Mitch Kupchak has now officially and publicly acknowledged something that's seemed clear to pretty much anyone paying attention over the last two years: that the Los Angeles Lakers can't, and won't, move forward as a team and organization until after they send legendary superstar Kobe Bryant off into retirement at the end of this season.
First, the Lakers' longtime general manager shared those sentiments — sentiments that have been forwarded by many, in a wide variety of ways, ever since L.A. gave Bryant a two-year, $48.5 million contract extension while he was still recovering from a torn Achilles tendon — with season-ticket holders during the Sunday event at which he discussed the franchise potentially retiring both of Bryant's uniform numbers, according to Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times:
Kupchak said the Lakers need to turn the page once Bryant steps away from the game.
"We cannot move on as a team until Kobe leaves," Kupchak said. "Part of that to me is painful because I've been here 20 years with Kobe.
"This is a year that's dedicated to Kobe and his farewell. From my point of view, it gives me complete clarity. ... We know what our [salary] cap situation is going to be like."
Then, Kupchak elaborated on his remarks — and, more to the point, the notion that devoting this season to Bryant's farewell tour means not devoting it to the development of young talents like D'Angelo Russell, Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. — in a chat with ESPN.com's Baxter Holmes:
"Under normal circumstances [in a season like this], at some point, you would probably concentrate on just developing all your young players," Kupchak told ESPN on Tuesday. "But we can't do that right now.
"This [season] is really a justified farewell to perhaps the best player in franchise history. And, God willing, he's going to want to play every game and he's going to want to play a lot of minutes in every game, because that's just the way he is.
"And as long as that continues, which it should, then that's 30-35 minutes that you might give to a young player that you can't. How do you get a feel for your team going forward when you know that your best player is not going to be there next year? So it's really hard to go forward until he's no longer here.
"That's not a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all. It's something that I think is a good thing. In some regards, there's a silver lining. Our younger players can make mistakes and it can kind of go under the radar because Kobe garnishes so much attention. Every game, it's about Kobe. Even when he doesn't play, it's about Kobe. So in a lot of regards, there's a silver lining that our guys can develop under the radar and maybe make a mistake or make two mistakes and it not be a big deal."
There's plenty to parse and pick through in that statement, including the idea that this version of Kobe is the Lakers' best player right now — an easier argument to make during the two-week stretch where he was averaging better than 20 points, five rebounds and four assists per game on 48 percent shooting, but that stretch ended before Bryant went on the shelf with a sore right shoulder. (For my money, Clarkson — averaging 15 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.1 steals in 31.9 minutes per game while shooting 45 percent from the floor, 34 percent from 3-point land and 79.1 percent from the line — has probably been the more consistent pick of an admittedly runty litter.)
The most notable bit, though, is the idea that the sheer size and scope of the spectacle surrounding Bryant's final trip around the league has helped mask the growing pains that the young Lakers have experienced as the team has sputtered to a West-worst 8-28 record. (Left unsaid: that it also helps mask the fact that the non-youngster moves Kupchak made this offseason — signing Lou Williams and Brandon Bass, trading for Roy Hibbert, bringing back Metta World Peace — didn't pan out nearly as well as he might've hoped.)
That argument seems like it'd make more sense if the young guys' stumbles and head coach Byron Scott's reactions to them — Scott's early-season tightening of rookie Russell's leash, his benching and slamming the defense of the "immature" Randle, etc. — hadn't repeatedly become widely discussed matters of public record. It's hard to say that Kobe's Grand Finale keeps the kids' miscues hush-hush when their head coach seems to be shouting them out just about every chance he gets.
Especially when, out of the other side of his mouth, he's openly and unreservedly saying Kobe has carte blanche to take all the bad shots he wants and make whatever mistakes he can without any fear of ever being benched under any circumstances. In this context, Kobe's farewell tour doesn't necessarily provide cover for the kids to develop at their own pace; it creates a double-standard (earned or not) for acceptable on-court conduct that makes it more difficult for them to develop at all, regardless of how many minutes they play.
Then again, it's possible that Kupchak's right, and that without the constant focus on Bryant's final performances in various cities, the megawatt Los Angeles media spotlight would be trained solely on Russell, who has seemed to respond to Scott's shuffling by redoubling his efforts, and Randle, who ... y'know ... has played some pretty crummy defense at times, and did commit a big-league no-no by airing frustrations at only getting 15 minutes of burn in one of the Lakers' precious few big wins this season. Without the arc of the Lakers-watching universe eternally bending back toward Kobe, we might find ourselves less likely to chalk these clashes up to Scott's unbending and largely unsuccessful old-school mentality, and more interested in putting the individual youngsters in question under the microscope to get a higher-resolution look at their flaws and imperfections.
Whether you buy Kupchak's view or not, the question remains: why does this season have to be just one or the other? From Drew Garrison of Lakers blog Silver Screen and Roll:
The conflicting goals of the franchise creates the perception the front office and coaching staff are out of touch with what needs to happen to rebuild from the ashes of franchise-worst seasons and missed free agency pitches. There's also the question as to why focusing on developing the most important players on the roster and respecting Kobe's final season have to be mutually exclusive.
That last point seems especially noteworthy considering we're less than one month removed from Kupchak suggesting that he didn't necessarily think they had to be, and that he didn't want them to be, according to Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times (emphasis mine):
"I think our fans understand, this being Kobe's last year, after 19 just ridiculous years, that we're in a year that there's going to be a salute and a goodbye, which in itself is exciting. But we've got to give them more than that," Kupchak said. "Quite frankly, I have to get more answers on our players going forward on this [young] corps. I want to see them develop and not only just get through the season averaging X-number of minutes and then next year we just figure it out. We need answers this year."
Now, though, with the Lakers sitting 20 games under .500 after Tuesday's blowout loss to the Golden State Warriors, Kupchak appears to have reversed course and embraced Kobe's Viking funeral in the hope that, by season's end, the residue of three straight franchise-worst seasons will have burned away, taken Scott's regrettable coaching tenure with it, and left behind a clean slate, as much as $60 milion in cap space, and several promising young talents who have proven they can play at the NBA level. And if Kobe's exit winds up taking up all the oxygen (and shots) in the room, making it more difficult for those youngsters to come through on step three ... well, evidently Mitch is a Meat Loaf fan, and is banking on his recent draftees being into (and not being) Immature.
"It's not a perfect scenario, but there's no way to plan this," Kupchak told Holmes. "There just isn't."
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