This Is 1 Season in History Where LA Lakers Should Tank

This is the one season in history the Los Angeles Lakers have an obligation to their fans to tank. I know that sounds heretical to Lakers’ fans, but bear with me.

When considering the Lakers, let’s not only look at this season, but also at the short term and long term future. 

Let’s also consider a strategy they could employ that could assure they would have a very short vacation (no more than one or two years) from the postseason and ascend back into contender status by the 2015-16 season.


The Present

First, let’s acknowledge a certain reality. The Lakers have no chance at a title this year. None. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Zero. It’s not going to happen.

Let’s look at their best-case scenario and assume Kobe Bryant comes back in MVP form.

Right now, they are just outside of the playoff picture. If Bryant comes back at an elite level, they might work their way into a seventh or eighth seed.

However, they can’t do any better. The West is just loaded this year. The Lakers, even with Bryant, have less talent than the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors, and Houston Rockets. The best they can hope for is beating out the Portland Trail Blazers (who may belong in the first group if they keep playing like they've started), Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves for seventh. 

In other words, their postseason shots are pretty slim. 

According to the simple rating system (SRS) at Basketball-Reference, a formula based on margin of victory and strength of schedule, the Lakers are currently the 12th best team in the West. Obviously, that’s without Bryant, and that has an impact. Also, many pieces changed, and that also has an impact. The Lakers can move up those rankings.

So, let’s assume things get better. Bryant is still going to need to mesh with his new teammates. At best the team would start clicking around mid-December. They’ll have a huge deficit to overcome by then to become a top-four seed, and only one team, the Houston Rockets in 1994, has ever won an NBA title without getting home-court advantage in the first round.

It is just hard to conceive of a scenario where the Lakers have a remotely realistic shot at the title. That’s the present situation of the Lakers. I’m not hating, I’m just stating: The Lakers are not going to win a title this year.


The Immediate Future

The immediate future offers two things that could make the Lakers better very quickly. They have their own first-round pick this year (for the only time in three years, and one of only two times in five). And they have cap space.

Fortunately for the Lakers, if you’re going to have just one year to have a first-round pick, this is the year to do it. Most years, if you’re lucky, there’s one franchise player available in the draft. This year, there is a handful.

This draft class may very well be comparable with the class of 1984 (Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and John Stockton), 1996 (Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Allen Iverson and Ray Allen), or 2003 (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony and David West).

It’s the kind of class that comes along once a decade. It features five players who could legitimately be perennial All-Stars. These are the kind of players you can build a franchise around. Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle and Jabari Parker have enormous promise. There’s a reason everyone is raving about them.

Dante Exum, the young Aussie, blew everyone away at the Nike Hoop Summit. Marcus Smart at Oklahoma State, Joe Embiid at Kansas and Aaron Gordon at Arizona are also sometimes listed in among the top three.

In short, there are at least seven players that are bonafide game changers in this draft. Three or four of them could potentially be Hall-of-Fame-type players.

With so many elite players coming out, "tanking” becomes a far more winnable gamble. There are a lot more lottery-balls that can be drawn that bring you home a franchise player. You don’t even need to have your ball drawn to get one.

In the immediate future, the reason the Lakers are better off tanking right now is that their only chance at getting a franchise player to build around for the next decade comes this year. They have no pick in 2015 and no guarantee that the 2016 pick will be worth much.  


The Long-Term Future

Now, you may have noticed that I didn’t elaborate on free agency yet. That’s because, while the Lakers have a ton of cap space coming up this summer, they may not have the best free agent available to build around for the future.

There are oft-discussed rumors about Anthony and/or LeBron James fleeing their current locales for Los Angeles, in order to play with Bryant.

In regards to Anthony, even if he does want to opt out of his contract and come to LA, is it going to work? Based on analysis from the new tracking data at NBA.com, comparing the passing stats with the touches stats, I determined that Anthony is one of four perimeter players (the other three are Bradley Beal, DeMar DeRozan and Rudy Gay, which explains why Toronto is dead last in assists per game) who average fewer than .4 points per touch and fewer than .6 passes per touch.

In other words, Anthony is not particularly efficient with the ball, and he’s not all that eager to share it either. Is that the kind of teammate who is going to mesh well with Bryant? Bryant is a far more willing passer than Anthony, but that won’t matter if Anthony is swallowing every possession like a fat kid with a Twinkie.

As for James, he’s just not leaving Miami, and if he does, I very highly doubt it’s for Los Angeles. If he leaves, it will be for a better situation than he’s in, and the Lakers aren’t going to have a better situation. 

LeBron will be entering a period of his career where he’s in the last few years of his dominance. Teaming up with a player at the end of his career and a player who is at the beginning of it, no matter how dominant they are, won’t be as enticing to him as “prefab”  teams like Chicago, where he could seamlessly step into three more rings.

In other words, if James leaves, it’s going to be for a better situation than Miami, and the Lakers don’t give him a better option.

Further complicating matters is that Byrant says he still wants to get paid. He told Serena Winters of Lakers Nation, when she asked him if he’d take a pay cut,

“I’m not taking any at all—that’s the negotiation that you have to have. For me to sit here and say, "Oh yeah, I’m just going to take a huge pay cut". Nah, I’m going to try to get as much as I possibly can.”

So there’s that too. Free agency this offseason is problematic for two reasons. First, Bryant wants a chunk of that change, and second, the two real game changers available are either not going to help or not going to come.

Cap space is one thing, spending it is quite another. Great players aren’t looking to play for the Lakers, they’re looking to play for rings, and if they don’t see those in the immediate future with the Lakers, they’re going to look elsewhere.

All is not lost though. There’s a way to manage all of this.


The Plan

The first thing the Lakers need to do is “encourage” Bryant to take his sweet time coming back. If Steve Nash wants to retire, give him a hug and walk him to the nearest exit. Look for any trade you can get for Pau Gasol that brings you back young assets, even if it means you have to take back a contract or two that don’t expire until next season.

For example, trade Gasol to Boston for Kris Humphries, Gerald Wallace and the Brooklyn pick. I know it sounds ludicrous but the Brooklyn pick is looking better every day, (although if it’s better than the Atlanta Hawks pick, Atlanta swaps picks and the Lakers would get the Hawks’ pick instead).

Either way, this makes the Lakers worse, which is better for the Lakers. It also makes Boston better, which is also better for Los Angeles, because it takes Boston out of the lottery sweeps.

In fact, the Lakers might even want to consider running their offense through Humphries in this scenario. The worse they are, the better.

So now, the Lakers have two first-round picks instead of one. They also have a real shot at a franchise player in the lottery as well as a second future starter.

But what about those contracts? Not to worry. We also got you covered there. Let Humphries play out his contract, and buy out Gerald Wallace on the last year of his contract in the summer of 2015.

And what about that cap space? Well, this is where you get innovative and find a way to give Bryant his money and preserve your cap space.

While you’re sitting down with him and “encouraging” him to take the season off to heal, offer him an extension. Because of his lengthy tenure with the Lakers, he’s eligible for a 30 percent pay bump next year, which, since he’s making $30,453,805 this year according to the ESPN Trade Machine, would come out to a massive $39,589,946 salary next year.

So why would the Lakers do that? Because the terms of the deal would be that the following season, Bryant would get just $1,499,187, the veteran’s minimum for 10 years in the league. While the two-year, $41 million contract would be very reasonable for both parties, it’s just heavily front-loaded.

That, along with buying out Wallace, gives the Lakers room for a max-contract player in 2015, when Kevin Love becomes available.

Not only that, since the Lakers—even with the rookie(s)' and Bryant's salaries—would only have around $10 million on the books. That leaves them enough space to get a second, near max-level player. Rajon Rondo will also be an unrestricted free agent. Interested yet?

It also gives the Lakers one year for their young, new superstar to be cultivated by Bryant. It’s one thing for Bryant to say he’s going to teach a seasoned veteran how to win. It’s quite another to have a young rookie, with one year of college (or none in Exum’s case), hear him say it.

So, imagine a team with Rajon Rondo, Kobe Bryant, Jabari Parker and Kevin Love in 2015. Doesn’t that sound like a team for the future? Sure, Bryant is only going to have a couple of years of run left in him, but the pressure would be off him to carry the team.

Yet he’d still be there for the crunch, when they need him the most. This is a team that could contend.

Would you rather have a one-round playoff run this summer or a championship run in two years? That’s why it behooves the Lakers to tank for all their worth (without really tanking of course, wink wink).

It’s in the fans’ best interest, because, who wouldn't want to watch that? It's in ownership's best interest, because winning makes more cents as well as more sense. It's in Bryant's best interest because it's his best shot at a sixth ring.

It's in the rookie's best interest because he has a mentor. It's in Love's best interest because he can come home and be a star. It's in Rondo's best interest because he's at his best when he has weapons around. 

Forget bandwagons, Lakers' fans, jump on the tank!