FUCK THE LAKERS!
okay now that I got that out of my system, its not a bad deal for any of them, its just annoying to see a HoF go to the Lakers again. Its just so annoying that the big market teams have the leverage because players want to play their and the small teams lose there stars to the big market. Even if you get lucky enough to get MVP talent in the draft, in 8 years you lose them because you don't have good talent knocking on your door to come play with you so you really can't screw up with any decision/draft pick in that time frame or your team won't be in contention for a title and the chance of your star leaving becomes higher. It really feels like 24 NBA teams are just feeder teams for the top 6 teams.
Preach!
It frustrates me to no end watching the best players in the league leave their original teams and gravitate towards big market teams.
(I don't understand how Chris Paul never caught any flack for his trade demands with the Hornets, compared to how LeBron James got raked over the coals.)
Anyways, looking at how Los Angeles got where they are now though, the only things that are significantly diffent from the Kobe and Shaq era are the additions of Pau and Bynum.
Pau was a result of Memphis strangely deciding to trade their best player in franchise history to LA to clear cap room and save money (the same year that Jerry West was leaving the organization... coincidentally). I get that Marc Gasol is considered to be just as valuable, if not more, than Pau Gasol these days, but at the time, he was a complete afterthought throw-in. The deal was essentially cutting Pau for cap space on Memphis' end and throwing Pau Gasol to the Lakers in the process.
As for Bynum, the Lakers just had to be fortuitous enough to have Bynum land in their laps in the lottery. I was personally a huge critic of Bynum at the time, and I still am, but it was never over his talent. At the time, everyone was doubting his intelligence, work ethic, etc., and the Lakers really took a chance on him. The fact that their gamble paid off might land them Dwight Howard. That's their doing and is in no way a result of being a "big market team."
So while it'll get under my skin if the Lakers are able to assemble perennial championship contenders, I'd be more upset over their several-year old acquisition of Gasol than their recent legitimate trade offers involving Bynum, who they actually drafted themselves, in the late lottery.
All things considered, they're really building a contender in a more legitimate way than teams like the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, or New York Knicks.