NBA 2008-09 Preview: Los Angeles Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers head into the 2008-09 season with far different expectations than they did a year ago at this time.

Flashback to October of 2008 and all of the talk back then was about whether or not Kobe Bryant was going to get traded and to whom and for what he would be traded for.

I dare you to find me a publication that projected the Lakers to finish higher than the seventh seed in the Western Conference and yet they managed to grab the conference’s top seed and earn themselves a trip to the NBA Finals.

Of course, the addition of Pau Gasol in a mid-season trade for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, two first-round picks and Pau’s younger brother, Marc, had a lot to do with their renewed confidence. But even before Mitch Kupchak fleeced the Grizzlies the Lakers had shown the potential to finish in the top half of the conference thanks to the development of their young center, Andrew Bynum.

Bynum’s injury had put to bed any hopes of the Lakers making it to the Finals, but it also gave the Lakers a reason to pull the trigger on the Gasol trade. Kupchak has said repeatedly that had Bynum not suffered the subluxation to his patella there’s no way the Lakers would have made the Gasol trade.

If you were to look at Bynum’s statistics on the season they wouldn’t necessarily pop out at you—13.1 ppg, 10.2 rpg, 2.1 bpg. But if you take into account that Bynum wasn’t a starter for the first ten games of the season then you can get an idea as to what Bynum meant to the team once he swapped places with Brown.

In only 35 games played last year (34 if you exclude the game against Memphis where Bynum suffered his season-ending knee injury), Bynum still managed to finish 41st in the NBA in double-doubles with 18. Shaquille O’Neal, the man Bynum was drafted to replace, had only 21 combined double-doubles in 61 games for Miami and Phoenix.

What the Lakers did this off-season

The 2008-09 Lakers roster will look very similar to the 2007-08 roster. The one glaring name missing will be that of reserve center/forward Ronny Turiaf.

Although Turiaf’s stats are pedestrian, his energy, spirit and enthusiasm will surely be missed. Turiaf is the kind of player that elicits cheers from the hometown crowd the moment he rips off his warm-ups and approaches the scorer’s table. He is the type of player that can be counted on to infuse his team with heart by diving for a loose ball or committing a hard foul on an opponent as he did to Utah’s Ronnie Price is in the Conference Semi-Finals.

All that being said, though, the Lakers were wise in not matching the four-year, $17-million offer sheet that Turiaf signed with the Warriors. For a team already in luxury tax land thanks to overpaid contracts to Luke Walton and Vladimir Radmanovic, it wasn't worth spending more money on their bench.

In his stead, the Lakers will count upon Gasol and Chris Mihm to back up Bynum at the center position.

The Lakers only other free agent of note heading into the offseason, reserve shooting guard Sasha Vujacic, was re-signed for three years and $15-million.

As far as free agents the Lakers added to the team, the only name you can certainly make the case for being on the opening night roster is forward/center Josh Powell.

The Lakers starting five this season will be Bryant, Derek Fisher, Lamar Odom, Gasol and Bynum.

The reserves as of right now that can be written in ink are Jordan Farmar, Vujacic, Luke Walton, Vladirmir Radmanovic, Chris Mihm, Trevor Ariza and Powell.

The remaining two or three roster spots will be filled from a list that includes recent second-round draft picks, Joe Crawford from the University of Kentucky and Chinese national teamer Sun Yue, as well as non-guaranteed training camp invitees Coby Karl, Dwayne Mitchell, Brandon Heath and C.J. Giles.

Two other Lakers from last season, Ira Newble and DJ Mbenga, have yet to find new homes and could still be invited to training camp.

What the Lakers didn’t do this off-season

The most important thing the Lakers didn’t do this off-season was use their mid-level exception or their bi-annual veteran’s exception.

For a team that’s already $11-million over the luxury tax limit, the Lakers were wise not to use either exemption. It’s one thing to pay Kwame Brown $4-million a year like the Pistons did. It’s another thing to pay $8-million with the luxury tax which is what a deal like that would have cost to the Lakers.

Instead the Lakers can go into the season with both exceptions in hopes that a player the caliber of P.J. Brown or Sam Cassell is available after the deadline. At that point, they could offer their full mid-level exception at a prorated amount and only be taxed on that amount.

Another thing the Lakers failed to do this off-season was add veterans to a team that looked like college kids against a very experienced Celtics team.

The good news for the Lakers is that they only have two players on their roster who are thirty years old or older.

The bad news for the Lakers is that they only have two players on their roster who are thirty years old or older.

By contrast, last year’s world champions had nine players on their roster over the age of thirty.

I fully expected the Lakers to try to add more of a veteran presence to the team by going after James Posey, Tyronn Lue, Jannero Pargo, Kurt Thomas, Michael Finley or Brent Barry. Instead, it appears that they’ve chosen to get older the old-fashioned way by just letting their current roster mature. In fairness, they did express interest in both Posey and Barry but Posey wanted more years and more money than the Lakers were willing to commit and Barry seemed headed to Houston from the start.

Areas in need of improvement

Last year’s Lakers were 19th in the NBA in fewest points allowed. They allowed their opponents to score an average of 101.3 points per game. The Celtics, by comparison, allowed only 90.3 point per game.

There’s no denying that the reason the Lakers were demolished in the Finals was because they couldn’t adjust to the Celtics swarming defense and they couldn’t do enough to stop the Celtics from penetrating—as evidenced by Ray Allen’s drive on Vujacic in the Celtics’ Game 4 comeback.

Both of those areas should see improvement with the return of Bynum. I should point out, though, that Bynum played two of his worst games last season against the Celtics. He scored only four points and had nine rebounds in 27 minutes in the first meeting between the two teams and only had eight points and two rebounds before fouling out in the rematch.

Another area that needs a lot of improvement is in their ability (or inability) to guard elite point guards. The duo of Fisher and Farmar is supposed to allow them to use Fisher to guard the bigger guards like Deron Williams and Farmar to guard the quicker guards like Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo. The problem is that there are just too many instances where mismatches occur and the league’s top point guards end up having a field day. Farmar has yet to show improvement on the defensive end and seems to rely on heart and grit over actual skill.

As a result, the Lakers end up having to rely all-too-often on Kobe Bryant to expend his energy on guarding the opponents best backcourt player. This will only become a greater concern as Kobe racks up more and more mileage after twelve NBA regular seasons and five postseason runs to the Finals.

Questions that need to be answered

Q: How will Gasol, Odom and Bynum coexist?

This is a fair question to ask considering these three guys have yet to play one game together. This will probably become the area where training camp serves of utmost importance. It’s also the reason why it’s imperative that none of the three suffers even the slightest injury in the preseason since it will take some time for them to find their groove and gel.

All three guys tend to do most of their damage in the paint.

Q: How will that change with so little room for them to operate?

My guess is that Odom will be used to penetrate from the perimeter while Gasol stations himself near the elbow—much the same way that Chris Webber did for the Kings earlier this decade.

Bynum will probably control the paint because he’s such a great finisher and shoots such a high percentage.

I don’t think this will become a reoccurring issue with the Lakers since they run an offense that requires constant movement. I also don’t think that Gasol will complain about a loss of touches since he’ll be playing a lot of center while Bynum’s on the bench. The Lakers will probably try to limit Bynum’s minutes early on and having Gasol gives them the luxury of taking their sweet time in doing so.

The consensus opinion seems to be that Bynum is the one who will suffer in the stats department. I couldn't disagree more. I think that Gasol and Odom's stats will suffer slightly as Gasol moves to power forward and Odom becomes the team's fourth option on offense.

Q: With the return of Bynum, what happens to the Lakers’ three-point shooting percentage?

The Lakers were sixth in the NBA last season in three-point shooting percentage. They shot close to 38% as a team. Conventional wisdom says that the presence of another big that requires double-teams should free the perimeter guys for even more open looks. But that might not be the case with this year’s Lakers. The return of Bynum means that Vladimir Radmanovic will now be coming off the bench. The Lakers go from being a team with three legitimate outside threats in their starting lineup to a team with only two.

Three of the Lakers’ top-five three-point shooters are now reserves—including their top two, Sasha Vujacic and Radmanovic, and their fourth-best, Jordan Farmar. Will the Lakers feel the need to acquire a three-point shooter that could crack the starting five? Wasn’t that the same reason the Lakers traded for Glen Rice in 1999?

Q: Was Luke Walton's dip in play last year a result of the ankle he recently had surgically repaired or are his best days behind him?

Watching Luke Walton last season was like watching a kid with rich parents get to play in an NBA game because his mom and dad bought it for him in an auction. Luke's minutes dropped to 23 per game from 33 the previous season and with it came a dip in every offensive category, except turnovers.

Phil Jackson gave Walton every opportunity to improve his game by continuing to play him despite his tendency to telegraph passes, miss wide-open three pointers and get abused on the defensive end repeatedly.

When Walton underwent surgery on his right ankle on July 18 it provided him with a pseudo-alibi for his lackluster play.

But Walton has yet to be cleared by his doctors to return to the court. If he's not cleared by the start of training camp, Walton runs the risk of seeing his minutes and stats drop even further this season since Bynum's return moves Lamar Odom to small forward. Behind Odom on the depth chart are Vladimir Radmanovic and Trevor Ariza. Walton already had an uphill climb and the ankle injury may force Walton into a battle just to make it on the active roster.

Walton just completed the first year of a 5-year, $30-million contract. He's the only Laker under contract for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons. Should he fail to live up to the contract then his albatross of a deal could be what prevents the Lakers from adding guys like James Posey and Eduardo Najera these next few summers.

This season’s storylines

The first and most obvious storyline for this upcoming season will be Kobe’s pinkie. Personally, I think the issue is way overblown considering it’s a pinkie but the media loves to talk about it to the point where I feel like I should register kobespinkie.com and provide daily updates.

The second and yet, most important storyline, will be Kobe’s ability to opt out following the season. As of right now, there are five potential scenarios that I can see happening:

1)    Kobe decides to exercise his option on the remaining two years and $48-million on his contract.
2)    Kobe decides to opt out of the deal and signs with the Lakers for six years and the maximum.
3)    Kobe decides to opt out of the deal and signs with the Lakers for the kind of deal that allows the Lakers the financial freedom to sign Andrew Bynum to a maximum deal and re-sign Lamar Odom for about four years and $40-million.
4)    Kobe decides to opt out of the deal and entertain offers from European powerhouses who could offer him substantially more money than any NBA team could.
5)    Kobe decides to opt out and sign for only three more years, allowing him to hit free agency concurrently with the expected expiration date of the league’s current collective bargaining agreement.

I'd love to tell you that I know what Kobe plans on doing but the summers of 2003 and 2007 have taught us that the only person that knows what Kobe is going to do is Kobe.

The next biggest storyline concerning the Lakers will be the pending free agency of Lamar Odom. The Lakers will have until February 19, 2009 to determine whether or not Odom is the right piece to the puzzle. The Lakers could decide to allow Odom to walk in free agency next summer, trade him before the deadline, or sign-and-trade him after the season.

Odom is by far the best chip the Lakers have because so many teams are looking to shed salary for the summer of 2010. The Lakers could find themselves in an even more luxurious position than they were with Kwame Brown since Odom has an even fatter contract than Brown had and he actually possesses talent. He is one of four Lakers on the current roster who can play small forward so he might be considered expendable if he could net them the missing piece.

One rumored deal that could get dusted off and reemerge is a Lamar Odom-for-Shawn Marion swap. Pat Riley would love to bring Odom back to Miami because he would require a lot less money in free agency than the amount that Marion is sure to ask for. Odom and Dwyane Wade are still close friends and the Heat would still have a little money to spend in 2010.

For the Lakers they would get a better three-point shooter and much better defender in Marion. The only question then is whether or not the Lakers feel they have a legitimate shot to keep Marion after this season. I don’t know if that’s possible unless the Lakers can find a taker for the two years and $13.5-million that Vladimir Radmanovic is still owed after next season.

The Lakers could also try to package Odom with Jordan Farmar if they feel they can get themselves the type of franchise point guard they might be lacking. Farmar is eligible for a contract extension next summer that would kick in during the 2010-11 season and the Lakers might decide to trade him before making a long-term commitment.

Forecast

No doubt the Lakers benefited down the stretch last year when it came to their schedule. They played ten of their final fourteen games at home, and one of their four final road games was against the Clippers. That favorable schedule may have been the biggest contributor to them winning the top seed in the Western Conference.

This year, the Lakers lucked out by getting ten of their first sixteen games at home. Down the stretch, they play five of their seven April games at home. The bad news is that they have a brutal seven-games-in-twelve-days road trip to end the month of March.

Looking at the Pacific Division, the Lakers should have no trouble repeating as division champs. The only competition for the division title should come from the aging Phoenix Suns.

The Suns, by comparison, play nine of their first sixteen games on the road and six of those seven home games are against Portland (twice), Houston, New Orleans, Detroit and the Lakers. If the Suns don’t get off to a good start they could find themselves five or six games back of the Lakers before the first of December.

The Clippers should be a lot better next season but not enough to make them a playoff team in the wicked and wild Western Conference.

The Warriors will probably miss the playoffs for the second straight year with so many new players and a devastating injury to Monta Ellis.

The Kings will probably be the same team they were last year considering that the development of their young players won’t be enough to overcompensate for the loss of Ron Artest.

Don’t be surprised if the Lakers improve upon their 57-25 record of last season. While popular opinion considers last year’s NBA Finals “a six-game sweep”, the Lakers themselves feel as if they were only two wins away from winning the NBA title and the reason they didn’t had more to do with not having home-court advantage.

As for the conference outlook, the Lakers main competition should come from the Spurs, Hornets and Rockets—three teams who will be battling it out in the same division. The Jazz, meanwhile, didn’t do enough to match the Rockets’ off-season acquisitions.

Prediction

60-22, top seed in the Western Conference.

As for the postseason, a top seed would present a first-round match-up with either the Nuggets, Blazers or Mavericks.

In the Conference Semi-Finals and Conference Finals they’re looking at a match-up with two from the group of New Orleans, Houston, San Antonio, Utah and Phoenix.

According to VegasInsider.com, the Lakers are currently Vegas’ pick to win the NBA title at 3-to-1 with the Celtics right behind them at 7-to-2.

In the interest of full disclosure I should let it be known that I’ve been a Lakers season ticket holder since 1989. If I picked them to win the NBA championship I’d look like a homer so I’m better off not picking them to win it all.

I’ll just say with the return of a healthy Bynum, Mihm and Ariza and the maturation of an already dangerous bench, I really like their chances.