Quote Originally Posted by wantitall4moi;[STRIKE
14846056]BECAUSE he is making so much it makes him impossible to trade.

Just more evidence of how the Lakers have buried themselves recently with bad contracts and thinking money grew on trees.

But sure if they could sucker someone into taking that deal it would be the best thing they could do.

But these guys are way late to the party I said this shit over a year ago and have been saying it ever since.

Also them thinking he matters off the court is a joke, Shaq was a much bigger off court presense than Kobe is or ever has been or will be. But they kicked Shaq to the curb like yesterday's garbage. So that off court nonsense is just dumb. He has been playing long enough now to not even be that big a draw, who goes to games just to see Kobe Bryant play? If he still had the draw power then you might factor that in but he doesnt and you cant. Even if he did at that price tag he would really have to have a lot of drawpower.

The way to look at it is would the Lakers still be selling out and selling season tickets and overpriced lower region tickets if Kobe was gone but the team was better? The answer is obvious. LA is a front running town, there are 'stars' walking around everywhere. So people that think 'star power' is meaningful in LA are lost. This is a front running town, you can have Kobe on a 500 team (like you did a few years ago) dropping 50 and 80 a game and people dont really care. They'll buzz about a big performance but it doesnt make them want to go see the next game in case it happens again.

Lakers are buried with this guy, thats why they will not be able to come close to competing for anything as long as he is there. The article says two years, who knows they might over pay this guy another 3-5 years just to keep him in the uniform. So two years is just the minimum of their servitude to this guy. So basically right now the Lakers are as good as they can expect to be considering the money they have invested. Unless they trade some guys for draft picks and get a superstar in the draft. Which isnt likely to happen. Thats why Lakers continually trading picks and stockpiling bad players to fill 'roles' is just bad basketball, and just adds to the list already mentioned of bad things the Lakers do.[/STRIKE]