Lakers Left to Ponder Future That Might Have Been in Pau Gasol's Return to LA
LOS ANGELES — The day finally came Monday when Pau Gasol felt "strange." He walked into Staples Center as an out-of-town visiting player, no longer a Los Angeles Laker.
It has been a long time coming.
Gasol was in the building for his new Chicago Bulls team to play the Clippers. Just as well, he said, so that it let him ease past the ghosts a bit in hopes of not being so spooked when he returns to play the Lakers on Jan. 29. (Yes, Gasol had the exact date on the tip of his tongue.)
Gasol, 34, has been motivated this season to recapture his old form, a reflection of how stale his existence had become with the Lakers. Gasol's 27 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks Thursday marked his first time with that much productivity in all three categories since April 2010—before his last championship hurrah with the Lakers.
Gasol sat out Monday night to avoid aggravating a strained left calf, preventing a matchup between Gasol and the player whose absence still stings the Lakers far more than the power forward's, no matter this hot start in Chicago.
Chris Paul was and still is the Lakers' real haunting...and in more ways than even Lakers fans fully realize.
Right now, the Clippers are a disappointing 5-4 after their 105-89 collapse against the short-handed Bulls. And Paul hasn't won anything but a first-round playoff series for the Clippers since landing there in the wake of the NBA stopping the 2011 trade of the point guard from the New Orleans Hornets to the Lakers.
But make no mistake: The regrets over Paul not becoming a Laker are more than a few—and not just because the Lakers sit mired in their one-win abyss to start this season.
For as many missteps as have occurred since then, and it is easy to chalk it up that the grand Dwight Howard experiment didn't work anyway, there is valid reason to believe that the Paul veto truly did cost the Lakers the full happily-ever-after storybook.
We covered some of the what-if scenarios back in February, but Howard was coming at some point via the Andrew Bynum trade, as the Lakers knew they could swing it even before they struck that aborted deal for Paul.
And why would Howard stay in this alternate world?
Not only did Howard openly want to play with Paul, his 2008 Olympic teammate, Howard would more likely want to stay with a team that had undeniable championship aspirations alongside a star point guard his age instead of Steve Nash. Having Paul there—and also no existing Kobe lieutenant in "brother" Pau—would have made Howard's life much easier in adjusting to Bryant, who is so close to Paul that their families exchange Christmas cards.
Howard also would've stayed because his coach, in all likelihood, would've been the guy he wanted, the guy everybody wanted: Phil Jackson.
There would unequivocally have been no Mike D'Antoni era with the Lakers given the lack of Nash. And working with the knowledge now from his failed Lakers trial and another bust in Cleveland, it's safe to say Mike Brown clearly doesn't have it as a head coach, which would have left the Lakers in the market for a coach.
Jackson wanted to coach Howard, and there's no doubt that the Kobe-Dwight relationship would have gone much differently with Phil there to broker the peace (and to do the dirty work Bryant felt obligated to do as the de facto mentor who had to teach Howard about winning). Bryant, Howard and Paul all have strong personalities, no doubt a potentially combustible mix, but who better than Jackson to manage that immensely talented crew?
Beyond that, Jackson quite conceivably would've stayed on longer than the one or two years he was willing to coach with Nash considering the championship window stays open a lot longer with Howard and Paul, both now not even 30.
In addition, Howard wouldn't have been able to go to Houston, as he did in real life, because James Harden wouldn't have been there (Kevin Martin was recycled from the aborted Paul trade and sent to Oklahoma City in the Harden deal), and Gasol and his fat salary would have been in Houston, blocking Howard from getting paid by the Rockets anyway.
Instead, Howard is a Rocket, Paul is a Clipper, Gasol is a Bull and Jackson is a Knick.
The Lakers, meanwhile, were left with nothing in compensation for losing out on all of them except for still having Nash, who fit into the trade exception created from sending Lamar Odom to Dallas. Nash, of course, is now the absentee albatross, physically unable to play while still costing the Lakers a precious future first-round pick.
The Lakers were never very close to trading Gasol again despite all the rumors and conversations. The reality is that his value eroded fast, and the Lakers failed to convince other league executives that Gasol could play as well as he is now for the Bulls.
In the end, at both the February trade deadline and with July sign-and-trade possibilities to pay Gasol more money, the Lakers couldn't get anything better than a second-round draft pick for their trouble and wound up with no deal.
Not getting any assets in exchange for a prize as sizable as Howard looms as an even costlier outcome, but the Lakers stuck with their go-for-broke mentality in early 2013 rather than believe the mounting proof that Howard would spurn them.
The trade market for Howard then was underwhelming. It was widely known that Howard wanted to go through the experience of free agency and choose his next destination, so it made little sense for a club such as Golden State to give up much in renting Howard and trying to sell him on a future vision.
Bryant goes to Houston on Wednesday night for his first game against the Rockets in Howard's new home—after Bryant and Howard exchanged words quite spectacularly on the court at Staples on opening night.
It feels impossible to envision Bryant and Howard as happy teammates who might've already won an NBA championship together, but bear in mind that a parallel universe exists wherein they would've had a lot of help.
Paul would've brought them together on the court, and Jackson would've brought them together off the court.
Yes, an ideal world...and it could've been the Lakers' real one.
Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.
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