Wanted to make this a separate thread to the Mike D'Antoni thread. Feel free to move if needed.
I don't know that I have ever seen such a public implosion of a sports team than what we have witnessed this past year with the Los Angeles Lakers. To recap:
July 4th, 2012 - Steve Nash agrees to a sign-and-trade deal with the Phoenix Suns that sends him to the Lakers.
August 10th, 2012 - Dwight Howard is moved to the Lakers in a four-team trade that also sees Andre Iguodala move to Denver and Andrew Bynum to Philadelphia.
November 9th, 2012 - Just five games into the season, former Cavaliers head coach Mike Brown is fired after a 1-4 start, to much criticism from around the league.
November 12th, 2012 - Mike D'Antoni, NOT Phil Jackson as was first widely believed, is hired to become the next head coach of the Lakers.
The Lakers currently sit at 23-27, 10th in the Western Conference and 3.5 games out of the 8th seed. Per a D'Antoni-coached team, they are 6th in PPG but 25th in opponent PPG. They average more turnovers per game than they force. Dwight Howard is hurt (or so he says) and he is publicly pouting. Kobe, per usual, is calling his teammates out in the media. Pau Gasol has publicly expressed his displeasure in coming off the bench and was experiencing one of the worst seasons of his career until he tore his right plantar fascia at Brooklyn the other night. Now he is going to miss 6-8 weeks if he rehabs the injury, or 10-12 if he opts for surgery. This team needs to swallow their pride, admit that the Dwight Howard experiment didn't work, and deal him away before the deadline, because unless things magically change overnight, I don't see him staying in LA next season.
What a mess. I guess it goes to show that just because something looks good on paper, doesn't necessarily mean it will translate into wins. At any rate, I would very much like for the Lakers to sneak into the playoffs so that the Cavs will be able to get that draft pick. If they do, it seems very likely that it could end up as high as the mid to late teens.