2014: Lebron and the LA Lakers

The LA Lakers would be one of those who would be playing during the opening nights of the 2012-2013 NBA season. Although this is set to happen a few days from now, it has not stopped the rumor mills from churning out a buzz about the possibility of Lebron James jumping ship and joining the LA Lakers.

Running an NBA team is pretty much like running your own business – not only do you have to consider what’s in front of you, you also have to make sure that you already have plans set for the next two or more years. That being the case, most game professionals are seeing the latest move of LA Lakers to Steve Nash and Dwight Howard as just the initial steps to dominating the 2013-2014 NBA season, and by that, most of them are speculating the acquiring of Lebron James as part of the Lakers by 2014.

The LA Lakers is under the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the NBA. Their home court is the Staples Center located at Downtown Los Angeles. The said venue also happens to be the home court of fellow NBA team, the Los Angeles Clippers. For the 2012-2013 NBA games, LA Lakers would be fielding some of the toughest basketball players of today – Steve Nash, Dwight Howard, and of course, Kobe Bryant, among others.

Seeing that LA Lakers seems to have some of the most driven players, one would think that they would not be going after other players in other teams. This might actually not be the case. For one, let’s assume that LA Lakers has around $30 million for both Nash and Howard, that means the team still has around $30 million annually to play with. Now, Kobe Bryan would be an unrestricted free agent by 2014 and is reportedly considering retiring by the said year. But what if he decides to forego retirement and prove once again that he can still catch up with newer players in the field, ,maybe even one-up Pau Gasol, the player who seems to be having Bryant’s moves. After all, Bryant still has not clinched the “throne” from Michael Jordan and might feel that he still has a lot of proving and one-upping to do in order to have more rings than Jordan. This would, however, pose the question, “Is Kobe Bryant willing to have a pay cut just so he could satisfy his competitive nature?” If he is, then we might see him playing side by side Lebron seeing that the team still has millions of dollars to play with and use in order to sign up Lebron.

One thing more, one could also argue that the matter of Kobe staying or not would likely be impacted by whether LA Lakers wins the 2012-2013 season as well as the 2013-2014 NBA season. If they win, then there is a high possibility that Kobe would be following through with what he promised to the public. If the team is unable to deliver, this might ignite more Kobe’s competitive nature leading him to stay and continue playing for the team.

The 2012-2013 NBA season would feature the traditional schedule which would include 82 games as opposed to the shortened schedule last time which resulted in only 66 games.

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