Gambling On A Savior

The Los Angeles Lakers are finished.

Take a minute to analyze that sentence because, I assure you, we will be looking back at this day and those words and nodding collectively by season's end. Take a deep breath, Laker fans. Relax. Try to avoid the typical overreaction and hyperbole and use some common sense. Then, I want you to close your eyes and say these words aloud and I want them to seep into your brain because, as painful as it's going to be for you to utter them, you'll thank me for it later.

I want you to close your eyes and say: "It's over. We had our shot and we blew it."

There will be no sixth ring for Kobe Bean Bryant, at least not while he's adorning the purple and gold. Look, Laker fans can point fingers and jump up and down in outrage over getting jobbed out of the Chris Paul deal by the NBA. It was unfair and unjust but so was the Pau Gasol trade a few years ago. Karma's a bitch. Chris Paul should probably be a Laker right now, but he's not. It's the way the cookie crumbles. There are Knicks fans who think LeBron James should be playing home games in the Garden. There are Nets fans that are dead set that Dwight Howard is coming to Brooklyn. After awhile, you give up on your hopes and dreams, no matter how close you were and how vivid it seemed inside your head.

The end of the Lakers' run as THE TEAM in the National Basketball Association has everything to do with Paul and Howard.....and nothing at all. I'll address the latter point first. For one, the Lakers didn't HAVE to make a move this offseason, with the exception of maybe a slight upgrade at point guard. The notion that the Lakers had to blow up the team following Phil Jackson's retirement and a postseason sweep by the eventual champion Dallas Mavericks was more sports talk radio fodder than an actual mandatory game plan. Yes, if the Lakers could pull off deals that would allow them to bring in the likes of Paul and Howard and team them with "The Black Mamba", it would re-affirm L.A. as the team to beat as well as set them up nicely going forward long after Kobe retires. However, even the most delusional fan had to think that the Lakers weren't going to be able to pull that off and the wisest of fans should have been smart enough to realize why they didn't have to. A starting five of Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol, Ron Artest(or Metta World Peace or whatever the fuck that nutjob is calling himself these days), Kobe and what's left of Derek Fisher, with Lamar Odom off the bench is formidable enough to make another run at the title, provided new coach Mike Brown can reel his heavy hitters in and keep them from coming apart like they did in the Dallas series.

Instead, they went with the nuclear bomb strategy and, in a stroke of pure genius, they managed to pull off a deal for Paul that didn't involve them giving up half the team and, at the last second, they got the rug pulled from under them. To use a football analogy, rather than kick the 55-yard field goal to tie, the Lakers chucked a Hail Mary in the air, came down with it with two feet in the end zone.....then had the referee rule it incomplete even after the booth review. It was a real tragedy what happened to the Los Angeles and, had it been someone less disliked than the Lakers, we might have made a bigger deal of it(which is saying something, because everyone who is everyone freaked out over this trade). Frustrated and outraged, the Lakers foolishly pulled out of the Paul talks and allowed their lowly little brother to swoop in and take their grand prize. That's where Paul and Howard add to the Lakers' demise. By swinging and missing on Paul, they publicly made it known that they were willing to be sellers if they found the right price(in this case, CP3 and D12). That shocker led them to be bullied by a guy in Odom, who spent the first two seasons of his reality show, getting bullied by his heavy-set, ugly-duckling, pseudo-famous wife. Outraged by being involved in trade talks, Odom wanted out and, rather than wait for a suitable deal, L.A. panicked and shipped Odom off for a bag of pennies. To make matters worse, they shipped him to Dallas.....the team that just got done cleaning their clock in the playoffs. You can't tell me there isn't a scenario where Odom couldn't have been flipped for something more than a dump of salary and some low-2nd round picks. You couldn't have gotten a suitable replacement at point guard for a versatile big man coming off his best season? Really?

In the span of seven days, the Lakers watched themselves get screwed out of a fair trade for the guy they've wanted for months, be forced to deal one of their best trade chips for nothing out of fear that Odom's unhappiness would leak to the public(which, it did anyway....Thanks, Twitter.), and then sit back and let the Clippers steal Paul from them and potentially resurrect their franchise.....IN THE LAKERS' HOUSE. The Clippers coming into the Staples Center to face the Lakers these next two seasons will be like the kid brother you used to beat the crap out of of when you were kids coming back home after a couple years in the military, except now he's cut like Vin Diesel and well-trained in MMA and you're 32 with a beer gut and tennis elbow.

The Lakers' last hope is trading for Howard, except Orlando has proclaimed any trade talks dead, which is yet another kick to the Lakers' balls. Make no mistake, the Lakers HAVE to find a way to get Dwight Howard, preferably before tip-off on Christmas. What was once a pipe dream now has to be a reality. Why? Because while the Lakers are a superb collection of talent, they are also a band of fragile minds. Don't agree? Think back to that Mavs series. Do you think the lasting images of Andrew Bynum's 2011 season would be him getting ushered off the court with his shirt off after clotheslining J.J. Barea if he were someone who was even the slightest bit composed? Would we not be thinking differently of Pau Gasol if he didn't let a bad breakup with his girlfriend completely take him out of the 2011 postseason? And do I even need to mention how Ron Artest is crazy? With the exception of Kobe, this batch of Lakers have the same frail, overwhelming lack of self-confidence and sensitive personalities you'd more commonly find on an after-school special on bulimic teenage girls. As if taking over for Phil Jackson wasn't tough enough for Mike Brown, now he has to go into this season stroking the egos of a young, talented center with no brain and a sack-less finesse power forward with no heart to make them feel better about being on the trading block. He's like Dorothy trying to lead a band of misfits to the Wizard of Oz.

That's why the Howard trade HAS to happen. You can't have this kind of dysfunction pollute your veteran squad under new leadership in a shortened season. Kobe is already pissed about how these last few changes went and he doesn't possess that same gene that MJ had that forced his teammates to put aside the bullshit and play hard. For the Lakers to remain relevant this season and beyond, they have to swing some deal that sends Gasol or Bynum and others(not both, because that would be an even more foolish display of desperation, not to mention frontcourt suicide) to Orlando in exchange for Doomsday. Dwight Howard holds the Lakers' season in his large hands, and he does so in a different uniform on a team that has no desire to trade him at the moment. That's why the Lakers are screwed. For so long, the thrill of playing in Hollywood and the shiny luster of the purple and gold had been enough to have faith in Showtime. Now, those days are dead. All that's left is false hope from a fan base that will just as easily trade their Kobe jerseys for Blake Griffin jerseys the minute CP3 launches an alley-oop to his slam dunk champion big man.

If the Lakers can't land Howard, they're slightly better than a lottery team because, not only will the trade talk destroy whatever chemistry they had, they also dealt away their best backup plan in Odom for when Bynum's knee snaps like a twig under a bear's paw. With good shooting at a premium, being able to rebound and protect the rim is paramount. It's why a team like the Mavs can beat a Heat team with three of the fifteen best players in the league and why a guy like Tyson Chandler can be paid like he's David Robinson by the Knicks. Patrolling the paint is something Bynum does well....when he's healthy, which is almost never, and when he can't control the paint when he's healthy, he resorts to choke-slamming 5'6 Puerto Ricans with the same force Rob Gronkowski uses to spike a football or Reggie Bush uses to penetrate Kim Kardashian's tush. That's why all the eggs need to be put in Howard's basket. An offseason spent being conned into thinking they need to make a big splash has culminated with their season hinging on them actually making one.

Open your eyes, Lakers fans, and remember this day because, come June, the next words you'll be reading will be: "I told you so."