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It seems to me we are all missing the obvious here. Dwight Howard has absolutely no intention of re-signing with the Lakers. Why should he?
Have you looked at that roster?
Howard is entering what should be the prime of his career. He turns 28 in December. He is the only – and I mean ONLY – player on the Lakers’ roster under the age of 32 who you would even remotely want on your team, long term.
Jodie Meeks? Earl Clark? Please.
The meeting did not go well. At a hotel restaurant in Memphis in February 2008, Chris Wallace, the general manager of the Grizzlies, was trying to explain to Agusti and Marisa Gasol, the parents of Pau Gasol, why he had just traded their son to the Lakers.
Despite the obvious professional upgrade for their son, the parents weren’t all that keen on the move. They lived in Memphis. They had had one son in high school, a roly-poly, 3-point shooting leviathan named Marc. They had another one in high school at the time, another big boy, Adria, who would eventually make the UCLA team as a walk-on.
It seems like every couple years or so, there’s a dilemma about who to select first overall in the NBA draft, and one of the options is almost always a defense-first center with an “unrefined” offensive game. This year’s model is Nerlens Noel, and right now it’s looking like he’ll go No. 1 unless a team with no need for a center lands the No. 1 pick. Our own Joe Kotoch, whose next Mock Draft goes up Tuesday, has already told you that Orlando and New Orleans will look to trade the pick if they win Tuesday night’s draft lottery.
It’s not hard to see why. Franchise centers are perhaps the hardest thing to find in the NBA, and the truly great ones can absolutely transform a franchise (see: Dwight Howard with the Magic). But past lotteries are absolutely littered with “project” centers that never turned into what so many people thought they could. Darko Milicic, Hasheem Thabeet, Kwame Brown… the list goes on. Does anyone remember Patrick O’Bryant? Nikoloz Tskitishvili? All these guys were drafted in the lottery since 2000. None of them have made an All-Star team, and most are out of the league.
So when the draft order is revealed Tuesday, the team who the ping pong balls favor might end up with a franchise player or a total bust. Or maybe Ben McLemore, whatever he turns out to be. Nothing is for sure. It’s what makes the draft so fun.
Now to the latest NBA news and rumors:
The meeting did not go well. At a hotel restaurant in Memphis in February 2008, Chris Wallace, the general manager of the Grizzlies, was trying to explain to Agusti and Marisa Gasol, the parents of Pau Gasol, why he had just traded their son to the Lakers.
Despite the obvious professional upgrade for their son, the parents weren’t all that keen on the move. They lived in Memphis. They had had one son in high school, a roly-poly, 3-point shooting leviathan named Marc. They had another one in high school at the time, another big boy, Adria, who would eventually make the UCLA team as a walk-on.
The 2012-2013 season has been one to forget for Los Angeles Lakers power forward Pau Gasol.
Actually, he’s had a number of forgettable seasons since helping the team win two championships and picking up the label “best power forward in the league” in the process.
It all seemed to begin when Phil Jackson left the team after getting swept in the playoffs by the Dallas Mavericks in the second round of the 2010-2011 season. Gasol did not perform well (he shot just 42 percent in that series), rumors began to swirl about his status with the team, and things kept going down hill from there.
