This. Paul Allen could buy every player, coach, manager and even the owner of the Rapers and have them work as his house boys and yacht crew, but he'd rather hire trainees and scrubs for his team because they will never disagree with his basketball "wisdom". Every successful jockey knows you have to loosen up on the reins and let your horse run to win the race.
I'm in the minority I know, but Howard for Bynum is a loss in my book for the Lakers. Don't get me wrong, Howard is a tremedous defensive presence and will help the Lakers greatly with his rebounding and shot blocking. But Offensively, the guy has some glaring holes. He has a very limited back to the basket post game and his horrible free throw shooting allows him to be a liability late in the game. Bynum on the other end, was an above average defensive player, and a very skilled offensive player and getting better. Ultimately, I feel like Howard has kind of reached his potential, while Bynum continues to improve year after year. Not to mention Howard's back injury. We all remember pre-back surgery Rudy, and post-back surgery Rudy. Anyone who's ever had a back surgery knows, that those are a 50/50 proposition to be effective in relieving the pain. Part of the reason it's so hard on athletes, is the constant jumping up and down crunches your spine together, over working those discs. What is rarely discussed is the fact that in every human being there is a degenerative process your discs go through, this is the reason as we age we begin slumping over and not walking as straight. This process usually begins in our early 40's, however the day you opperate on a disc, the process begins., no matter what your age is. I know this may be grassping at straws, and Howard may very well come back 100% and be as imposing as before. That being said, after living through a severe back injury and knowing the pain I live with on a daily basis, I wouldn't expect any player who's had to have back surgery to come back as good as before. It just doesn't work that way, your body just won't bend and be as flexible as you were before.
Not that I'm the only one who thought so, but as I have said, Howard to the Lakers was as certain as death and taxes. We all knew it was inevitable. If it weren't for the Blazers, I wouldn't watch this farce. Maybe it would be merciful if Allen did move the team after all, so I could move on with my life.
I agree we are not hurt by this *this year*. The point is, I think, that the Lakers don't have "windows". When the Lakers aren't getting sweetheart deals, they are having players like Shaq and Kobe and Howard force their way to play there. It will never end.
Ha, Ha. Made me laugh. It's OK, for now. We are in developmental mode. We ought to be able to compete with them within three years. We will never be able to compete with them for superstars though. If we can get the right players with the right chemistry at the right time, we have a shot. God, I'm such a hopeless romantic. And by hopeless, I mean without any real hope.
LOL- so wait, what about the Heat w/ D-wade Lebron and Bosh? or Celtics with KG, PP, Rondo and (formerly) Allen?? It was the same thing back then....I dont see how Lakers makes it worse....than those teams.... I mean; they are spending 34 million in tax for their players, so I suppose we could do that but then you'd bitch about the blazers not being financially responsible... Its their team, who fucking cares what they do. Just like Miami, and Boston, it'll make everyone else aspire to beat them....
Sure, we could have gutted our team, traded Aldridge and our future. The minute his contract is up, he would have bolted to....Los Angeles. Bad move.
So taking a risk is a bad move. Ok. But then don't cry when we don't land him, or another team doesn't land him by not taking the risk. He could bolt us. Or not. He could also bolt the Lakers. Probably not. They're willing to take that risk. You aren't. But you cry when another team does take the risk and it works out. That's just stupid.
This I think is where shooter and chris and I are of a different opinion. Speaking only for myself, my perception is that it would be a HUGE risk for a small market team (Portland, Milwaukee, etc) to trade for a player who openly will only play for one or two 'elite' big market franchises, and will clearly leave town at the first opportunity (hence why Howard is being traded in the first, second and third place). And not just a 'risk'. More like suicide. Whereas, conversely, and on the other hand, it is literally NO risk for the team he WANTS to play for (LAL, Nyets, etc) to trade for him.
It's well documented on this board and others that there's very few people that hate the Lakers as much as I do. I've gone into monologues and rants regarding this topic many times, so I won't repeat myself. What I've recently discovered, though, is that it's not the Lakers themselves that I hate, but the flawed system of haves and have-nots in the NBA. It's been this way since the 1960s, when the Celtics and the Lakers were pretty much the only two teams that mattered in a much smaller NBA. Today, with a larger league, the number of blessed teams is slightly larger, but the bias towards them couldn't be more nakedly obvious. Yes, every so often a team not in the chosen few strikes gold through the draft or through shrewd front office maneuvers, but this is the exception rather than the norm. A good underdog story makes for entertaining theater, but only for so long. Madison Avenue and the advertising corporations dictate the NBA and it's fortunes off AND ON the court. And we enable this by continuing to buy tickets to root for teams that have no real chance in the system, and buy the products that perpetuate the cycle. I know that most of you don't give a shit about this... you just want to root for the Blazers (laundry), and when the game is over, go back to whatever else you were doing. You treat games like watching a sitcom or a movie. You are entertained, and then that's that. I envy people like that. I really do.
This, for me, may be the top reason I hate the Lakers so much. I can't stand their douchebag fans. Unbearable.
http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/...-dwight-howard Holy fucking shit. Until this moment, I simply felt fatalistic about it. Now I'm doing a real burn. They fucking deserve it? Are you fucking kidding me? This sense of entitlement is what really pisses me off about these Laker fan fucks.
I understand what you're saying, but you're missing the point. Whether or not Howard works out this year for the Lakers, they are the team that got him!! Portland was never even in the running. Neither was Sacramento, or Memphis, or Atlanta, or Minnesota. Every team in the league would be willing to take a chance on Howard, even with the back issues, but it was the freaking Lakers who ended up with him. They always end up with great players because the great players want to play in the limelight of Hollywood. And if Howard doesn't work out, they will replace him with some other great player, because all the great players want to go to LA, or Miami, or New York.
Im not sure why people keep bringing up the GP, Malone, Shaq, Kobe title failure as a point against LA's one sidedness. That team made it to the NBA finals even though they didnt win a ring they had a very very sucessfuly season. Their implosion in the finals is a minor point as in sports nothing is guaranteed, even the bobcats win a game now and then. In the history of the Blazers we look at our teams that went to the WCF and NBA finals as some of the best teams in our history, getting to the second round is big news for us.
