All Ball: Lakers revolving door still spinning 

Mira Costa senior superstar Maile Nakaji started every game she played in her four years. Photo by Ray Vidal

by Paul Teetor

The more things change in Laker Land, the more they stay the same.

After two years of complete chaos and total ineptitude on and off the court, the Lakers finally did something smart at the trade deadline this week: they got rid of selfish, surly, petulant Russell Westbrook, the hometown hero who turned out to be a heel.

The final chapter in his nightmarish Laker tenure came Tuesday night against Oklahoma City, the same night Lebron James set the NBA scoring record. Near the end of the second quarter, Coach Darvin Ham subbed Westbrook out and Westbrook lingered on the court long past the time he should have gone to the bench.

You didn’t need a dictionary to read his body language: I’m sick of this. Why is everybody always picking on me?

During halftime in the locker room Westbrook verbally challenged Ham, a 6-foot-8 former power forward who carved out a 10-year NBA career by refusing to back down from anybody. The two men nearly came to blows before cooler heads intervened – just the kind of distraction they didn’t need on LeBron’s big night.

Within 48 hours Westbrook had been shipped off to the NBAs’ version of Siberia – the Utah Jazz.  

And that was just their first trade activity. Actually, the Lakers made two smart moves this week: they also got rid of Patrick “Fake Hustle” Beverly, the single most annoying player in the entire NBA. His specialty is hiding behind LeBron while talking trash, and then pushing stars like Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton in the back when they’re not looking. He’s been fined and suspended twice for such dirty tricks.

Beverly first got noticed a decade ago when he undercut Westbrook as he was trying to call a timeout in a playoff game. The sneaky, dirty move injured Westbrook and kept him out of the rest of the season. From that moment on the two hated each other. So putting them together like two pythons in one cage was just one more crazy decision by the Lakers “management team” of Rob Pelinka, Kurt Rambis and Linda Rambis. 

Two years ago, when the Lakers gave up a king’s ransom to get Westbrook from the Washington Wizards, All Ball ran a column called “What the Hell was Rob Pelinka thinking?”

This week we finally got the answer: Not much.

He was merely acting on orders from LeBron James and his agent Rich Paul.

And now he was once again acting on orders from LeBron, who wanted Westbrook gone and pressured Pelinka mightily to trade him, and their two precious first-round draft picks in 2027 and 2029 for his old pal Kyrie Irving.

But when owner Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks “won” the Kyrie lottery and got the Brooklyn Nets to ship the league’s biggest knucklehead to Texas for a package of players and draft picks weaker than the one the Lakers were offering, LeBron admitted he was disappointed, but for the record he was philosophical: “We had an opportunity, it didn’t happen, now we move on.”

Translation: I still want Westbrick gone and while you’re at it replace some of these stiffs around me with some guys who can actually, you know, play ball at an NBA level.

So Pelinka kept working the phones, and by the time the trade deadline had been reached at noon Thursday there were five new players wearing purple and gold unis.

Gone besides Westbrook and Beverly were Juan Toscano-Anderson, Thomas Bryant and Damion Jones. Of those five, the only one who will be missed at all is the 6-foot-10 center Bryant, who improved so much this year that he was arguably their third best player behind LeBron and Anthony Davis. Indeed, the Lakers one and only real winning streak this season – a five-game stretch back in December – came with Davis out and Bryant taking his place as an inside force. He averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds during that stretch, but he faded away when Davis returned from injury, and will now best be remembered as the guy who had posted up under the basket and was calling for the ball when LeBron hit the fadeaway jumper that set the new career scoring record. He will always be in that picture every time LeBron’s record shot is run in the paper or on video.

The Lakers season was encapsulated in that record-setting game: LeBron played great and the Lakers still lost, 133-130 to the lowly Oklahoma City Thunder.       

Then, as if to further point out the different planets LeBron and the Lakers are living on, LeBron took the next three games off – he was apparently exhausted by all the energy spent chasing his new record – while the team itself went on a three-game losing streak and remained stuck in 13th place in the 15 team Western Conference.

But hope springs eternal in the Lakers front office, and with their mainstream media minions. Now they want us to believe that their five new players will turn the season around and get the Lakers into the playoffs. Once there, so the wishful-thinking rationale goes, they will have a puncher’s chance to pull an upset because they have LeBron and AD.

Of course, that is assuming those two stars stay healthy – a bad bet in AD’s case.

But operating on the assumption that they will both be healthy and balling out when the playoffs start, let’s take a closer look at the new players for the Lakers and how they could help get them into the playoffs.

Mo Bamba is a 7-footer who was supposed to be the next great center when the Orlando Magic drafted him a few years ago, but thanks to injuries and lack of development he never really panned out. Now he has supposedly developed a three-point shot and can play both inside and out, making him a modern NBA center. He better be, because he is supposed to take Bryant’s place in the big-man rotation, and with Davis’s injury history, he is sure to get a lot of minutes at the center and power forward spots.                                                 

Malik Beasley is a standard issue NBA guard, not great, but competent enough to fill a spot on the floor and soak up some productive minutes. He’s a decent shooter and a good enough driver, but there are a hundred guys in the NBA just like him.

Jarred Vanderbilt is an intriguing young talent  known for having a great motor, and being a good defender. He hasn’t really made his mark yet on offense so this is a real opportunity for him under the national spotlight that always shines on the Lakers — or will as long as Lebron is there.                    

That brings us to D’Angelo Russell, the prodigal child coming home for a shot at redemption.

Back in 2015 the Lakers drafted him second overall, meaning he was supposed to have the potential to be a great player. But he proved to be soft as Charmin, with below-average athleticism. He became an outcast in the locker room when he leaked a tape recording of his teammate Nick “Swaggy P” Young confessing that he had cheated on his then-girlfriend, “singer” Iggy Azalea.

So after two years the Lakers shipped him to Brooklyn, where he actually had one decent year before being traded again to Golden State. The talent-smart Warriors quickly figured out he wasn’t their kind of player and dumped him on Minnesota.

By the time the trade deadline approached last week, the Timberwolves had figured out two things: Russell isn’t nearly as good as he and his agent think he is, and they were not prepared to pay him anywhere close to the $30 mil a year he was going to demand as a free agent this summer.

Enter the Lakers, who were happy to trade for him with the expectation that they will sign him to a big contract this summer to give the Lakers yet another Big Three that is really a Big One and a half.                                                 

LeBron’s record-breaking moment was a microcosm of the Lakers season: LeBron played great with 38 points and 10 rebounds, yet the Lakers lost to one of the worst teams in the league.

It had to be a bittersweet moment for everyone in the Lakers organization, from President Jeannie Buss on down to the locker room attendants. Once the sugar high of that moment passed, they went right back to their regular programming: losing more often than they win.

Prediction: LeBron the shadow GM created this mess, and Pelinka, Buss and the Rambis’s enabled him. Now, after the Lakers lose in the first round of the playoffs, he’s going to ask out this summer, demanding a trade to somewhere that he has a realistic shot at winning his fifth NBA title.

As we have been saying for more than a year now: trade him for the best haul of draft picks you can get, start the long overdue rebuild and say thanks for the (mostly bad) memories from the LeBron era.

 

Mustang girls end season dedicated to former coach John Lapham

While the Mira costa boys basketball team has attracted all the media attention with its run to the CIF quarterfinals in Division 1, and perhaps beyond, the Mustang girls quietly ended their season Thursday night with a hard-fought first round road loss to Chaminade, who finished second in the much tougher Mission League.

Despite racing out to a 14-point lead behind a barrage of three-pointers, the Mustangs hot shooting eventually cooled off. When they didn’t have the size to match up with Chaminade in the paint they fell by a score of 76-66.

“In the end they were too big for us. Their size wore us down,” Mustang coach Jeff Herdman said. “But we played with a lot of heart, just as we did all season, and I’m proud of the kids for hanging in there through everything they had to face this year.”

Indeed, not only did the Mustangs have to overcome the loss of four seniors from last year’s team – including three all-league players in Cara Susilo, Winslow Smith and Hannah Gedion — but they suffered a serious shock when veteran coach John Lapham passed away last spring.

The team dedicated their season to Coach John, who had been their coach for the last decade. Herdman had been his top assistant for the last nine years and stepped in when Lapham resigned before he passed.

“The girls all wore patches on their uniforms with Coach John’s initials,” Herdman said. “It was a way to remember all he had done for them.”

Despite all the hurdles they had to overcome, the girls still finished with an 18-10 record overall and 4-6 in the Bay League, with several very close league losses.

Although they will lose senior superstar Maile Nakaji – who has started every game she played in her four years at Costa – the future looks bright for the Mustang girls.

The team’s other star this year, junior defensive demon Ju Ju O’Brien, made first team All Bay League, along with Nakaji. Super shooter Hayden Lin, who made second team all-league, also will be back next year. 

The Mustangs also had four outstanding freshmen in Kate Kenney, Adrianna Martinez, Kenia Bohman and Ella Nickerson, all of whom contributed this season.

“I expect them all to keep improving, and come back better than ever,” Herdman said. “We start workouts the first week in March.”

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER 

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