The Los Angeles Lakers Are Cruising While the Miami Heat Are Losing

The NBA season is less than two months old and already some strange and unpredictable things have happened.

The Atlanta Hawks are 14-12, Richard Jefferson is fifth in scoring, the Portland Trailblazers have the NBA's longest winning streak of the season, and the first coach to get the axe was not Isaiah Thomas.

One thing that may come as a surprise to some but not to others is the Miami Heat's record of 8-20. The same team that was celebrating the franchise's first NBA championship just 18 months ago is now 12 games under .500 in the Eastern Conference.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Lakers are 18-10 and have posted impressive wins over the Suns (twice), Nuggets (twice), Spurs, Pistons, Jazz, and Rockets. The Lakers have as many wins over those six playoff teams as the Heat have against the entire NBA.

The Heat and the Lakers will be tied together as long as both Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal are active. Since Miami has won their championship, it has been easy to declare the Heat the winners of the trade.

Miami made the trade because they had a goal of winning an NBA title—and they accomplished that goal. But with each day that passes and each game that Shaq gets paid a quarter of a million dollars to put up 13 points and eight rebounds, the trade looks more and more lopsided in the Lakers favor.

For starters, the Heat team that won the title in 2005-6 was 50-32. They won one regular-season game against the NBA's other division winners that year. And yet, they chose to keep the same group of players together going into the 2006-7 season.

To call their championship lucky would be a gross understatement. They benefitted from playing a tired Pistons team in the Eastern Conference Finals, and were given a generous officiating crew in the Finals against Dallas—D-Wade shot 96 free throws in six games.

You can't blame the Heat for either of those things, since they had no control over them. What you can blame Pat Riley for is thinking that the same group of players, albeit one year older, would be able to compete for another title.

You can blame him even more for thinking that Smush Parker, Ricky Davis and Mark Blount would be enough to make them contenders again this year.

It may sound like I'm contradicting myself because I criticize them for not making changes after 2006 and then blast them for actually making changes after 2007. The difference is that they let guys go instead of either trading them, and had no back-up plan in place if those guys left.

Forbes Magazine recently released a report on the world's wealthiest sports owners. Heat owner Micky Arison was listed third in the world, but first in the United States. He's wealthier than Mark Cuban, Daniel Snyder, and even Paul Allen.

Which makes it all the more puzzling that Arison was willing to let Jason Kapono, Eddie Jones, and James Posey walk away from the Heat because he was scared to pay the luxury tax—yet he wasn't afraid of giving Shaq a five-year, $100 million extension that still has two-and-a-half years left on it.

Meanwhile, the Lakers have used the time since Shaq's departure to rebuild their team, while only missing the playoffs once. They are the third-youngest team in the NBA, and have a 20-year-old budding superstar in Andrew Bynum.

Ask yourselves this: if Andrew Bynum were a junior at UConn (where he had committed to go before entering the draft) and showed the promise he has shown this season, where would he be selected in next year's draft?

Say what you want about Michael Beasley, Derrick Rose, O.J. Mayo, Eric Gordon, and Kevin Love, but there wouldn't be a GM in the NBA crazy enough to pass on drafting Bynum.

Kupchak has drafted surprisingly well. Luke Walton and Ronny Turiaf were both second-round gems. Jordan Farmar, taken with the pick acquired in the Shaq trade, leads one of the NBA's highest scoring benches. Sasha Vujacic and Javaris Crittenton both look like they could be solid contributors.

Kupchak's biggest draft mistakes seem to be Brian Cook and Kareem Rush. But Kupchak parlayed Cook into Ariza, and traded Rush for two Bobcats' second-round picks—one of which was used to draft Turiaf, and the other in reserve for 2009.

The only move that's haunted the Lakers is the Caron Butler-for-Kwame Brown trade. But if Kupchak can get anything for Brown's expiring deal, even that might not look so bad.

The question then becomes, what risk is a championship worth? Had the Miami Heat not made the Shaq trade and competed with a nucleus of Dwyane Wade, Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, Brian Grant, Eddie Jones, and Rafer Alston, you could make the case that they not only would be a top-three team in the East, but also have a relatively young nucleus that could be built around for the next decade.

Considering that Jones and Grant would both be off the books right now, they would also have Shaq's $20 million to spend on the free agent market. 

I guess in a city like Miami, you might not have any choice but to try to win in the present. The Dolphins seem to be the only team in town that anybody cares about. The Marlins have won two titles in the past ten years, and yet it still seems like there are more people on the field than in the stands.

The Heat, meanwhile, have to wait until 2010 before they can do anything to help them. By then, both Shaq and Wade will be free agents. Even a lottery pick in next year's draft won't be able to contribute immediately.

It's pretty safe to assume that Shaq will retire in 2010. But will Wade want to stick around and wait for the Heat to rebuild around him?

Will Wade risk the prime of his career in hopes that the front office can surround him with the necessary pieces to compete for a championship? They sure didn't do a good job of surrounding him with the talent to compete only two years removed from their last championship.

If he does leave, will one lucky championship be worth at least five or six years of mediocrity to all seven of the Heat's fans?

As a sports fan, you have to ask yourself if it's worth trading a future of stability and annual contention for instant gratification. Here's a similar question: is it worth giving up a lifetime with a loving wife for one night of passion with a supermodel? What if you had to see that loving wife every day with someone else, and be reminded what you gave away for a one-night stand? Chances are you'd probably have the same answer for both questions.

So four years later, who got the better of the Shaq trade? The Lakers may have indeed lost the battle—but the war is looking more and more winnable by the day.