Why are the Lakers So Good

May 21, 2009

I know every sports fan out there has been forced to hear this entire season how much better the Los Angeles Lakers are than any other team in the NBA. They are by far the most talented? They are the best coached? They have this, they have that….. Does anyone really know what make the Lakers as potent as they are. Lets break this team down and I’ll tell you what makes them so dangerous and powerful.

I’m going to start off with the most obvious. They have the best player since Michael Jordan on their team. I do not want to hear about LeBron James right now. I know he is good. I know he is a 6′8 freak so definitely will win a championship before he retires. He is the face that David Stern wants on his NBA product. But sometimes we get so obsessed by what will be that we loose track of what was and what is. Look, Kobe has won three championships and they were back to back. I do not want to hear anything about him having Shaq. That certainly helped to have a Shaq in his prime but Kobe was a major part of that championship to. Shaq came in the league in 1992 and did not win a championship until 2000. I wonder who was the missing piece? Kobe Bryant. He is not an easy to person to like. I must say that I do not know him personally but he has never been one of my favorite players. Being from Texas I have been a Spurs and Rockets fan to be honest. But I have watched 100s of Bryant’s game and I can tell you now Kobe Bryant has not flaws. That is not easily said by me. He is an excellent shooter proficient at the three point shot and mid-range jumper. If you give him space he will shoot the lights out and has done so numerous times. He can also get to the rim as well as any player in the league. Kobe is able to twist his body in mid air allowing him to draw the foul and get any shot up he wants. He is a fantastic and artistic finisher. He has proved himself to be a good and willing passer having excellent court vision when the mood suits him. The final two facts about Kobe Bryant’s game, and this sets him apart from his peers at present and puts him right under Michael Jordan, is that he has always been an above average to great defensive player especially considering his offensive responsibilities and his clutch factor. There is nothing that he cannot do. And this is only the first reason Los Angelas is #1 and they only way they can be defeated is by totally imploding inwardly.

Two years ago the Lakers were literally handed from above a gift. This was probably one of the most lopsided none sense making trade in the last twenty years. If anyone up to this point thought the NBA was rigged they had ample reason at this point to be fully validated. I am talking about the Los Angelas Lakers acquiring Pau Gasol. People do not fully understand that this single trade put the Lakers at the top and as long as they have Bryant and Gasol they are going to be an extremely hard team to beat. Why do you think this is? Pau Gasol has easily been one of the best and talented big man is the game for the last several years. You never heard about him because he played in Memphis, one of the smallest markets in the NBA, and go little to no recognition. It also did not help that during his first two years Hubbie Brown ran a 10 man rotation severely limiting Gasol’s minutes and being on a team for many years with little to no championship talent. I would say that for many years only Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Rasheed Wallace, and Dirk Nowitzki were the only power forwards better than Gasol. He has a very refined and skilled post up game and a reliable if not deadly mid-range jump shot. He has always been an excellent passer for a big man and when you put him into an offense like the “triangle” his passing becomes murderous for the other team. Could you imagine the damage Pau could do in the King’s “Princeton Offense” they used to run back in their glory days under Rick Amderman.

So already we have the best player in basketball joining forcing with the fifth best power forward in the entire NBA. Are we scared yet?

Derrick Fisher is scary. As a Spur’s fan you have to understand that I still have nightmares from the 2004 playoffs when he killed us with .4 seconds of the shot clock. I still feel a slight twitch from that. He is an excellent physical defensive point guard, a great leader (president of the NBA Association Executive Committee), having a penchant for hitting clutch shots throughout his whole career, a great three point shooter, and a player that never makes any mistakes. He is not the assist king like Steve Nash but there is nothing glamorous about his game. While he will never be on ESPN highlights secretly every coach in the league would give their right hand to have him leading their team.

Lamar Odom is their next secret weapon. He is a 6′10 “point forward” who can do a little bit of everything. His biggest flaw is that he is lazy. If he consistently live up to his potential the Lakers could have gone deeper into the playoffs even before they acquired Pau Gasol. He can step back and shot threes, loves to pass, can drive to the hole, but more importantly get you tons of rebounds, many being offensive, during a game. He is a mismatch waiting to happen on any given night and how the Lakers have the luxury of this beast coming off their bench.

Let’s not forget about Trevor Ariza. He and Derrick Fisher are the absolute glue to this team. He is a another great athletic defensive player with long arms and knack for disrupting passing lanes. He is on his way to one day being what Bruce Bowen was three years ago. He allows the Lakers to have a defensive stopper at the small forward spot who can make life a little tougher on the opposing side’s oftentimes best scorer.

Add all this up and you have a dangerous team. Bynum, Farmar, Vujacic, and Walton finish the bench off fairly nicley. They all have their complementary roles and quite frankly Vujacic and Farmar can get hot at any moment and start draining threes from all over the court. When these guys get hot the Lakers are impossible to beat.

Phill Jackson is a great coach and I take nothing from him but he has one hell of a team. With the talent he has anything short of winning a championship is an abysmal failure. The Las Angeles Lakers are the best team in the NBA and I truly feel sorry for any team that tries to stand in their way. Nothing is impossible. The eight seeded Warriors beat the Dallas Maverick several years ago in one of the biggest upsets in NBA history. So anything can happen. Its just not going to be this season…

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