So I was on Facebook when my buddy from highschool scooped me with the news that Ron Artest would be a Laker. Here at Crave we were just talking about trades and the fact that Trevor Ariza might be gone. This news seems to solidify the idea that Trevor will be moving on (hopefully to the Clippers but that’s for another blog) with Artest filling his role as a defensive stopper who can still threaten from the outside.
ESPN radio crapped on the idea of Artest coming to the Lakers stating that Phil Jackson wouldn’t want to deal with a player who has a reputation as a head case. How soon we forget this is the same Phil Jackson who took a chance on Dennis Rodman to great effect. It would seem highly feasible that Jackson can work with Artest who has been a model citizen in recent years (a guy beats up one or two fans and then can’t catch a break…).
But what does this mean for the Lakers? If they can keep hold of Lamar Odom, who is friends with Artest then it probably means at least one more finals appearance. Artest brings a lot of the same skills as Ariza along with leadership and experience. Plus he doesn’t have a ring, he still has that hunger for a championship. Trevor Ariza is looking to get paid and the five million a year that the Lakers were offering obviously isn’t enough. This also say a lot about the future of the Rockets.
With Yao Ming down for maybe the rest of his career things looked pretty bad in Houston, and now it looks worse (in fact things haven’t looked this bad since General Zod took the place over back in 1981) especially with T-Mac still on the mend. The Rockets went from contenders with a bright future to being on the outside looking in just two months.
LA fans will warm up to the idea of Ron Artest soon enough, they’ll just look at his upside and the way he handled himself in the playoffs against the Lakers. In all fairness, we shouldn’t be surprised by Phil Jackson anymore who has made a career of tweaking his team in the midst of championship runs. Those Bulls teams had a few constants, Scottie Pippen and some guy named Michael Jordan were the constants, and others like Toni Kukoc came and went. The same can be and will be said of these Lakers.
There are still questions that need answers, like will LO re-sign and the same goes for Shannon Brown who could end up being Kobe’s BJ Armstrong when it’s all said and done. Stay tuned to this site, we’ll tell ya what’s going on as soon as we find out, unless it happens this weekend then we’ll tell ya on Monday.
