Are the Lakers too talented to make a trade?

At first blush, this is a stupid idea - of course the Lakers can make a trade to improve their talent. They have the assets to pursue an All-Star on a team that is wanting to blow things up and rebuild - one of the largest expiring contracts in the league in Odom’s $14M contract and several young, promising players on their bench. Or they could a trade similar to the Ariza trade where the Lakers upgraded their bench talent. But the more I think about it, the more I think the Lakers can’t make a trade to improve their talent.

Just how talented are the Lakers? Chris Mihm was the team’s starting C for a season and a half (’04-’05 and ‘05-’06) until he had his horrific ankle injury. His stats put him in the middle of the pack for starting C’s in the WC. Luke Walton was the team’s starting SF in the ‘06-’07 season and started 31 games last season despite being slowed by injuries. This preseason, Mihm and Walton are healthy and appear to be regaining their pre-injury form. Last night, Mihm got into the game with 3:32 left and the Lakers up by 18 and Walton got into the game with 2:43 left. They are now the 10th and 11th men on the roster.

I am going to digress for a moment and discuss how to build a championship team. Based upon this article, you need (1) a top 5 player and (2) a Top 10 caliber player or Top 10 defender as a sidekick (one of those 2 players should be a Top 10 caliber defender). The Lakers have Kobe Bryant, the best player in the NBA and one of the best defenders. Not mentioned in the article is that a lot of champions use a “2-3 stars and a bunch of role players” model. The Spurs have won several championships with Duncan, Parker and Ginobili. The Celtics had Garnett, Pierce and Allen. The threepeat Lakers had Kobe and Shaq. The only exception I know of the “2-3 stars and a bunch of role players” model is the 2004 Detroit Pistons.

So who are the Lakers 2-3 stars and can they upgrade them? Kobe Bryant is the best player in the NBA, so the Lakers can’t upgrade there. Pau Gasol has played incredibly as a Laker and I feel the Lakers are hoping that Andrew Bynum will develop into a star. I don’t think the Lakers can trade for a player who is better than Bynum or Gasol. There are players that are better than them (e.g. Garnett, Howard), but they rarely, rarely get traded and I don’t think the circumstances are such that one of those players will get traded.

What about the upgrading one of the non-star starters? Well, I think Derek Fisher is the best role player the Lakers can have at PG. There are lots of players with more talent than Fisher and there are other players who could probably execute the triangle better than Fisher, but I don’t think there is anyone who can execute the triangle better while Kobe is screaming for the damn ball. The most important things Fisher brings are his intangibles - Kobe’s trust in him and his leadership in the locker room. I would not be surprised if once Fisher retires, Hamblen also retires and Fisher takes an assistant coaching spot on the Lakers.

So how about getting someone better than Vladimir Radmanovic? Let’s say that the Nuggets decide that they can’t win with their current team, that they should blow up the team and consequently offer Carmelo Anthony for Lamar Odom (then let Iverson walk and buy out Kenyon Martin and Nene). The problem with the deal is that there aren’t enough shots to keep Carmelo happy. Radmanovic averaged 6.7 shots per game last season and Carmelo averaged 19.2. If you reduce Carmelo’s shots to what Odom took last year (10.3) and assume hits points per shot remains the same (1.34), Carmelo becomes a 13.8 ppg player. Bynum and Gasol shoot a much higher percentage than Carmelo, so taking shots from them and giving them to Carmelo will lower the team’s shooting percentage. Radmanovic’s three point shooting ability fits in well with Kobe-Gasol-Bynum (KGB) because pulling his defender out to the 3pt line opens things up for KGB. Radmanovic is one of the top 3 pt shooting SF’s in the league (#6 last season).

Well, how about replacing Radmanovic with a young Bruce Bowen type of player who is an excellent at defense and whose outside shooting is good enough to keep teams honest? Bowen averaged 5.3 shots per game last season and shot 41.9% from 3. There aren’t too many defensive SF’s in the NBA because most team look for their SF’s (and SG’s) to be their primary scorers. One of the few is Trevor Ariza and he is already a Laker. As Phil starts Radmanovic over Ariza, he obviously prefers better 3pt shooting over better defense with the KGB unit.

So what about the Lakers bench? I really doubt that you are going to get a better sixth man than Odom. I (and I think the Lakers) had hopes that he would become an All-Star, but he never reached that level. However, he is head-and-shoulders better than other bench players. Ginobili is the only bench player that I can think of that compares in talent to Odom.

Moving down the bench, you have Ariza, Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic. To me, these three are near starter quality players and any of them (plus Odom) could finish close games given the match ups. One of the problems with trying to upgrade the bench is that if you get a player who is better than one of those three, he is going to want to start. All indicitations are that these guys are happy with being on the bench (though I think Farmar plans on moving up as Fisher gets closer to retiring). To me, Farmar has great chemistry with Ariza and does a great job of imposing his tempo on the game. Sasha was one of the best 3pt shooters in the NBA last season (#8 at 43.7%) and his pesky defense really gets on other player’s nerves.

Now were are down to Mihm and Walton. I think these guys are far more talented than most teams’ #10 and #11 players, but it doesn’t really matter as they will hopefully not get any minutes. I think Mihm isn’t going to any non-blow out minutes because Phil is going to go with a Gasol/Bynum/Odom rotation and if each of them play 32 mpg, there are no minutes for Mihm. Mihm is an insurance policy, ready to step into the back up C position if Gasol or Bynum gets injured. I have defended Walton many a time over the two prior seasons, but I just don’t see how he is going to get any minutes this year unless there are major injuries. There are just too many players that can play SF. Actually, having a player as talented as Walton as your #11 player is probably a bad idea as he is going to be unhappy getting DNP-CD’s for most games. I will talk more about Walton later.

Then the last 3 names on the roster - Josh Powell, Didier Ilunga-Mbenga and Sun Yue. If these guys matter this season, then the Lakers have been smashed by injuries. These are guys getting paid the NBA minimum and are unlikely to ever break into the Lakers rotation.

What are the long term implications of this?
The biggest implication is that if the Laker young develop as I (and I think the Lakers) hope, then this is the roster for a while. Either this group of players has enough talent to win it all or these guys aren’t going to win a championship.

I would say that the short term (i.e. this season and next off-season) goals of the Lakers should be to trade Walton for an expiring contract and re-sign everyone in their top 9 who becomes a free agent. Again, I like Walton but he is paid too much for a #11 player and both he and the Lakers will be happier if he is on a team where he can get some minutes. His contract is pretty reasonable for a guy who was once a starter for a winning team, so he shouldn’t be too hard to trade now that he is healthy. Not many teams will be under the cap next off-season and I am doubtful that those teams that will be under the cap (probably Memphis and OKC) are going to be interested in paying above MLE money a 29 year old player who plays best when he is not one of a team’s top 2 options. So, hopefully trading away Walton and reducing Odom’s salary will keep the Lakers total salary in an acceptable range with Dr. Buss. If the Lakers can re-sign Mihm to a reasonable contract, then do it. He might be able to make more somewhere else, but he might reward the Lakers for their loyalty to him.

The biggest downside I see to this plan is that Bynum needs to become a better player than Odom. If he does so, the pecking order is set and the probably salary structure for the team will make sense. If not, then Bynum will still probably get a near max contract (because everyone wants a young monster center) and Odom will demand a salary closer to his current salary. Also, Odom will want to go back to the starting line up, which will demote Bynum to the bench. Would Bynum accept that demotion as well as Odom is taking it? I am crossing my fingers that Bynum bounces back to the form he had before the injury.