Financial Window For Lakers Closing Quickly

I really hope we don’t have to hear about the economy throughout the playoffs. Frankly, I’m sick of spending half my day shifting through salary figures. But a piece in the Los Angeles Daily News suggests that this oh-so-perfect Lakers team is just waiting for the other economic shoe to drop. They’re cohesive, completely, and have very little hope of staying together—starting this summer: ↵↵⇥In the offseason, it’s hard to imagine the Lakers will be able to keep such a deluxe tool set. Decisions will have to be made on free agents like Odom and Ariza. Can the Lakers retain both? Should they? [...]
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↵⇥Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said in a meeting with season-ticket holders earlier this week: “Without getting too far ahead of ourselves and trying to predict how we’ll end up (in the playoffs), how players will play and what the economy will be like this summer, I think the simple answer to the question is: With the ownership that we have here, we’ve always seemed to do whatever it takes to bring the players back that we want to bring back to put this team in a position to win.” ↵↵I rarely find myself nostalgic for the days before expansion and free agency allowed more players to star and make bank. But this Lakers team is the kind of top-to-bottom powerhouse that mirrors, rather than just stares longingly at, the kind of teams we saw in the 1960’s. Oddly, Cleveland is a far more patchwork roster, anything but the Platonic ideal of a basketball squad. In fact, looking ahead, the goal there is to retain the key guys and replace the disposable, or overpaid, ones with new blood. Maybe even another star.
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↵Both Cleveland and Los Angeles are faced with a so-called “window.” In Cleveland’s case, it’s before they get to reload and try another angle of attack. The Lakers, on the other hand, have to make tough decisions that will ravage their completist roster and force guys to be more resourceful. I don’t know, this seems like the death of a certain kind of idealism. We’ll see if it works out with the Blazers’ long-term planning.↵