HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Mark Heisler

Pretend you’re Mark Cuban.

Right away, everything is different. For one thing you have $2 billion.

More things have changed than that. As you start to look around, you find you suddenly have boundless energy and a keen insight into things you didn’t know anything about, like the Internet, the stock market and the future of global communications.

On the other hand, you don’t care about things that seemed important, like clothes. Now a T-shirt will suffice, no matter where you’re going.

Oh, and you have an obsession with this NBA team you own, that seemed to be going down the drain.

You still go everywhere with it… and it’s ever more painful as its fall accelerates from its pinnacle (2-0 up over the Heat in the 2006 Finals with a 13-point lead midway through the fourth quarter of Game 3) to its present state.

Even if you have a lot going on, like trying to buy the Cubs, which Commissioner Bud Selig will never let happen —Bud likes owners with a more reverent attitude toward commissioners—and SEC is charging you with insider trading, you’re still out there suffering day-by-day with your Mavericks.

You bought the franchise when it was nothing… just as coach Don Nelson started to pull it together.

Of course, dying to help, you got him Dennis Rodman, who scuttled the rest of that season like an anvil dropped from space.

In subsequent years, you and Nellie disagreed about which of you was the genius, but you managed to put your personal feelings aside and let Nellie do what he does.

Then, when Nellie left and the legal proceedings began, you even went Avery Johnson, whom Nellie nominated to succeed him. Avery took Nellie’s offensive team and made it defend.

Voila!

Avery went 16-2 after stepping in for Nellie, 60-22 in his first full season and 67-15 in his third, giving him the highest winning percentage in NBA history at that point.

You let Steve Nash go… to back-to-back MVP seasons in Phoenix and still wound up as a better team!

It looked like it was going to become a championship team except for your misadventure in the 2006 Finals after going up, 2-0 and blowing that 13-point lead in the last six minutes in Miami when it looked like you were about to lead, 3-0.

Now all everyone remembers is you railing about the referees, you getting fined $250,000 by Commissioner David Stern, Avery changing hotels and bristling at the press, presaging your losses in Games 4, 5 and 6.

The next season was even better and worse: 67 wins, utter domination of the regular season, followed by that first-round loss to the Warriors… and that damned Nellie.

The season after that, 2007-2008, you started 35-17 but that was only No. 3 in the West as everything changed.

The Lakers, who had almost lost Kobe Bryant, were back with Andrew Bynum on the rise and the Grizzlies donating Pau Gasol.

Worse, the Suns had just beaten you to the obvious move —Shaquille O’Neal— who would have fit naturally with you but fit awkwardly with them.

So now, you had to think up a dramatic move of your own… Jason Kidd?

Unfortunately, you gave up Devin Harris, your best player under 25, and it would have been nice if someone had figured out Jason would fit about as well with you as Shaq did with the Suns.

Your offense was built around isolations for Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard, leaving little for Kidd to do but hand them the ball and get out of the way.

So you finished 16-13, lost in five games to the Hornets in the first round and offed Avery, who was supposedly too controlling and making everybody crazy.

Now you’ve got Rick Carlisle, a sharp guy who turned around his first two teams, the Pistons and Pacers, but it’s clear your days of winning 55-60 are over.

What do do now?

Make trades in the hope of patching on the fly?

Back up the truck?

Unfortunately, there’s a certain point at which you’re out of good moves—and you’re there.

If you want to trade, you’ll soon discover the only players anyone wants will be Dirk, Josh and Brandon Bass, the ones you’d want to rebuild around.

If anyone knows you, they know you won’t ever be trading Dirk, your No. 1 fave.

There are deals out there, they’re just loaded with risk and freighted with huge, long-term contracts (see: Zach Randolph, Eddy Curry, Stephon Marbury or your choice of any Clipper of Bobcat.)

On the other hand, when you see it’s not working, how long do you intend to gaze at it?

Detroit’s Joe Dumars just decided he wasn’t going to watch his veterans—who had been in the last six East Finals—die by inches, plunged boldly into the future and, in the meantime, aligned his fate with Allen Iverson.

Meanwhile, Denver just went from uncoachable with AI, Carmelo Anthony et al. to semi-lucid with Chauncey Billups there to restore order.

We don’t know how they’ll wind up but it was Denver’s best shot to right the ship before Carmelo abandons it and it pushed Detroit headlong into the future.

Of course, the best thing would be if you can get one of those flashes of genius like creating Broadcast.com.

Did you ever see that movie, “Weird Science”, in which two geeks program all the facets about their perfect woman into a computer and out pops Kelly LeBrock?

In any case, you’d better figure out a new way to get where you’re going because you’re not getting there this way.

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You don’t normally like to see your roster go belly up in the Finals which, even that far along, suggests a fundamental problem. Take the Lakers. The Celtics just did.

It’s not good to discover you’re not tough enough, especially up front since no one is likely to be inclined to send you one of their tough big men. Nor would the draft be of much use, even if they were in it, which the Lakers almost aren’t, with only one pick at No. 58. However, this is an extraordinary case with the Lakers expecting seven-foot, 275-pound, 20-year-old Andrew Bynum expected back next fall.

Bynum, who missed the second half of the season, had been breaking out in his third season, looking so impressive that Kobe Bryant, who had excoriated Laker management, demanding to be traded, changed his mind about the whole thing.

If this was embarrassing – Bryant also railed at the Lakers for not trading Bynum for Jason Kidd – Kobe is now on board in a big way (“He’s a legitimate, 7-1, long-wing-span, natural shot blocker so add Andrew, it takes us to another level defensively.”)

Hurt on Jan. 13, Bynum was expected back in March but wound up undergoing arthroscopic surgery and missing the rest of the season. With Pau Gasol arriving to take his place – another piece of good luck for the Lakers who wouldn’t have been pursuing the deal with Memphis if Bynum hadn’t been hurt – the Lakers were never sure how good they were.

They certainly weren’t physical and or imposing defensively. On the other hand, their offense was so good – – they were 34-8 with Gasol in the lineup going into the Finals – there didn’t seem to be anyone better, or close.

It was almost as if they were on a lark. They would be better next season but in the meantime, why not try to take advantage of the opportunity at hand?

They wound up running into the Celtics, who looked out on their feet after going seven, seven and six games deeps in the three first rounds, but seemed quite refreshed in the Finals.

Bryant, who had smoke coming out of his ears in the interview room after their Game 6 loss in Boston, was over it by the time he talked to Laker beat writers three days later after his exit interview with head coach Phil Jackson.

“I’m comfortable with what we have,” Bryant said. “Whatever Mitch [Kupchak, Laker GM] decides to do, he decides to do. It’s more of a relaxing summer for me because I know we have an opportunity to win. It’s exciting.”

With Bynum’s rehab now progressing, the Lakers do have one decision to make with Andrew up for an extension at or near the maximum-salary.

Nevertheless, the Lakers can let it play out according to their own comfort level.

They could extend him this summer (unlikely), wait to see how he holds up in training camp and sign him before the opener (possible) or wait until after the season, when he’ll be a restricted free agent and they can match any offers (also possible).

Aside from that, the Lakers just have to make the pieces fit with Bynum at center and Gasol moving to power forward.

That would move Lamar Odom to small forward… if he ever gets there.

At the moment, there’s speculation the 6-10 Odom will be shopped for a more small forward who’s a better outside shooter.

(That means, forget those Shawn Marion rumors. Like Odom, shooting from the outside is the worst thing Marion does.)

(As for those Richard Jefferson rumors, shooting isn’t what RJ does best, either.)

In what could be viewed as a preview of next season, Boston’s Kevin Garnett roamed off Odom in the Finals, just as the Lakers did with Rajon Rondo, giving Lamar any outside shot he wanted.

Odom faded, Garnett helped jam up the high-powered Laker offense inside and that was that.

Jackson wanted a small forward who could shoot and space the floor badly enough to start the inconsistent Vlade Radmanovic while labeling him “my favorite Martian.”

Beyond the question of how Odom will fit in the new configuration, he has one year left on his contract at $14.1 million and wants an extension. Meanwhile, the Lakers have financial issues. These don’t threaten the franchise, which probably grossed $175 million last season, but they’re issues, anyway.

As a result of the Gasol trade, Jerry Buss is looking at an additional $90 million in additional salary and luxury tax over the last three years of Pau’s contract – which was the reason Memphis got so few offers – unless the Lakers get some money off their cap.

With trade-Lamar stories all over the local papers, an irate Kupchak said the team hasn’t even had those discussions yet. However, Odom was originally in the package going to Memphis for Gasol, until Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley took him out, opting to lesser players and more savings.

And the Lakers will be holding those talks soon, with only one problem position, small forward.

Jackson, who wants to get tougher – and has never minded getting loonier – loves Sacramento’s Ron Artest, who just happened to be hanging this postseason, even going to Boston for Game 6.

Artest has tried to get himself traded to either Los Angeles team for years and can opt out of the last year at $7.4 million on his Sacramento contract. However, with the Kings unlikely to do a sign-and-trade unless they get Bryant, Bynum or Gasol, Artest could only get the Lakers’ $5.4 million veteran’s exception.

Of course, with Artest and Jackson, anything’s possible from Ron-Ron in purple and gold to a peaceful summer in Lakerdom.

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