It’s funny how often history repeats itself. We see it over and over again, yet every time it happens we are still surprised. At what point do we stop letting life surprise us with something we’ve seen before?
I feel that this is more evident in sports than in any other walk of life. Sure, you see similarities between politicians and world events. Even wars separated by several decades have parallels that seem beyond coincidence. Still, in sports it never seems to fail.
Consider this: At the end of the 2007 NFL season the New England Patriots coasted into the Super Bowl with the best record in the league. They took on the New York Giants, a team that barely reached the post-season and were seen as astronomical underdogs. Sure enough, New York trumped the mighty Patriots and became the league’s unlikeliest of champions.
Fast-forward to 2012. The Patriots, once again holding the best record in their conference, find themselves back in the Super Bowl. Naturally, the 9-7 Giants crept back into the playoffs and played their way back to the championship game. The result? A near identical game that ended on a late-game touchdown scored by the Giants and a New York championship.
It’s almost eerie.
So let’s get back to basketball. In 1996 the Orlando Magic found themselves with a disgruntled center that wanted out of town. He had led them to the NBA Finals several years before but came up short. His attitude was getting progressively worse as it became more and more apparent that he wasn’t going to remain in Orlando.
So what happens?
He leaves Florida for the bright lights of Los Angeles, cements his legacy by winning three championships in L.A., and ultimately retires as one of the best centers in league history.
Again, let’s come back to the present. The Magic find themselves with the best center in the league. He led them to the championship round just four years ago, but has outgrown Orlando and desperately wants out of town. They’re faced with the proposition of keeping him on the roster and watching him desert town once his contract is up, or trading him and trying to at least get something out of him before he leaves of his own fruition.
Standing there, with open arms and a wide smile, are Mitch Kupchak and the L.A. Lakers. The same team that stole Shaquille O’Neal out from under Orlando more than a decade before, is waiting in the wings to do it once more. And the Magic have no choice but to let it happen.
Late Thursday night, Magic GM Rob Hennigan (reluctantly, I would assume) agreed to send the best center on the planet to Los Angeles in a 4-team deal that brought back a gaggle of draft picks and a bag of corn chips. Okay, I made up the part about the corn chips but you catch my drift.
History repeats itself, again. And it’s a cruel, debilitating feeling for those in Orlando, while the already-perfect weather in Hollywood gets a little more wonderful.
—- Get your Lakers Nation gear and show off your team pride! —-
I think Mike Bianchi, a sportswriter for the Orlando Sentinel, put it best when he visited with Colin Cowherd of ESPN Radio on Friday morning.
“It’s like you fall in love with a woman and she leaves you for this studly guy. You finally get over her, you know, like 15 years later. And then you fall in love again, and the woman leaves you for the same damn guy.”
It’s a bad dream for those in Orlando. It’s that same, gut-wrenching feeling they had back in 1996 when they were forced to watch their star player leave town and proceed to dominate the NBA in a way we hadn’t seen since Wilt Chamberlain was playing. There’s not enough Recall in the world to help Orlando overcome this misery.
But there are two sides to every story. And on the other side of the black abyss that just swallowed the Amway Center are the Los Angeles Lakers. Again. While those in Orlando are eating food they can’t even taste, 3,000 miles away there is talk of golden trophies and summer-time parades. Because that’s what they’ve come to expect from their Lakers.
And because they’ve seen this movie before.
Jerry West, Shaquille O’Neal and Summer of ’96
That brings up the obvious question. Which magical heist (pardon the horrific pun) was the better move? And better yet, which off-season, 1996 or 2012, was the more successful for the Lakers?
The obvious answer is that it’s far too early to tell. It took eight years before O’Neal’s legacy in Los Angeles had played out and he had moved on to a different team. It’s clearly impossible to say how much of an impact these moves will have purely because we haven’t had a chance to see it yet. But the obvious parallels are there.
Next Page: Breaking Down 1996 vs. 2012
Let’s look at the three major acquisitions from 1996.
–Shaqulle O’Neal (free agent)
–Kobe Bryant (trade)
–Derek Fisher (draft)
Now I know some of you are going to kill me for throwing Fisher in there, but he was a 5-time champion in Los Angeles and played an integral role in four of those five titles. Also I’m the one writing so I get to do what I want. Bite me.
Now, how about the major moves made in 2012.
-Dwight Howard (trade)
-Steve Nash (free agent – technically a sign-and-trade, I know, but he was a FA)
Notice I chose not to include any Laker draft picks from this season. They did pick up Darius Johnson-Odom (Marquette) and Robert Sacre (Gonzaga)* in the draft, but it’s far too early to tell if they will have an impact on this team – especially long-term.
—- Get your Lakers Nation gear and show off your team pride! —-
*For the record the same could absolutely have been said about Fisher in ’96. Nobody expected anything out of the undersized guard from Arkansas-Little Rock to turn into the most successful Los Angeles point guard since Magic Johnson.
At first glance it’s hard to say the 2012 haul is a better one than the ’96 version. In that one summer (’96) the Lakers set themselves up for five future championships. For a little perspective, there are only three franchises in NBA history with more than five titles, one of which is (obviously) the Lakers. So in one off-season the Lakers put together a more successful decade than 98 percent of the league’s total existence.
It may be unfair to expect that kind of success from Howard, Nash and the latest batch of new Lakers, for a variety of reasons. The main one is that Nash is 38 years-old and dealing with chronic back issues. That’s not exactly the same thing as a spry, 17-year-old Kobe Bryant who still couldn’t even buy a lottery ticket when he signed his first contract.
Another reason is Howard and what exactly the team can expect from him. First of all he’s not guaranteed to be a Laker beyond this next season. While it’s widely expected that he’ll sign a long-term extension with Los Angeles, it’s not guaranteed. If he decides life in Southern California doesn’t suit him he has the option to pack his bags and head elsewhere next summer. Not many people are expecting him to do this, mainly because it would require leaving $25 million on the table, but it’s possible.
But let’s say Howard does sign an extension with the Lakers and spends the next 5-8 years playing in Los Angeles. To live up to the precedent set by O’Neal (remember, we’re comparing just these two off-seasons, so we’re ignoring Abdul-Jabbar and Chamberlain’s legacy in L.A. for this argument), Howard needs to win at least three championships.
’96 Success Brings Huge Expectations for Howard, Nash
Three championships. In six years? That’s an order that’s taller than Howard himself, especially when you consider the competition around the league and the aging state of the Lakers roster.
There’s no question that Shaq had more to work with during his prime years in Los Angeles than Howard will. Bryant and Nash are still All-Star caliber players, but their productivity numbers aren’t going to increase anytime soon. Bryant’s stated multiple times that he only has 2-3 more seasons left in his legs, and Nash’s contract is up in three years, at which point he is expected to retire.
So theoretically, Howard could be left with a roster that doesn’t look much more impressive than the one he had in Orlando just a few years ago. But that’s assuming the front office doesn’t do anything else to prepare for the future, which they will undoubtedly do.
But let’s get back on track. So in order for this particular off-season, which, don’t get me wrong, has been rather legendary, to trump the famed summer of ’96, Howard needs to deliver multiple championships in a short amount of time.
I don’t see it.
This doesn’t mean I’m taking anything away from Mitch Kupchak, Jim Buss and the rest of the Lakers’ front office, mind you. What they’ve managed to accomplish in the last eight months is truly staggering if you step back and examine it closely.
Last December the team had a deal in place that was going to bring Chris Paul, arguably the best point guard in the league, to the Lakers. He was going to be the piece that carried them beyond Kobe and into the future.
We all know how that went.
Most teams would have folded. They could have thrown a fit, taken their ball and gone home. For the poker players out there, they would have gone on tilt. The emotion of the situation in which they got hosed, which regardless of your feelings towards the Lakers you should probably realize that they did indeed get hosed, could have easily caused an enormous problem. Instead, they pulled their pants back up and went to work.
Does Mitch Kupchak Deserve West-like Praise?
After acquiring Paul and seeing him taken away just as quickly, the Lakers played through a fairly disappointing season and found themselves once again on the prowl. Kupchak & Co. went out and agreed to terms with Steve Nash, a 2-time league MVP and a sure-fire Hall of Fame point guard.
That right there would have been enough to earn Kupchak free drinks at any bar in Los Angeles. But a month after acquiring Nash, Kupchak brought in the biggest fish of them all in Howard.
In eight months Mitch Kupchak and the Lakers traded for Chris Paul, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard, while the rest of the league tried to figure out what the hell happened.
Not bad, Mitch.
While it’s far too soon to tell which summer will ultimately be the more prosperous for the Lakers, the fact that it’s even a debate is impressive enough. The GM back in ’96, Jerry West, is widely known as one of the best team architects in the history of the NBA. Five years ago it would be considered blasphemy to put any other man in the same sentence as West, at least when referring to general managers.
But Kupchak has proven time and time again that he deserves to be up there with West. And, as blasphemous as it may sound, when it’s all said and done he may have even surpassed the legendary Logo in GM accolades.
So in the end it’s a movie we’ve seen before. The names of the characters are different and the script is slightly modified, but overall that overwhelming sense of Déjà vu is an appropriate one. It seems that we’re once again re-living old memories. For those in Orlando it’s the emergence of a long-dormant nightmare.
But in Los Angeles? Well, let’s just say things are a little more optimistic.