The Problem of “Unthinkable” – by Henry Abbott

BY HENRY ABBOTT

We are deep enough into the NBA season to know that the Lakers are not going to win the title. Neither will the 76ers. Probably not the Bucks, Warriors, Clippers or Suns either. By my count, eight of the top ten earners are already to the point where they’re starting to ask what went wrong.

In order to cure the disease, it is crucial to make the diagnosis correctly. Let’s assume the 76ers will something. Doing the wrong thing can easily curse them to years of irrelevance.

• Are the 76ers terrible because the roster lacks the talent to withstand Joel Embiid’s predictable absence? If so, they might want to throw everything they have into a deadline deal deal for a starting power forward.

• Is Paul George past his prime? If so, no need to be sentimental: see how the trade market looks for PG.

• Have the players tuned out Nick Nurse? That would probably be the easiest problem to solve.

• Is that the cold, hard analysis the 76ers will never contend with when Joel Embiid is out? Maybe it’s worth pausing his season and flying him all over the world, visiting every possible expert to figure out how to get his body right.

It can be difficult to put your finger on the real problem – especially when those responsible do not want to find it. A rather silly but unfortunately common thing is that a team will ignore the real problem in favor of what makes key people look smarter. The Kings drafted Tyreke Evans ahead of Stephen Curry, then literally put on a parade to assure everyone they had been brilliant.

In that way, the 76ers have just executed a multi-year strategy to pair Embiid with George, the jewel of free agency. Everyone thought it would work. I wonder how many times the 76ers front office researched, prepared and presented this plan to billionaire Josh Harris. After all, who builds a house and then a few months later recommends tearing the house down? It’s simply human nature to ignore the flaws in something you’ve worked on for years.

Recently on ESPN, Brian Windhorst explained that the Warriors’ dream is LeBron James playing alongside Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. To power work! But if it doesn’t go smoothly, trading away the talent the Warriors need to get LeBron will likely kill Steph’s chances for another title. The Clippers once decided they would win more with Paul George than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a bunch of picks (one of which became Jalen Williams). The Bucks went all-in on the bet that Damian Lillard was just what Giannis needed.

On the Lakers, the real problem to me is that the team not only employs, but revolves around, a $49 million megastar who, as we are painfully learning before our eyes, is simply too old to wear a good NBA keep night in and night out. It is one thing for Henry Abbott and David Thorpe to solve it LeBron James is the problem with the Lakers. For Lakers head honcho Jeanie Buss, I wonder if it’s even possible to really weigh it when basketball’s most famous person is headed for the local TV ratings that support her entire family.

On the other hand, the Buss family has been through this before – and it hurt.

Last week, Adrian Wojnarowski resurfaced in NBA media circles. He seems to be doing well — keeping prostate cancer at bay, looking happier and healthier than his NBA game days. And he told a story that shook something loose in me.

As the 2011 NBA lockout negotiations dragged on, it was reported that the new CBA would include an amnesty clause. It’s a way for teams to kiss a bad contract goodbye. They would still have to pay every penny, but they would be able to waive the player while (here’s the most important part) getting relief from the player’s effect on their salary cap and, if applicable, luxury tax.

It’s a mulligan for a bad contract, commonly used on a star with a big salary and a bad injury. Gilbert Arenas, Baron Davis and Brandon Roy—beloved players slowed by injuries—were predictable choices. According to an article by Chad Ford and Marc Stein in the fall of 2011, it was a “slam dunk” that the Lakers—with massive payroll, questionable contracts and an urge to improve the roster—would pardon anyone. Leading contenders at the time were Metta World Peace and Luke Walton.

But the Lakers did not grant amnesty to anyone in 2011 or in 2012. The way the rules worked, teams had five years to take advantage of the clause. And in an oddity, players could only get amnesty during a one-week period in July and only on contracts signed in or before 2011. The number of eligible Lakers declined as the year went on. In the spring of 2013, the Lakers had only four amnesty-eligible contracts.

That spring was a turning point. For the 2012-2013 season, the Lakers had assembled a super team around Kobe Bryant: Steve Nash, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol and Metta World Peace. The team dominated predictions ahead of time and had the NBA’s highest payroll by a wide margin. Still, after losing to the Clippers by 24 points in the final game before the All-Star Break, the Lakers had a dismal 25-29 record and faced an uphill battle just to make the playoffs. It was an old and expensive team and it was hard to see how they would improve.

At the time, Kobe Bryant was 34 and the highest-paid player in the NBA — earning north of $30 million, while the second-highest salary was around $20 million. Every team with a 34-year-old star should plan for posterity. That’s especially true when the player makes a fortune and doesn’t win with an All-Star roster.

That’s why Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak held regular meetings about the post-Kobe Lakers. In particular: Kupchak met secretly and regularly at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills with Dwight Howard’s agent Dan Fegan, who died in 2018. Fegan told me several times about these meetings. One topic: which coach could make Kobe more of a team player. Fegan spoke for Phil Jackson. Otherwise, he recommended how the Lakers use the amnesty clause to give up the biggest contract in the NBA. If the Lakers granted Kobe amnesty, Fegan believed, there were many avenues to pair Howard with another star and quickly return to contention. For a time, it appeared to Fegan that Kupchak and Jim Buss, who were making the big Laker decisions at the time, were leaning that way.

I have no idea how much Kobe knew about these meetings, but very likely he had something similar in mind when he reportedly told Wojnarowski that he thought he would get amnesty.

What emerged next was a smear campaign that would make it difficult for the Lakers to sell their fans on the concept Howard had what it took to lead the post-Kobe Lakers. Wojnarowski published several stories, many openly attributed to Bryant and some less so. In January 2013, i a Wojnarowski article discussing ideal team strategiesBryant mentioned every key teammate except Howard: “We’ve got to go back to basics. We’ve got to put guys in positions to do what they do best. We’ve got to eliminate that. Steve’s best in the pick- duck-roll. Pau is best in the post. Let’s go back to the basics.

“Part of the problem with Howard’s clowning is that people don’t take him seriously,” Wojnarowski wrote the following month. “It’s easier to doubt his toughness, tenacity, when they see him grabbing the microphone to make an impression on team charters or booming farts in the dressing room. Bryant never wanted Howard’s disposition to rule the day in the Lakers’ locker room.”

A few days later, Wojnarowski wrote on the possibility of the Lakers trading Howard, quoting an icy Kobe: “I don’t know what they’re going to do. At this point, it doesn’t matter.”

Woj smiles as he recounts how Kobe thought the Lakers would use the amnesty clause to essentially fire Kobe. He laughs it off as if it never happened.

The Kobe story packs a lesson for the current Lakers: NBA rules make holding on to the past incredibly expensive. Playing careers end all the time – sometimes instantly, more commonly in ways that are grueling, painful and Shakespearean.

While drags the Lakers into the playoffs in the spring of 2013, Bryant alarmed his teammates, coach and trainer with excessive work on and off the field. It culminated in a torn Achilles, which changed the debate in various ways. Yes, the Lakers made the playoffs thanks to his heroics, but they were swept in the first week in forgettable fashion. The whole episode seemed to carry a lesson: Kobe was unlikely to ever lead the Lakers to another title. The work was simply too stressful.

The following summer, as I wrote at the timeHoward chose to leave the Lakers in no small part because he felt his teammates were fodder for media attacks on him. There was a cool meeting in Fegan’s office where Nash reportedly said he didn’t realize Howard felt that way, but Kobe essentially told Dwight to step up. Howard didn’t. Instead, he left for the Rockets for $30 million less than the Lakers had offered. (Kobe later said that he regretted nothing.)

The Lakers then finally used their amnesty clause – on Metta World Peace. The Lakers held a press conference to say that losing Kobe Bryant would be unthinkable, and eventually extended Kobe’s contract.

It didn’t work. After opening the 2012-2013 season with what was widely seen as the NBA’s best team, the Lakers almost immediately turned into one of the worst, winning just 64 of their next 246 games. Bryant played just 107 of the 246. It’s doubtful he could have helped much.

In the end, Kobe had one of the worst plus/minus on the team – just like LeBron now. (That suggests the team could expect better results from an average player taking their minutes.) What followed was the most losing stretch since the Lakers opened for business in 1948. The team spun through general managers, coaches and the stopgap – players. Nothing worked until the miracle of LeBron’s arrival.

We’ll never know what would have happened if the Lakers had granted Kobe amnesty. But they didn’t – because the idea was unthinkable. Given how things worked, the lesson would surely be to make everything imaginable.

Most of the NBA’s highest-paid teams have tough decisions to make right now. The cost of expecting the future to be like the past can be painful years of mediocrity. David Thorpe recently argued that the Lakers should trade Anthony Davis. I often wonder if the 76ers might be better off moving on from the painful Embiid experience. The Suns won’t trade Kevin Durant, but if they did, they’d get a rebuild out of the deal.

Athletic has just launched a major project ranking based on an anonymous survey of GMs, the league’s top front offices. The answer is the Thunder, Celtics and then everyone else. The Thunder once had a massive star, at his peak, in Paul George – and traded him away at age 29. The Celtics traded away Kevin Garnett at 37 and Paul Pierce at 35. Both front offices hired no-name head coaches. In other words, they had the courage to make unpopular decisions in real time that favored the long term over the short term.

There are front office managers who, in some cases, make more than $10 million a year to handle these decisions. Sometimes they do. But more often, instead of making the tough call, they make the comfortable one.

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