Summer 2013: Season Of Decision For Los Angeles Basketball Teams

Online, May 21, 2013 (Newswire.com) - When thinking about the Los Angeles Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers, it's helpful to remember the classic opening quote of Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

Los Angeles Clippers
From the moment that the ex-officio owner of the New Orleans Hornets, David Stern, vetoed the trade of Chris Paul to the Lakers, it became "the season of Light" for the Clippers. From the outset, the first pre-season game of the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, the Clippers let it be known that they were no longer the team many viewed as a laughingstock throughout professional sports.

That date was Monday, December 19, 2011 and the Clippers beat the Lakers 114-95 on the Lakers' home court in the building that they both shared. Chris Paul was now a member of the Clippers and good things were about to happen.

For that moment forward, the Clippers went on to the best two seasons in the franchise's history. Paul was now on the stage of the West Coast mecca of basketball, STAPLES Center, along with a couple of promising young players, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan.

In that first season, the Clippers survived a tough first round series with the Memphis Grizzlies only to fall to perennially favored San Antonio in the Western Conference Semifinals. Yet, life for the Clippers was better than it ever had been and things were only looking better.

During the intervening summer, the Clippers added a talented supporting cast and had a somewhat spectacular season of 2012-13 which included a franchise record 17-game winning streak during the month of December.

Yet, as the season wound down, the Clippers' season of promise turned into a dysfunctional mess with complaints from Griffin that the team didn't have any set defensive schemes and hints from the locker room of conflict between Paul and the younger players he coveted playing with.

This summer, the Clippers have critical decisions to make about the makeup of the squad going forward. The most critical is convincing Paul, a "Bird" free-agent, to re-sign with the ballclub. The Clippers can offer Paul more money than any other franchise in the Association, but will it be enough to satisfy the unquenchable thirst of Paul to win an NBA championship.

The composition of the roster is another decision that needs to be made. Last summer, the Clippers constructed what was, for most of the season, a challenging bench anchored by second-year player (and former first-round draft choice) Eric Bledsoe. Bledsoe has proven himself to be a formidable defensive player on the Clippers' second unit. He, along with veterans Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes, Lamar Odom, Ryan Hollins and Ronny Turiaf, often functioned often like a well-oiled machine. Many times, their play was superior to that of the starters.

Hampering these decisions are front-office choices that must be made as well. De facto GM Gary Sacks and head coach Vinny Del Negro are both free agents. Of the two, Sacks seems to be in the safest position, having been a member of the Clippers' franchise for over 18 years. He seems to have the support of owner Donald Sterling's right-hand man, team president Andy Roeser. Sacks also has the very public endorsement of the face of the franchise, Blake Griffin.

Del Negro, on the other hand, is like the man without a country. His failure to produce a better outcome, than a first-round exit against the Grizzlies, has left him with fans screaming for his removal and a vote of no-confidence from more than half the locker room. Del Negro, in some quarters, is viewed as a young coach with promise. However, most question his rotations and strategies and view his success as the result of a talented roster.

Los Angeles Lakers
From that very same decision of David Stern, the veto of the trade of Chris Paul to the Lakers, it became "the season of Darkness" for the Lakers. It immediately became an issue in the Lakers' locker room and their fans.

Lamar Odom became disgruntled and demanded to be traded. Pau Gasol, while on the one hand being the consummate professional, went into his shell. The Lakers did not have the point guard they coveted and were left with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum.

The Lakers went on to make the playoffs, but lost in the second round to the Oklahoma City Thunder, but their summer was to be quite eventful. GM Mitch Kupchak pulled off a blockbuster trade and an improbable free-agent signing and the Lakers ended up with a starting unit of Bryant, Gasol, two-time league MVP Steve Nash and three-time Defensive Player of the Year, Dwight Howard. Also starting was Metta World Peace (a/k/a Ron Artest), a former Defensive Player of the Year as well.

The problem for the Lakers, however, was age and the misguided decision of head coach Mike Brown to install a new offense during training camp. The Princeton offense was a complete failure. The Lakers lost all eight of their pre-season games and four of their first five regular-season games. The experiment with the Princeton offense came to an end with the dismissal of Brown.

After a flirtation with former head coach Phil Jackson, the Lakers hired Mike D'Antoni, the former coach of the Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks. However, the Lakers continued to struggle as D'Antoni tried to force his system on a squad that clearly wasn't built to run an offense based on making shots in "seven seconds or less."

Meanwhile, injuries started to pile up on the oldest roster in the Association.

Jordan Hill, a promising young forward, played only 29 games. Steve Blake, the backup point guard, played 45. Gasol was sidelined and played 49 games. Nash, the point guard expected to run D'Antoni's systemic offense, played 50. Earl Clark, another promising young forward, played 59. Howard, coming off back surgery, played most of the season, as did stalwart Kobe Bryant, who seems to play injured.

The Lakers struggled to attain the promise that their stellar roster foreshadowed. After falling to 17-25 on January 23rd, they rebounded to finish the season at 45-37. They came within one game of not making the playoffs, but instead finished as the 7th seed in the Western Conference.

However, their fight to make the playoffs had taken its toll and Bryant finally sustained an injury even he could not overcome. On April 12th, Bryant went down with a torn Achilles and was done for the season. For all intents and purposes, so were the Lakers. They finished the postseason as they had the preseason, losing all four games to the San Antonio Spurs.

Like the Clippers, the Lakers have many decisions to make during the summer. Also like the Clippers, they have a "Bird" free agent in Dwight Howard, who they want to re-sign. GM Kupchak also will struggle to design the kind of roster the Lakers want to have going forward. Do they continue to build around the injured Bryant and possibly a returning Howard? Do they go in a different direction?

Coach D'Antoni did not enamor himself among the legions of Laker fans with his resistance to abandon his system and run his offense through his bigs. Yet, D'Antoni seems reasonably comfortable with his status to purchase a seven million dollar oceanfront home in Manhattan Beach. Will his return satisfy Howard?

Does Kupchak trade Gasol as he so often has threatened to do since that fateful decision of David Stern's? Would Kupchak dare to amnesty Kobe as some have suggested releasing some pressure on the Lakers heavily tax-burdened roster?

There's a lot to be digested on the plates of our local NBA teams during this time before the league's new year begins on July 1st. Some fans' attention will be distracted by the ongoing NBA playoffs. However, in a city where the Clippers, Lakers and Ducks are done for the season and the Angels and Dodgers' are mired at the bottom of their divisions, other fans are impatiently awaiting for decisions to be made.

There's another portion to Dickens' opening quote in A Tale Of Two Cities.

"We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

And so it goes.

About Mike Murray:
Mike Murray is a freelance writer for the blog One Man's Eye View.

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