Bryant has only just reached the point where he can
complete a full-speed practice and is coming back from an injury that has
drastically changed the game and effectiveness of virtually every NBA player who has ever suffered it, and yet the Lakers have just rushed to pay him more than any other player in the game through the end of his age-37 season. Loyalty,
history and marketing are all clearly important considerations here — the Lakers re-signed Kobe in part because of his importance as the sort of franchise totem and cultural touchstone you can't jettison even if it
might make on-court sense — but that's still a staggering commitment to make without having seen Bryant take the floor for live game action after his injury.
Heck, that would be a staggering commitment to make even if the Lakers knew that Bryant is sure to be fully healthy and 100 percent of the player he was before going down last year, because using about 37 percent of your salary-cap space (based on a projected 2014-15 cap line of $62.9 million) on a player who mitigates his prodigious offense with dangerous defense makes it incredibly difficult to field a true title-contending team. As it stands, the Lakers will now be paying Bryant, Steve Nash and Nick Young just over $34.4 million next year — add in cap holds to fill out the remainder of the roster, and L.A.'s available cap space this summer dips down to between $22.2 million and $28.5 million, according to salary cap wizard Larry c00n, depending on whether the Lakers decide to keep Nash around for the final year of his deal. (For his part, the injured point guard has said he does not plan to retire at the end of this season, and that he has every intention of coming back for the final year of the contract he signed in the summer of 2012.)
That's still enough room to add a max-level free agent, should the Lakers be able to woo one, but it would still leave plenty of question marks with respect to filling out the rest of the roster. For example, if
two max players plus
older veterans on minimum contracts/exceptions is L.A.'s chosen framework, is this essentially the end of the Laker line for Pau Gasol, who's in the final year of his contract and has mentioned a similar
reluctance to take a pay cut? And on the max-free-agent front, will top prospective free-agent targets like
LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony,
Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh (who
might not be all that interested in moving anyway) really jump at the chance to head west, not be the team's top-paid guy and serve as second banana to a 36- and 37-year-old Kobe? If not, given the
dearth of draft picks in coming years thanks to several now-for-later trades, how will the Lakers add the sort of prime and likely-to-improve talent that will not only build the next generation of competitive L.A. teams, but also make the last couple of Kobe-led models into viable contenders for the NBA championship?
I ain't know you could see the future.
