Lakers Rumors: Kobe Bryant Furious with Jim Buss

Stephen A. Smith is reporting that Kobe Bryant is furious with Jim Buss, Lakers executive and son of owner Jerry Buss. According to the website, Larry Brown Sports, 

"

Appearing on SportsCenter, Smith said “I predicted that Kobe Bryant will demand a trade, and I am not budging from that. He’s livid. I’ve known Kobe too long. He is ticked off.

“It’s not just because [the Clippers] got Chris Paul, which is a guy that he expected to have. It’s because Jim Buss seems to be doing the inexplicable,” Smith said. “It makes no sense. It’s one thing for the team not to have improved [after losing to the Mavericks], it’s another thing entirely for them to regress. If you know anything about Kobe, that is the last thing that he wants to do.

“It will not be pleasant at all.”

"

Since Buss took over, he has not exactly endeared himself to Kobe. First he hired new coach Mike Brown without consulting Bryant first. Then there was the whole Paul debacle. Then, in the wake of that, they shipped out Lamar Odom, longtime teammate of Bryant, and got nothing in return, leaving Bryant livid. 

Clearly, Bryant is not a big fan of where the team is headed. If his mood is any barometer, then there's not much chance of getting Howard in the purple and gold any time soon, either. 

The Lakers have been so good for so long and made so many good moves that it's hard to believe that they could be on the precipice of prolonged failure, but the problem is that Jerry West might not be looking out for them this time, either on their team or Orlando's. 

And while Kobe might be wanting to get traded, the chances of it are somewhere between slim and none, with the odds being much, much closer to the "none" side of things. 

Bryant is owed over $80 million over the next three years, which makes him virtually impossible to trade. He has almost no chance of getting interest in spite of his obvious talent level. First it would require that a team give up $25 million worth of talent in return, but that talent would be on the other side of a career. 

In two years Bryant will be making $30 million! That's potentially half the salary cap by himself. The Lakers, simply put, are the only team that can afford that kind of contract. 

While I understand some readers are going to insist that Bryant is tradeable, I challenge you to come up with a trade the other team accepts. Certainly there are teams, like the Bulls who would love to have him (and frankly right now I'm sure he'd love to be on), but there's no realistic way to get him there. 

Financially speaking, the only NBA player the Lakers could get straight up for Kobe is Rashard Lewis, and we all know that's not going to happen.

In order to acquire Bryant, a team would have to give up two stars with salaries in the double digits, and Kobe, on the tail end of his career, is simply not worth that anymore.  

There's only one way out of this mess for Kobe, and it's probably even less likely than a trade, and that is for Kobe to be amnestied or waived, but that's a boatload of money for the Lakers to eat. Realistically, there's just not a way out. 

Or else he can always just retire. 

Barring that, Kobe can fume all he wants, but he's not going anywhere.