Just for fun what if we went down a different road

Dexmor · Post #1 » by **Dexmor** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 8:07 pm

Lets say Mitch made a few decisions that werent so great.

Lets say instead of drafting Bynum we drafted May.
Lets say we never drafted Marc Gasol so we never got POW.
Lets say we held on to Ronny T.

Now Kobe was pissed about the weak team so lets say Odom and Kobe went out and recruited Artest and got him for the midlevel

Now we don't have cap room in this situation or anything but Fisher still came back and our team was

Ronny T
Odom
Artest
Kobe
Fisher

Where do you think we would be? Third team in the west behind Spurs and Blazers? Playoff team? Still the best?

I think in this situation Kobe defeantely takes Artest under his wing more so lets say we have Ron at full power trying his hardest. The best Ron possible.

i would think we would be anywhere between 3-6 seed. Dangerous team sure but odds of winning it all not to high at all. Or maybe a sf is what Kobe needed all along like Jordan and its a remake of the old Bulls, idk what do you guys think?

Tekkenlaw · Post #2 » by **Tekkenlaw** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 8:19 pm

Agreed, probably the 3rd seed or so.

How about this scenario? What if the Lakers traded Lamar Odom's expiring contract for Chauncey Billups last year? Do they still win the title? And how about the lineup going into next year?

PG. Chauncey Billups
SG. Kobe Bryant
SF. Ron Artest
PF. Pau Gasol
C. Andrew Bynum

Best team ever? Don't get me wrong though, I love Odom, this is all just hypothetical.

SashAlex · Post #3 » by **SashAlex** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 8:20 pm

You wouldn't create this topic if we went a different way. :lol:

Post #4 » by **Slava** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 8:24 pm

Without LO we wouldn't have a ring last season.

For the OP's question, Sean May would have been a terrible pick and that right there would have limited our assets to Kwame Brown's expiring contract to make any moves. We might be looking at a depth chart like

Kwame/May/Mbenga
LO/Turiaf
Artest/Luke/Ammo
Kobe/Sasha
Fisher/Farmar/Crittenton/Shannon

Lots of redundancy there and I would think we'd have made some other moves to get a borderline all star for Kwame's contract + picks + one of our PGs.

Dexmor · Post #5 » by **Dexmor** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 9:15 pm

j-far wrote:Without LO we wouldn't have a ring last season.

For the OP's question, Sean May would have been a terrible pick and that right there would have limited our assets to Kwame Brown's expiring contract to make any moves. We might be looking at a depth chart like

Kwame/May/Mbenga
LO/Turiaf
Artest/Luke/Ammo
Kobe/Sasha
Fisher/Farmar/Crittenton/Shannon

Lots of redundancy there and I would think we'd have made some other moves to get a borderline all star for Kwame's contract + picks + one of our PGs.

Yeah but I didn't want to get into the depth because it's to complicated. At the same time we would have had higher picks maybe never made that trade so Im trying to do it with just the starting 5. So just think starting 5 and don't get carried away with the bench.

DEEP3CL · Post #6 » by **DEEP3CL** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 9:39 pm

Ronny T
Odom
Artest
Kobe
Fisher

That wouldn't be a good starting 5 considering it's no center in that line up. Bottom line that team would struggle to be an 8th seed. Anybody who thinks the Lakers would be around 3-6 is fooling themselves.

Ronny or LO can't play center period.

Dexmor · Post #7 » by **Dexmor** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 9:49 pm

DEEP3CL wrote:Ronny T
Odom
Artest
Kobe
Fisher

That wouldn't be a good starting 5 considering it's no center in that line up. Bottom line that team would struggle to be an 8th seed. Anybody who thinks the Lakers would be around 3-6 is fooling themselves.

Ronny or LO can't play center period.

You might be right but so many teams have crappy C's. Ronny these days can pull off C.

I thought that might be a little to weak. Lets say they had Brad Miler

Lets say

Miller
Odom
Artest
Kobe
Fisher/Farmar

Dexmor · Post #8 » by **Dexmor** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 9:54 pm

j-far wrote:Without LO we wouldn't have a ring last season.

For the OP's question, Sean May would have been a terrible pick and that right there would have limited our assets to Kwame Brown's expiring contract to make any moves. We might be looking at a depth chart like

Kwame/May/Mbenga
LO/Turiaf
Artest/Luke/Ammo
Kobe/Sasha
Fisher/Farmar/Crittenton/Shannon

Lots of redundancy there and I would think we'd have made some other moves to get a borderline all star for Kwame's contract + picks + one of our PGs.

Yeah we would of but the point of the thread is what if we didn't have a superstacked team. It's like if we had a terrible gm or were in a low budget market. Lets just pretend the core is Odom-Artest-Kobe. How far can that go?

LAL4Life · Post #9 » by **LAL4Life** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 11:01 pm

Tekkenlaw wrote:Agreed, probably the 3rd seed or so.

How about this scenario? What if the Lakers traded Lamar Odom's expiring contract for Chauncey Billups last year? Do they still win the title? And how about the lineup going into next year?

PG. Chauncey Billups
SG. Kobe Bryant
SF. Ron Artest
PF. Pau Gasol
C. Andrew Bynum

Best team ever? Don't get me wrong though, I love Odom, this is all just hypothetical.

Our bench would be atrocious though. Still that's probably the greatest starting lineup in history.

UThinkUrSoGood · Post #10 » by **UThinkUrSoGood** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 11:33 pm

Okay, how about we take it back even further?
1996, we don't sign Shaquille O'neil and we do not trade Vlade for the rights to Kobe Bryant.

We kept the core of
Nick Van Exel
Eddie Jones
Cedric Ceballos
Elden Campbell
Vlade Divacs

Lets say there was a season ending injury to one of our main players (ie Nick, Eddie or Cedric). Dropping us out of the playoff race and we somehow end up with the #1 Draft pick in 1997.
With this we Draft Tim Duncan.

Do you think a core of
Nick Van Exel
Eddie Jones
Cedric Ceballos
Tim Duncan
Vlade Divacs

Would this team be as great as the Shaq/Kobe team? :lol:

Asianiac_24 · Post #11 » by **Asianiac_24** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 11:34 pm

What if we got Wade from the Shaq trade instead of Butler? Wade/Odom/Grant for Shaq. Our lineup would be:

Derek Fisher
Dwyane Wade
Kobe Bryant
Lamar Odom
Bynum?

Dexmor · Post #12 » by **Dexmor** » Sun Aug 9, 2009 11:40 pm

Is it possible anybody is gonna discuss the question I made the thread with?

I think its interesting. That would be about the average team, having a big superstar, a 2nd allstar and then a 3rd in Odom. How good would we be could be interesting.

Dexmor · Post #13 » by **Dexmor** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 12:20 am

Kobe and Artest is the best 1-2 combo in the league (in this situation)

Would it be enough with Odom assuming he gets his 15 10 5.

The Laker Kid · Post #14 » by **The Laker Kid** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 12:44 am

Ronny as a C won't get us anywhere, but we could be a West Finals contender with Kobe+Artest+Odom. Still NOT a championship contender though. That lineup needs a big man.

hermes · Post #15 » by **hermes** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:11 am

Dexmor wrote:Is it possible anybody is gonna discuss the question I made the thread with?

nah, lets just go with more hyptheticals

what if the bulls got pissed when MJ retired to play baseball and traded him to us?
what if kobe and shaq always got along?
what if we were to get a starting 5 of CP3/Kobe/Lebron/Pau/D12?
what if Buss bought the clippers and used them as a "minor league team" for us?
what if Jerry West never left his gm post?
what if the lakers never moved to LA?
what if kobe finds some crazy technology that allows him to play forever?
what if there was no salary cap?

Tekkenlaw · Post #16 » by **Tekkenlaw** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 2:19 am

Dexmor wrote:Is it possible anybody is gonna discuss the question I made the thread with?

I think its interesting. That would be about the average team, having a big superstar, a 2nd allstar and then a 3rd in Odom. How good would we be could be interesting.

Your question is how good would we be with any average team. Well, we'd be average. Probably a little bit better than the teams that were beaten by the suns due to Artest and Fisher. Maybe 50 wins and a 2nd or 3rd round exit, and all of us would be a little bit sadder and more prone to suicide. Who knows/cares how well they would do? There isn't really any point in discussing one particular hypothetical situation so we might as well just all post our own hypotheticals and have fun with it.

Dexmor · Post #17 » by **Dexmor** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:15 pm

O.K. go nuts.

Let me do a hypothetical I like

What if we didn't have Bynum but Kirk and Noah

Gasol
Odom
Artest
Kobe
Kirk

Noah off the bench

Mamba Venom · Post #18 » by **Mamba Venom** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 2:55 pm

Billups on point

Sic

Tekkenlaw · Post #19 » by **Tekkenlaw** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 4:07 pm

I think we would be a better team next year but we would lose out on Bynum's potential. Noah is pretty underrated by non-Bulls fans.

And for the Billups thing, is there any reason that couldn't have gotten done? I mean the pistons were just looking for an expiring weren't they? Our big man depth would have been nonexistent though which would have been a big issue against the Magic.

Dexmor · Post #20 » by **Dexmor** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 6:24 pm

Your gonna think im crazy but I would rather have Kirk then Billiups. I know Billups is waaaaaay better now but this team is a now and the future team and Kirk is just so young. In 2 years Billups will be 35 years old. Kirk is not even in his prime yet and he can guard all 3 positions.