Nash now a Laker
 

Semi-finals or bust!

:tro:

Hell he is only 38 :rolleyes:

Maybe they can bring back Gary Payton and Karl Malone again too.

Not far off. Looks like Grant Hill is coming with him.

IF that does happen, the Lakers will become the favorites to win the 2005 NBA championship.

I dont know the Knicks signed JKidd...might give them a run since Bynum will be 16.

three words
























Metta World Peace ;)

I'm not so quick to dismiss this trade. From a defensive standpoint, it obviously doesn't help but I don't see how the lakers aren't vastly improved with Nash at the point in place of Ramon sessions. They still have one of the biggest frontlines in the league along with Kobe. Nash averaged 10 assists per game last year.

I'm not saying that this pushes them past okc but it certainly makes the series much more interesting and I don't see any other team in the west being any better.

This trade does not make them better then OKC or Miami, hell they can't beat Boston in a series as the rosters sit right now.

That would put them as one of the four best teams in basketball which is about right in my opinion. I realize that OKC beat them in that series but its not like it wasn't competitive. If Nash was in there this year over Sessions, could that not have made the difference? Maybe not but i don't think one could answer that definitively considering how close the games were.

Nash averaged 10.6 assists last year passing the ball to a bunch of stiffs. What does that total look like when Kobe, bynum and Gasol are taking those shots? How much does it help Kobe if he has a two time MVP getting him easy looks? How much does it help the lakers spacing when you have a credible shooter spotting up from three point range? How much does it help Gasol and bynum when they have one of the best pick and roll point guards in history to work with instead of watching kobe jack up another 20 ft fade?

Kobe best player on the planet
 

OKC got lucky with the Lakers, And Kobe Needs help, Bynum sucks, he should be trade. plus their style of play now is set up for a point guard
and nash is perfect fit for that style.

No_more triangle offense

Lakers the Team to Beat in this Up_coming season

it was too easy to fix that.

i don't follow basketball at all but my friend who actually cares thinks they're improved but have too little on the bench and you can't expect the front 5 to carry them through the playoff's. he thinks they'll try to trade gasol for two guys who combined make about as much money as he does by himself.

They need some athleticism and energy from the bench, and badly need a useful backup point guard as well.

Obviously 30 minutes of Nash is better than what they had but Kobe, Nash, MWP and even Gasol are all in various stages of decline. The elephant in the room in LA is Kobe is not the player he was and one of the Lakers issues in the playoffs was they ran out of gas because Brown overused Kobe, Gasol and Bynum in the regular season. Nash isn't going to help in that area and they simply have no depth especially on the wings and have very little room to maneuver. The window for them is really narrow because they have no young legs and the decline in the key players isnt going to reverse itself. Of course if they get Howard for Bynum then it changes everything because all of a sudden the defensive issues go away for the most part.

Where they rank isnt really pertinent because in LA it is win or bust. Nash is not the MVP player he was. Watching a PHX game the last 2 years and seeing him laying prone on the sidelines makes you remember that he has a lot of miles on that body. The spacing issue is not going away because Nash is not a guy who get doubled. Teams play him straight up just as most play Kobe straight up and live or die with him taking bad shots. The thing that may be an issue with LA is Bynum is strictly a low post guy and Kobe is an isolation player, neither of which plays to Nash's strengths. Of course he is such a dynamic playmaker that he can make it work but Brown should probably seperate Nash and Kobe's minutes and let Nash dictate the offense when Kobe is on the bench because I still don't see Kobe allowing the offense not being run through him most of the time.

Defensively how do they match up to OKC? Still major issues there.

I think Nash makes them better but not significantly. Not because he's not a huge improvement over Sessions because he is, but because I don't think he fits their style of play. For one, Kobe needs to control the ball too much and that takes it out of Nash’s hands and that defeats his purpose. Kobe has won five titles. James got one. Wade got one. Bird won three. Jordan won six. All of these guys were wing players that controlled their offense and won without a top level point guard. In fact, I believe you may have to go all the way back to Isaih Thomas in 1990 to find the last time an all star level point guard won a title. I suppose you could argue Parker and Billups, who were both finals MVP but neither was actually an all star at the time. But anyway, I just don't see Kobe ceding that much control of the ball to anyone. Nash is a good shooter but he's more off the dribble, not spot up. I don't think his style best fits that of Bynum and Gasol either. I think his assists numbers drop down instead of go up. We haven't even gotten to his defense. Offense wasn't the problem for LA. It was an inability to stop transition offense and penetration and Nash doesn't help that. So I think it improves them but not enough to put them over the teams ahead of them.

Santa's Little Helper at Port Brewing in San Marcos next weekend!

I have them as the 4th best team right now. Guess I was being harsh. I do beleive the gap between Miami and OKC is big though. The gap between OKC and Boston is also pretty big, but LA is right there. 3 or 4.

They have to be 3rd behind Heat and Thunder....moves aren't done yet, big fish still of unknown destination.