It’s strange to say, but the Lakers are in a good place. There’s finally hope for a team fixated on its legacy and repeating that legacy through the same means. The Lakers finally seem to be open to moving on after stockpiling a couple potentially good draft picks in Julius Randle and D’Angelo Russell. There is, however, one roadblock to there future success: Kobe Bryant.
The Lakers have only shown good will to Kobe after spending half of his life playing in a purple and gold uniform. They chose him, an arrogant child, over a unanimous top-five center ever in Shaquille O’Neal. They stood by him when he was charged with rape in Colorado in 2003. And they paid him $48.5 million over two seasons when he was coming off of an Achilles tear, an injury few players have been able to come back from.
Laker fans have come to the sobering reality that to have any chance at playoff contention, the Los Angeles front office has to move on from Kobe (or at least not pay him like he’s 24-years-old). Vino said this would be his last season but has since flip-flopped from that stance, stating that he’ll know when his time is here. In an interview with the LA Times, Jim Buss had this to say about the aging star’s current contract and his future role with the team.
“The man has done so much for the Lakers and the fans of the Laker nation, he deserves the money,” Buss said. “I don’t understand anybody trying to break down what I did for him. Let’s break down what he did for us, then say, what is he worth? To me, he’s worth that.”
So is this Bryant’s final year with the team? “My arms are like this,” Buss said, holding his arms wide open, about Bryant’s future.
“He just has to know, at that age, and that many miles on you, what is your role? We’ll explain the role, and if he still wants to do that and that’s how he wants to go out, that’s fine with me.”
“We’re going to approach it like it is, but that doesn’t mean it is,” Buss said of Bryant. “I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘This is it, Kobe, you’re done,’ because it’s not my decision, it’s his decision.”
The Lakers have no chance of making the playoffs this season. Kobe and the rest of the team are hopeful, but the Western Conference is stacked. That is not to say the season won’t be interesting though. A major theme will be how the Black Mamba approaches interacting with the squad, which is progressively embracing advanced analytics more and is getting younger and more team-oriented — a style Kobe definitely did not embrace last season.
But if the 37-year-old can look toward the future, which he is not a part of (at least as a player), and focus on improving the youngsters and playing with his team instead of using them, he can most definitely be a useful player. But it remains to be seen how much he trusts the younger and less-proven players, something he’s struggled with in the past.
[LATIMES]
