As the World Turns: Reassessing My Lakers' Posts From This Past Year

When I left the house at 5:30am on Saturday for an all-day licensing exam, I lost contact with the outside world for about 14 hours. Getting back to my truck and turning on my phone, I was immediately inundated with alerts of text messages, emails, and notifications from every app known to mankind. You really don’t know how much contact you get throughout the day until you are forced to stash your mobile device somewhere without checking it for several hours. Such was how I learned that Kobe Bryant had torn his achilles the night before. Kobe’s injury brings to mind several things: Kobe’s future as a player, the Lakers’ plans for how to reshape their roster in the upcoming years, and, most selfishly, all of my wacko Laker comments and predictions dating back to last summer. As the default NBA soap opera franchise of this past year (the Miami Heat previously held that title), I’ve written about Los Angeles a bunch lately. However, my prognostications have ranged from spot-on to complete crap. Allow me to give myself a Laker report card…

On a sidenote, Mike D'Antoni's grade for his season as Lakers' coach? F----.

1. Dwight Howard will wind up being a Laker before all is said and done…B+…Howard’s 1st choice was always Brooklyn, but as those talks broke down it become increasingly clear that LA was the only logical destination. So, my prediction was on-point, but I will downgrade my mark because it was fairly obvious to begin with.

2. The Lakers could be really, really good…D…I did give the caveats about roster age, Howard coming off injury, and how the pieces would all fit together, but generally I thought the Lakers would immediately vault back into a top 3 team in the West even if it took a while for them to start to click. Well, playoffs or not, I couldn’t have been farther off.

3. The Lakers will only improve this year through some kind of blockbuster trade, preferably moving Pau Gasol…D…In my defense, I didn’t see Dwight Howard getting healthy or Kobe playing 47 minutes a night in the cards either. More on those in a sec…

4. Dwight Howard needs to tone down his on-court wardrobe…A+…This wasn’t so much as a prediction as a plea, and Howard has obliged. For the most part lately, he’s ditched the headband, arm sleeves, and ballerina tights. Lately, he’s been sporting a Underarmor style black compression shirt under his jersey, which looks odd given the league’s dresscode, but…

Ahh, looks much better. Coincidence that he's started to play better also? I think not.

5. Dwight Howard will never be the player he once was again, and the Lakers shouldn’t sign him to a max contract…F…Yikes…at the time I wrote this, Howard looked like a shell of his former self. Once an unmatched pairing of strength and athleticism for a paint player around the league, earlier this season Howard more resembled a taller Carlos Boozer who couldn’t shoot (yikes again). Shortly after writing that post (see the but at the end of the last bullet), Howard started to look a little more spry though, and now he is the human basketball wrecking ball that he was pre-back surgery again.

6. I’ve had enough of Kobe Bryant…A-…Also, not a prediction really, but how can I not bring this up when I wrote the post and Kobe goes down in a heap a month later?!? For all the sports-hate I have towards Kobe, I wasn’t wishing him to go out like that! And even worse, I doubt that this is him going out at all. Instead, it will probably be the last nail in the coffin for coach Mike D’Antoni (playoffs or not), who was giving Bryant so little rest the last few weeks that an injury was almost expected. But if I had to bet, Kobe will be back at some point next year, and we will have to hear “heartwarming” (I mean nauseating) Kobe-rehab stories for months on end…making the Lakers the NBA’s soap opera team for 1 more year at least.

Spare me.