4 comments Bill Simmons "Fixes" the Lakers Since He's the Best Candidate to Do This and All

Very reluctantly, and quite frankly because he hasn't written a column since June 18 and the SimmonsClones won't stand for their hero to stop writing despite Bill's desperate attempts to stop writing, Bill Simmons is going to help the Lakers fix themselves. Despite the fact the Lakers haven't ever really shown they need to be fixed, Bill volunteers himself for the job anyway. Hey, he's got a write a column again at some point and his brain isn't exactly kicking out new material at a fast pace, so this is what his readers get stuck with reading.

I know a Celtics fan should never try to help the Lakers. I know I should bite my tongue. I know I should hope Jimmy Buss keeps ruining his family's team,

And really, who else is intelligent and capable enough to help the Lakers other than Bill Simmons? Plus, if Bill focuses on the disaster that is the Lakers he won't have to focus on the Celtics blowing up their entire team and starting a 2-3 year (minimum) rebuilding process while drafting highly incapable big men like Colton Iverson and Fab Melo (wouldn't it have been easier to just forfeit a first round draft choice as opposed to drafting Melo?) to go along with the non-franchise cornerstone Jeff Green and the constantly disgruntled Rajon Rondo. Bill will do anything to keep our minds off the Celtics and on to another NBA team that may not have a bright immediate future ahead of them. Bill has to prepare for the post-Garnett/Allen/Pierce Celtics world, so don't be surprised if he becomes an NBA widow soon and starts talking about the Clippers more than the Celtics in his once a month columns.

But here's the problem …

You are the only one who considers yourself qualified to fix the Lakers?

I love making fake NBA trades, figuring out blueprints for franchises and determining the fastest, most efficient ways to save them. That's just who I am. I'm a weirdo.

This is why in his own head Bill would make such a great General Manager. Who says "no" to these fake NBA trades? You can't argue with the brain of Bill Simmons.

I found myself clicking on the Lakers' salary page just out of curiosity … but then my wheels started turning … and one thing led to another … and suddenly I found myself helping the Lakers.

You found yourself unnecessary italics helping the Lakers? But aren't they your sworn enemies as a Celtics fan? You must really love fake trades if you find yourself unnecessary italics helping the Lakers become a better NBA team.

In the NBA, you want to be either really good or really bad. You never want to land between those two "reallys" for long.

Tell that to the Raptors/Bobcats fans or fans of the Los Angeles Clippers who have been fans of the Clippers for longer than five years. Sometimes being really bad isn't a good thing.

You don't want to be squeezed into the no. 8 seed or keep finishing 12th or 13th in every lottery. Basically, you don't want to be the Milwaukee Bucks.

If you can't compete for the title, why not bottom out in the most flagrantly offensive way possible?

Other than it demoralizes your fan base, creates a losing culture around the team, the players on the current team become apathetic due to the organization's lack of concern for winning, and doesn't guarantee you will land the #1 overall pick due to the NBA's lottery system?

Of course, that's something the Lakers have never, ever done. They picked first in the 1979 and 1982 drafts (Magic and Worthy) by fleecing laughingstock franchises of their draft picks — not by being the laughingstock franchise.

Says the fan of the NBA team that dealt the first overall pick in 1980 for Robert Parish and Kevin McHale and had the #2 overall pick in 1986 fresh off winning an NBA title because they traded Gerald Henderson to Seattle. It's not often Boston is the laughingstock either. Just wanted to point this out.

They miraculously turned Vlade Divac, three cartons of Marlboro Reds and a pound of phlegm into a raw high schooler named Kobe Bryant.

To be fair, there wasn't a long track record of high school players skipping college and thriving in the pros at this point and the Lakers were taking a risk by trading a proven center for a late, late lottery pick (the 13th pick). Divac was coming off a season where he had put up 12 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1.7 blocks as a 27 year old. These days a guy like that gets a multi-year contract for $10-$11 million per year. It's not like Bryant fell in the Lakers' laps, they took a chance to acquire him.

No professional sports franchise has been this consistently good for this long: not the Yankees, not the Canadiens, not the Steelers, not anybody.

Yes, but now they need fixing that only Bill Simmons can provide.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. Their best player is hitting Year 18 and rehabbing from the worst sports injury an older player can have. Their second-best player just ditched them.

Notice how Bill just wrote an entire column about how Dwight Howard has hit his peak and is declining as a player, but now he needs to make it seem like the Lakers are losing an important player, so he suddenly considers Howard more valuable than Pau Gasol. In Bill's 2012 Trade Value column he had Gasol at #17 (and bumped Gasol this year because he is underused) and Bill had Howard at #18 in his 2013 Trade Value column.

Their coach is realistically two years away from taking over the Minnesota Lynx or the Pepperdine Waves. And they need to sell the illusion of hope to their fans, which means they need to save as much cap space as possible for LeBron, which means they can't add ANY contracts that expire after next summer.

At least they didn't draft Fab Melo. That's gotta be some consolation.

Fact: This year's Lakers team will be undeniably worse than last year's Lakers team … a team that didn't make the playoffs until Game 82.

"Fact." Apparently Bill Simmons is trying to write like Dwight Schrute talked. If he mentions something about a beet farm, I'm done writing.

Fact: This is bleak. Really, really bleak.

Not really. The Lakers could conceivably cash in on some free agents in one year. It's already been conceded by Bill that the Lakers have a very, very attractive franchise and city to play and the Lakers will have $50 million in 2014 to improve their team through free agency. Struggling for one year isn't really, really, bleak. The Celtics went from owning the 5th pick in the draft to winning the NBA Title in the span of a year half a decade ago. Things don't look good in the short term for the Lakers, but struggling for one year and still being the Lakers isn't really, really bleak.

OK, so they have two inherent advantages. First, the Lakers have only one contract on their books for the 2014-15 season: Steve Nash for $9.7 million. They might be $50 million under the cap next summer — perfect timing for an all-you-can-eat buffet of free-agent stars headlined by LeBron, who's only (a) the best player since Michael Jordan, (b) someone who wants to be a "global icon," and (c) someone with an established track record of treating free agency like he's organizing a bank heist with his buddies.

So the first part of Bill's plan to fix the Lakers is to sign LeBron James. Where would we be without his insight into this matter? Maybe the Lakers could sign another really, really talented player who is a free agent and the Lakers could turn their team around while moving on from the Kobe Bryant-era and it would all be because of Bill Simmons' grand plan.

Famous basketball players gravitate to the Lakers because of their storied history, and because Los Angeles remains the easiest American city for any wealthy celebrity to live in.

It looks very bleak for the Lakers though, doesn't it? I hope Bill's plan of using $50 million in cap space to lure free agents to a storied franchise in a city where celebrities love to live works out. It seems pretty unlikely this risky plan will work.

Celebrities in L.A. can be around other celebrities all the time, and if there's one thing celebrities love, it's being around other celebrities. If they want to dabble in music or movies or any other ego-fueled creative project, or meet just about any heavy hitter business dude on the planet, they have those options here.

BUT HOW IS BILL GOING TO TURN THE LAKERS AROUND WITH ALL THIS CAP SPACE THE LAKERS WILL HAVE IN 2014?

As recently as three years ago, had you told any fan of the other 29 teams, "In 2014, the Lakers will have $50 million in cap space during a loaded summer for free agents," their reaction would have been, "We're all screwed." But when they're being run by someone who can successfully be compared to Tommy Boy?

Let's investigate the logic that Bill is using here. He believes the biggest thing holding the Lakers back is their idiot owner, yet part of Bill's plan to turn the Lakers around relies on their owner being smart and having a plan. Here's the problem...if we assume Jim Buss is smart enough to have a plan and follow the plan, then we could also assume Jim Buss is smart enough to realize his plan needs to revolve around having $50 million in cap space and luring free agents to Los Angeles. What I'm saying is that Bill poo-poos the whole "We have a shit-ton of money and now we just go after the free agents we want" plan because the owner isn't smart enough to realize he can do this, but then part of Bill's plan is for the Lakers to have a shit-ton of money and go after the free agents they want. Basically Bill muddies the water enough to where his less discerning readers won't realize Bill is proposing essentially the same plan he doesn't think Jim Buss is capable of pulling off.

Making matters worse, the Lakers lost their L.A. basketball monopoly.

This isn't a real thing.

They've been spending money in the most anti–Donald Sterling ways possible, building around the league's most expensive coach (Doc Rivers), a $107 million point guard (Chris Paul), a $95 million, high-flying power forward (Blake Griffin) and a slew of quality role players. It's almost like the Lakers and Clippers switched bodies. And actually, we can't rule this out.

Actually we can rule it out since the Lakers and Clippers don't have bodies because they are organizations not human beings.

So if we ever needed a "Save the Lakers" plan, it's right now. Here's how Wolf Pope Simmons would hypothetically save the Lakers in 10 hypothetical steps.

Bill has to use 10 steps to get where he is going to make his plan seem more complicated. I can sum up his plan in three steps.

1. Save the cap space during 2013 by not taking on large contracts.

2. Accept 2013 may be a tough year and know if the Lakers miss the playoffs then they have a lottery pick and a lot of cap space.

3. Use this cap space to lure attractive free agents to Los Angeles and hope they get a Top 5 pick in the third consecutive "loaded" draft that may not end up being all that loaded.

There. That's a plan and it could work. Of course if Bill limited his plan to three steps he wouldn't be rambling, his column would be shorter, and he couldn't try to desperately show off his ability to jump on the Andrew Wiggins bandwagon...while also looking at Scout.com's Top 100 2013 class to see that Jabari Parker and Julius Randle are also highly rated and they may leave for the NBA Draft next year so he will name-drop them to make it seem like he knows all about them outside of highlights he has seen on YouTube.

1. Don't be afraid to suck all kinds of suck for one season.

Two facts about the 2014 draft. First, if you were ranking the Can't-Miss NBA Prospects of the 21st Century, Kansas freshman Andrew Wiggins would rank behind LeBron, but would probably land right on that second tier with Durant, Oden and Carmelo. He's T-Mac 2.0 by all accounts.

Then Bill provides a YouTube link (what else would Bill provide?) to Andrew Wiggins' Hoop Mixtape, which if there is a better measure of a player's ability to play basketball then a YouTube Hoop Mixtape I certainly can't think of it.

There's a reason the Tankapalooza committee (I'm the chairman) is thinking about changing the name of Tankapalooza 2014 to Riggin' for Wiggins.

Bill is so pumped to see Wiggins play he may even watch a few Kentucky games this year to see how good Wiggins is at playing college-level competition. At least I'm betting Bill believes Wiggins is going to play for Kentucky this upcoming college basketball season.

Second, it's the rare NBA draft that's deep AND top-heavy.

By the way, the draft doesn't occur for another 11 months but Bill already knows every player that will declare for the 2014 NBA Draft. Incredibly impressive, isn't it?

ESPN draft guru and former The O.C. star Chad Ford pointed out that, in 2013, he broke the draft down by tiers — with Tier 1 being "potential franchise players," Tier 2 being "potential All-Stars," Tier 3 being "potential starters," and so on — and there wasn't a single 2013 draft prospect in Tier 1 or Tier 2. In 2014? Right now, we have eight guys in those top two tiers, and that's without factoring in the possibility of one or two more breakout stars.

So there are a lot of potential stars in Chad "Darko for President" Ford's arbitrarily selected tiers? Because these tiers are based on fact and zero speculation color me impressed.

There's also a chance that Kentucky power forward Julius Randle might turn "Wiggins vs. Randle" into a "Durant vs. Oden"–type debate, and that Duke's Jabari Parker might be looming as a Carmelo-like sleeper.

Except I would bet anything these two players are already in Chad Ford's Tier 1 or Tier 2, so they would not count as breakout stars and they would simply be moving around from Tier 1 to 2. Also, I would love to hear Bill's opinion of the potential breakout stars in the 2014 NBA Draft, simply for the sake of hilarity.

Why not take your lumps, Jimmy? Your fan base is more sophisticated than anyone realizes. They've had four generations of success.

It's hard to stereotype an entire fan base, but the Lakers have had a ton of success over the last 40 years so I'm not entirely sure how the fans would respond to a 30-52 season.

They'd be fine with throwing away ONE season. Just not two.

Bill speaks for the Lakers fan base now. He's "The Sports Guy" so of course he speaks for EVERY team's fan base...or at least he thinks he does.

2. Clear every dollar off your 2014-15 cap. Get to zero, or close.

Bill thinks the Lakers need to do the thing that he doesn't believe Jim Buss is smart enough to do. Again, if we assume Buss is smart enough to clear money off the cap and then spend $50 million in free agency then that's the obvious plan (as well as being the plan Bill is proposing here, just in a more complicated fashion to make it seem like it is an original plan).

On paper, the 2013-14 Lakers could take the 2009-10 Heat's game plan to another level by jettisoning every contract while also landing a top-five lottery pick. But they have to worsen this year's roster.

They are going to trade a first round pick for Fab Melo?

3. Trade Steve Nash to Toronto.

Admittedly, Nash doesn't have much market value right now. He's 39 years old, his body is breaking down in a variety of ways, he seemed a step and a half slow last season, he's a turnstile defensively, and he's making $9.3 million in 2014 and $9.7 million in 2015.

But who cares about logic? This isn't logic Bill is using. Bill is just pretending trades can be accepted by one side of the trade even if they don't make sense for both sides of the trade. It's really the only way he can make his plan work, by assuming the Raptors will take on Steve Nash's contract, even though the Raptors just dumped Andrea Bargnani and his contract.

Other than that, he's pretty enticing. But you know where he's still a hero? CANADA! What would be better than Nash finishing his career on Canada's only NBA team?

It doesn't make sense, but it fits Bill's agenda. He can make nonsensical moves if he wants to rosterbate and make himself feel like the NBA trade king. He's done it for most of his ESPN career. There's no way the Raptors would take on Nash's contract.

Now here's where you say, Wait a second, the Raptors just hired Masai Ujiri from Denver. That dude is a shrewd mf'er — he'd never trade for Nash. Au contraire! Thanks to Rudy Gay's onerously onerous deal, DeMar DeRozan's extension, the cap-clogging quartet of Landry Fields, Marcus Camby, Tyler Hansbrough and Steve Novak (nearly $20 million combined in 2014-15) and a few other commitments, Toronto can't become a free-agent player until the summer of 2015 ... right as Nash's deal is expiring. So why not bring him aboard as their feel-good Canadian basketball ambassador?

(Shakes head sadly) I don't know why Ujiri would spend $19 million to feel-good.

Do you realize trading for Nash would immediately become one of Canada's five greatest NBA moments ever?

Do you realize how incredibly irrelevant this is when it comes to whether the Raptors would choose to trade for Steve Nash or not?

Anyway, here's my offer: Nash for Linas Kleiza's expiring contract and Aaron Gray's expiring contract. I can't do better than that.

Generally rebuilding teams choose to trade away expiring contracts so they can use some of that precious cap space on players who are 40 years old and want a chance to play for an NBA Title. And oh yeah, in Bill's absolute genius GM move to trade Steve Nash to Toronto he left out the human part of this trade where Nash won't want to play for a non-contending team over the next two seasons. Who cares what Steve Nash wants though? It's not like he is a real person or a player's opinion on a trade could ever impact the Czar of the ESPN Trade Machine's brilliant ideas.

Bill consistently leaves out the human element of his proposed trades. Why would the Raptors take on salary when they want to get rid of salary? Why would Steve Nash choose to be traded to a non-contender when he signed with the Lakers (in a sign-and-trade) to win an NBA Title? In the middle of Bill's brilliant "who says 'no'?" trade ideas he tends to forget the human element of his rosterbation.

4. Trade Pau Gasol.

You know who's not helping us Riggin' for Wiggins? A future Hall of Famer playing for a new contract. I don't need Pau dropping 23 and 11 every night.

This still wouldn't guarantee the Lakers could get Wiggins, but whatever.

Destination No. 1: Hey, Cleveland, why roll the dice on Andrew Bynum's fusilli knee ligaments when you can rent Pau in a contract year? You know he'll be motivated. You know he's one of the league's best 25 players when healthy

Bill referred to Dwight Howard as the Lakers second-best player earlier in this column. So doesn't that mean he considers Howard to be among the league's best 25 players when healthy? Then what was this column all about? I don't think that column reads as one of the league's Top 25 players is a free agent, but reads as more of a cautionary tale about signing Howard. Yet, now Bill considers Howard to be the Lakers second-best player and considers the Lakers third-best player as a Top 25 guy when healthy. I think I'm confusing myself at this point.

Even better — this trade gives the Lakers a low-post combo of Chris Kaman (always gets hurt) and Varejao (always gets hurt). They could be the Twin Owww-ers. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Simmonsites, this is your hero. Your daddy figure and role model who you live and die with when it comes to him answering one of your emails in a mailbag. "The Twin Oww-ers," that's what Bill writes.

Destination No. 2: Flip Gasol's expiring contract to Chicago for Luol Deng's and Kirk Hinrich's expiring contracts. Just a fascinating trade. The Bulls know Jimmy Butler can replace Deng's minutes,

Yeah, the Bulls know this. Sure, Butler may not be able to replace Deng's production, but replacing Deng's minutes is easy.

For the Lakers, they'd keep Deng for a couple of months before rerouting him to a contender for expiring deals and a pick. (You don't need Deng in a contract year making you slightly better than you need to be.)

This is typical Bill Simmons logic. Trade for Deng under the assumption you can trade him again for expiring deals and a pick. Again, let's forget the human element, such as what if there isn't a team willing to trade expiring contracts and a pick for Deng or the Lakers can get expiring contracts but not a pick? It doesn't matter because reality is only nitpicking to Bill when he is rosterbating.

The Lakers can't sign LeBron after he wins his third straight NBA title for the simple reason that, in the history of basketball, the best player on a championship team has NEVER subsequently ditched that team.

And we all know LeBron has no ego so he wouldn't want to prove he can win an NBA Title for the NBA's most storied franchise without Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. It may not happen, but it is a possibility.

That's why the Lakers need to improve the Bulls — they can't get LeBron unless Chicago, Houston, Oklahoma City, Indiana or Golden State beats the Heat. And Chicago's the best bet of them all.

Let's look at Bill's logic here. He thinks the Lakers should improve the Bulls so the Bulls can beat the Heat in the 2014 NBA Playoffs 10 months from now, so then LeBron will feel okay about leaving the Heat in free agency to go to Los Angeles? There's only like 20 assumptions in this scenario to get to Bill's desired conclusion. Assumptions like:

The Bulls aren't trying to get LeBron after the 2014 season themselves so they would trade expiring deals.

The Bulls are going to be healthy enough 10 months from now to beat the Heat.

The Bulls will match up with the Heat in the 2014 NBA Playoffs and won't get knocked out earlier by Indiana.

LeBron James won't re-sign with the Heat by mid-season next year.

LeBron James won't leave Miami regardless of whether he wins another NBA Title, due to Wade starting to further decline.

Chicago really is the best bet to beat the Heat.

The Lakers think they can't get LeBron to sign with them regardless of whether he wins another title with the Heat.

There are more, but I'm growing bored...

6. Since you're sucking anyway, bring back as many popular former Lakers as possible.

I'd go further than that — I'd also bring back beloved veterans Derek Fisher and Luke Walton for the veteran's minimum, then keep my 15th roster spot open and spend the season signing old Lakers favorites (Robert Horry, Rick Fox, Michael Cooper, Sam Perkins, etc.) to a series of 10-day contracts.

Important note: Lakers fans would LOVE this.

Yes, I'm sure Lakers fans would love it if the organization further made a mockery of the 2013-2014 team, as well as ruined their memories of favorite Lakers players. I'm sure Kobe Bryant would be thrilled to play for a team that brings back 50 year olds to sit at the end of the bench out of nostalgia.

Then Bill suggest Jack Nicholson sits out the season and gives his seat to Phil Jackson. Obviously this would never happen, but I do actually enjoy this idea. Though by doing this it would further disappoint some Lakers fans when Jackson doesn't come back to coach the 2014-2015 team.

8. Keep Mike D'Antoni for the entire year.

When I was going over my tentative "Save the Lakers" plan last night with my friend Lewis (a Lakers nut who's onboard with everything you just read),

Bill's one Lakers fan friend think these are all good ideas and this means these are all good ideas! NO ONE DENIES THIS!

"Are you kidding?" Lewis yelped. "YOU KEEP HIM! YOU KEEP HIM THE WHOLE SEASON! WE WANT THE WORST COACH POSSIBLE!!!!! WHY WOULD YOU EVER FIRE D'ANTONI!"

I would be much more moved by the fact Lewis agrees with Bill if I didn't think Bill surrounded himself with "yes men" who helped massage his ego and make him feel like everything he does is right. I don't have faith Bill has friends who will challenge his ideas.

9. Delay Kobe's return for as long as possible.

I'm not gonna lie — this is the shakiest part of my rehab plan.

The shakiest part of the rehab plan is that you felt the need to use 10 steps when fewer steps are required. Oh, and you make a ton of assumptions like the Raptors will want to trade for Steve Nash and Lakers fans would be perfectly fine with a season where the team intentionally tanks and signs Sam Perkins to a 10-day contract.

Kobe cares about two things right now: Ring No. 6, and Kareem's record. In that order. We could talk him into playing for a historically lousy Lakers team for one season if Ring No. 6 (and maybe LeBron) was the carrot dangling on the other end.

I think Bill is correct about what Kobe cares about right now, but this is one of the few times I think Bill is correct when he pretends he knows what is going on inside a player/coach/organization's head. This is the exception to the rule.

So he's 6,770 points away. To put that in perspective, he scored 2,133 points in 78 games last season before his Achilles ripped. This is doable … you know, assuming he recovers from that devastating leg injury.

Kobe would essentially have to play three or slightly more than three full seasons to take over Kareem's record. And let's be honest, he is going to have to play longer than that if he teams up with LeBron because his shots are going to decline with LeBron on the roster. If Kobe wants LeBron and Kareem's record he may have to play another four full seasons.

10. When Kobe comes back, allow him to hog the ball to alarming degrees.

You know what the best part of that plan is? Kobe's quest to score 40 every night will inadvertently become one of the more entertaining subplots of the 2013-14 season. I'd flip over to every Lakers game just to see how many points he had. So would you.

Actually I really wouldn't do this at all. Watching a player score as many points while ignoring the competition of the game and the flow of the offense becomes tiresome to me after a while.

Of course, they'd still be hoping that Jimmy Buss hired the right coach, made the right lottery pick, lured LeBron, kept Kobe and spent $60 million in cap space in the best possible way …

No matter what plan is used to fix the Lakers this is a concern. Really this sentence Bill wrote is all that is needed to fix the Lakers. Hire the right people, spend money the right way and hope to hit it big in free agency. Of course Bill has to get an entire column out of the idea of fixing the Lakers so he diddles himself for 2000 words before getting to the point.

See, you need a strong owner or a front-office voice to execute a long-term plan — like what Miami had with Pat Riley and Micky Arison four years ago. These Lakers don't have that voice. Kobe will convince them to compete next season because he's nearing the end of his career, and he wants to shove it in Dwight Howard's face, and he probably believes that he and Pau can still battle anyone on any given night. That's what makes him Kobe. And that's why I didn't mind trying to "save" the Lakers. I know they won't do the right thing.

You know who they SHOULD be emulating, actually?

You are going to have to sit down before reading who the Lakers should be emulating because it is going to shock you. Bill Simmons, "The Boston Sports Guy" wants to tell you who the Lakers should emulate will change how you think about the world and be completely unexpected.

My beloved Celtics.

I'M SHOCKED! Bill Simmons thinks the Lakers should be like the Celtics. I can barely breathe I am so surprised.

In the span of five weeks, Boston mortally wounded next year's team by dealing Garnett and Pierce (improving their Riggin' for Wiggins chances);

You know every team can't get Wiggins and I can see a scenario where Jabari Parker stays at Duke for two years. My point is the 2014 NBA Draft may not be quite as loaded as anticipated. Just a thought.

Boston got back a terrible contract (Gerald Wallace) in the Nets trade so Bill is contradicting himself in a big way by saying the Lakers should emulate the Celtics. Bill suggests a strategy to fix the Lakers where they don't take on any long-term contracts and get their cap space as low to $0 as possible, but then says the Lakers should emulate the Celtics who took on a longer-term contract when trading Pierce and Garnett, as well have no immediate plans to trade Jeff Green or Brandon Bass, both of whom have relatively large cap figures. The Celtics are essentially rebuilding around some of their current players which is not at all the strategy that Bill is suggesting the Lakers use.

As always, he plays both sides so that eventually he can be right when/if the Lakers turn it around. Bill writes an entire column about how the Lakers need to clear as much cap space as possible in order to try and lure LeBron, but then says the Lakers should really emulate the Celtics, who are rebuilding around a core of players and not entirely blowing the team up. Of course both teams are in completely different rebuilding situations, but Bill's need to talk briefly about the Celtics has caused him to waffle on the intended plan in this column for the Lakers. Only Bill could write an entire column about a plan for the Lakers and then ruin his plan in the last paragraph and his readers would think nothing of it. They are just happy he writes because they adore him so much.

turned the roster over to Brad Stevens (the perfect guy for a rebuild);

How do you know Brad Stevens is the perfect guy for a rebuild? He's never coached in the NBA before. This is pure speculation.

That's a team that knows who it is, and where it is, and where it needs to be.

The Celtics still have to draft well with the first round draft picks they have acquired. Bill is proposing the Lakers rebuild through the 2014 draft and free agency, which seems to be different from the way the Celtics are rebuilding. The Celtics are looking more long-term for their rebuild. Not to mention, Bill warns against teams trying to be the 8th seed in the playoffs while rebuilding, and guess what, as the Celtics are currently constructed that's the playoff spot they could be in contention for next year. So Bill basically now thinks the Lakers should do the opposite of what he just suggested in this column by emulating the Celtics.

Can you say the same about the Lakers? My gut feeling is no … and that in April, we'll be watching Kobe and Pau fighting for a no. 8 seed.

Damn them and their inability to tank on the off-chance they land the #1 overall pick. Really the Lakers should do what Bill suggests they do in this column or what they should really do is emulate the Celtics...that is unless Bill's suggested plan in this column works out, then that's really what the Lakers should have done. Either way, if the Lakers succeed or fail in rebuilding Bill feels comfortable in knowing he has covered every scenario to where he can claim he was right. As long as he can claim he was right and feed his ego, that's all that matters to him.