Presiding Over The Funeral Of A Rival

  

 Happy Easter!!!

   Easter is a special day in Monponsett. Everybody puts on their Sunday best, children get Easter bonnets, the first flowers are emerging, and the air doesn't freeze your lips shut. Spring is just around the corner(it's actually been Spring for a week, but I don't consider it to be Spring until all the snow melts), and "rebirth" is the buzzword for today.

   It's also the day that the Sunday Sports are due out. We're like the Chinese place down in the plaza. We work holidays. You know the deal. Stuff yourself full of Easter brunch at Grammy's....then roll out after the NBA games to catch some deep-fried sweet and sour post-Easter goodness from the local Ming Dynasty.

   Easter is also neck and neck with Halloween and Valentine's Day to see who can sell the most candy. I have already secured my chocolate bunny, and it is stored in my office where no child can get at it. Gabrielle has her own stuff, and I get ornery when my level of chocolate runs low. Mr. Chocolate Cottontail is out of his box now, and he will soon be decapitated.

   So now that we're fed, it's time to check out the world of sports. It has been an interesting week, far beyond the two fine NCAA games we saw yesterday

Daddy Beats Suns

"I'll play the host at your funeral...as I smoke a blunt and reminisce..."

    The NBA was rocked to the very core by the Shaquille O'Neal trade last summer. Anytime you trade a monster like Shaq Daddy to build around someone, that kid better bring the Dubs in with a fat rake. And if you enjoy your professional reputation as a general manager, the Diesel better break down before his extension, proving to all that you were right all along.

   This past week, Shaq took his NBA's best record into a game with the Beasts of the West, the Phoenix Suns. Shaq was a behemoth inside, smashing aside opponents like a rampaging Wooly Mammoth. When the evening was over, he owned the NBA's best record, earned at the expense of the NBA's second best team.

   Shaq has teamed with Dwayne Wade to basically gorilla pimp the Eastern Conference. Miami has worked the LA recipe(takeone Shaq, add scoring guard, voila!!) to a 53-18 record. While his contract extension might hold the chance of paying him $30 million to score 12 points a game, his Movement To The East has simply tipped the NBA balance of power back to the landof the Risng Sun.

   Back in LA, Kobe is the whole effin' show, and with his legal difficulties settled, he was at last free to start his own Laker era. The results have been a nightmare. The Lakers are 32-36 as I write this. They are almost twenty games back in the loss column. If the Lakers lose the #8 in a row (ironic?) while the Clippers win somewhere else, Kobe will be playing for the worse LA basketball team.

   And it's not like the Clip just drafted the next Olajuwon and have sixty wins already. They're the same old Lottery bunch they always were...they just have a roomie named Kobe, now. If the NBA were a neighborhood (with each division being a house), Los Angeles is a bunk bed ragamuffin kid's room in the squalid white trash house. They've pi**ed through three coaches since last June, and they'll probably bring in Contestant #4 this July.

   It gets worse. In order to make it Kobe's team, they had to lose the Diesel, his $29 million  year contract, his demands for a $30 million/2 year extension, and his status as the straw that stirs the drink. While this decision may be questioned, the motives can be understood. Kobe is a kid, and he might have 10 good years left. You build around that. The key was getting the best possible return for Shaq.

   Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant are all fine players, but I truly believe that you could sprinkle seed onto a "NBA Top 50 Scorers" list and let a chicken peck 3 better guys off of it.

   They are less than the sum of their parts, which is hard to do. Odom is a solid player, a multi-talented Olympian who is always a threat to fudge around and get a triple double. Butler is a servicable forward, and Grant simply needs his own paragraph. He's the factor that turns the equation negative.

   Brian Grant owns what may be the worst contract on the books in the NBA today. He is owed an utterly ridiculous 13 million and change this year, 14 next year, and 15 the season after that. New Jersey is paying Dikembe Mutombo $14 million to play for Houston this year, but at least they get to stop in July. New York owes Lil' Penny and Allan Houston a few Iraq invasions worth of salary for 2-3 years. Those are his only rivals.

   So you have a Laker squad built around a Lottery-producing Kobe/Grant/Odom financial axis. Chris Mihm is a nice-but-clumsy fellow, and Chucky Atkins tries really hard. The rest of the squad are has beens and never weres. The Lakers are crippled financially, and if they use their draft pick this Lottery season, they'd better hope they score big....because Boston owns their draft pick one of the next 3 years from the Payton trade. The last time the Lakers gave Boston a draft pick, it turned into Larry Bird.

   Kobe is paid maximum NBA dollars through his 2011 contract ($24.8 million). Odom gets $62 million through 2009. Grant will collect an ungodly $15 million  through 2006-07. The four contracts they have on the books in the 2006-7 season put them over the cap. They lose Grant in 2007, at which point they can spend 8-10 million on a free agent....as long as they then play four-on-twelve.

   Unless Kobe rights this ship next year, no help is coming. Someone may take that nightmare Grant contract off their hands for an overpriced, Abdur-Rahim type player...but that day is perhaps years away. If they don't give the Celtics this year's Lottery pick, they could stand the chance of handing us a much better pick in 2006 or 2007.

   I don't blame Kobe as much as many do. He is scoring like a SOB, spilling dimes, and rebounding. He can still take games over now and then. But if you look at his record next to other NBA teams, he's no better than Corey Maggette, Steve Francis, or the Redd Mike. None of those dudes is on the books for $25 million in 2011.

   The worst part is that when the Lakers had a chance to slip into the playoffs with a run, they proceeded to reel off eight humiliating losses in a row. Without the Diesel, the Lakers went belly-up in crunch time. They will have to beg free agents to accept their paltry, mid-level exception. 

   They have these chances to get better.

- Kobe and Odom click, and a full training camp brings the Lakers out of the box like a cannonball in 2006-7.

- Odom is dangled over the summer, and fetches a player who enjoys the aforementioned chemistry with the Kobester. Lamar for a high lottery pick and an expiring contract?

- Someone offers them an unhappy star in 2007 in exchange for Grant's expiring contract.

- The Lakers gather a Lottery pick or two, and strike gold.

- They shake up the NBAagain, and trade Kobe before he becomes a Lottery fixture.

   All of these moves involve one man, and it isn't Kobe. LA needs to decide if they are gonna leave the future in the hands of the current regime. While the motivation is understood, the Lakers could have been assembled better by a monkey with a pack of NBA trading cards. They blew their wad- trading the Daddy- and they got played like hillbillies on 42nd St.

   They were essentially worrying about paying Shaq thirty mill to score 18 points a game. So they instead traded for three guys at the same salary who'll be lucky to combine for 18 a game. They should have offered Kobe a deal before last season, and shipped him off for 80 cents on the dollar if he didn't sign immediately.

   If I owned the Lakers, I would walk out onto the court during the last home game and fire Mitch Kupchak over the PA system. I might bring a few armed bodyguards with me, as Mitch goes about 6'11" or so. As the heavies escorted Kupchak from the building, I'd give Kobe a seven year deal stare as I threatened him with banishment to Toronto if he doesn't start producing next year.

  

 

JOKE TIME:

 Saint Peter has three blondes in the waiting room. He calls the first one in.

"Miss....please explain to me what Easter is."

"Well.....Jesus was born in a manger, and on Easter, Santa visited him and gave him a stocking full of toys."

"Sorry...off to Hell. Next!"

   The second blonde walks in.

"Explain Easter to me, Miss..."

"Ummmm....it's that day where the Pilgrims like killed the Indians and ate them?"

"Off to Hell with you....Next!"

   The third blonde walks in.

"Explain Easter, please."

"Easter is a Christian celebration that celebrates Christ rising from the dead after his crucifixtion. On the third day, Jesus rose from his tomb....."

"Excellent...here's your wings....Heaven is the third door on the left."

"....and then he saw his shadow, and we had six more weeks of winter." 

St. Peter then resigns his position.