend and shoot threes, and he did one of those well, and the statistics don’t actually so how decidedly un-clutch he was shooting threes in these playoffs, he lost them as many games with his shooting as he won with his defense.
Basically, the Lakers just stole one of the better players in the NBA… again. I’m not going to criticize the Rockets, because they got absolutely screwed over this offseason,
So the damage has been done. Chris Wallace is no longer to blame exclusively for the Lakers dominance, it falls upon all of you, NBA owners. Your penny pinching has created a monster that by all rational means should have no trouble winning the championship next year. I have 3 options for you to cripple their title push, two of them are legitimate moves you can make, one of them is something horribly spiteful that the entire world would hate you for.
OPTION NUMBER 1: Sign Lamar Odom. Do It. Sure he’s an enormous liability, he eats more candy than an entire city block of children on Halloween, he’s moody. But he’ll play second fiddle to your star happily, it takes the pressure off of Odom. The problems are he only wants to be in a sunny place, so golden state, the clippers, and
OPTION NUMBER 2: This one will be less effective, but it exploits the Lakers other weakness. They don’t have a quality point guard. Don’t let them sign a quality point guard. The only thing they really need is a 3 point threat who isn’t borderline retarded to run their triangle offense (Sorry Stephon Marbury, you don’t fit either of those categories) Withhold as best you can, teams with a superstar PG, keep your back-ups, don’t let any free agents slip through the cracks, if the Lakers get a quality point guard its game over.
OPTION NUMBER 3: (The spiteful one): Pull a Gasol-to-Lakers with the Cavaliers or Magic. Those are the two teams who can step up and stop the Lakers because of their superstars (Dwight Howard is going to figure it out this summer, mark my words. And Lebron is a freak whose only going to get better) The Magic would be a better option because the Cavaliers have already screwed up their offseason with awful, AWFUL trades (seriously, Shaq takes Lebron’s biggest weapon away from this, you’d have to shake the NBA analysts at ESPN like a baby to make them admit it, but its very true. It isn’t 2001 anymore, its not even 2004, Shaq is burnt out and played out, keeping him and Z makes me think you’re going to put on a clinic of Big Men whose age has finally caught up with them, maybe you can sign freaky-deeky Mutombo out of retirement, then you could run an awesome team of Big Men who were a lot better in the early 2000’s)
Finally, if you’re wondering why I’ve resigned myself to believing the Lakers will win the western conference. Look at their competition. Their only competition is the spurs, who will end up meeting them in the conference finals when Tim Duncan is exhausted and pushing 1300 games, and the rest of their stars will be banged up after going through either the mavericks, nuggets, trail blazers, hornets, or the other western teams. I don’t think the Spurs will measure up after having to play through those teams, whereas the Lakers can run through those teams and still be fairly well rested, they're younger, tougher, and better than the spurs are at the moment.
Of course all of this is knee jerk and will probably change as the offseason further develops, but that’s my two cents after a truly abysmal move by the NBA in allowing Ron Artest to go to the Lakers.
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