Right, but does Shaq leave that Orlando team to join the LA Lakers if the Lakers are coming off a 20-25 win season?
I cannot see that happening.
Shaq went to the Lakers because they offered him everything he was looking for:
(1) opportunity to win
(2) the most money
(3) weather, lifestyle and non-basketball opportunities.
You just keep repeating things, some of which are factually incorrect. For starters, he took less money to go to LA than Orlando offered so your number 2 is not something that even happened
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/19/sports/pro-basketball-lakers-get-o-neal-in-7-year-contract.html
Second he went to a worse team! The Lakers were knocked out in the first round and were losing a very effective player in Magic Johnson. They were not at a better place for immediate winning than an Orlando team coming off a finals appearance and a conference finals season in which they went 60-22.
The Magic had a fellow superstar in Anfernee Hardaway (this was all pre-injury) a lock solid big man in Horace Grant (Better than Elden Campbell) Nick Anderson and Dennis Scott were actually performing very similarly with Scott being the best scorer of the group.
Can you just admit that Shaq is a horrible example for what you are trying to argue? He came to LA for several reasons money and being on a contender were not the top ones.
Trim back the build up of quotes there ....
(1) You are side-stepping my point. I am not comparing the 1996 Orlando vs 1996 LA Lakers. I am comparing the LA Lakers of 1996 to the LA Lakers of 2015.
Orlando were a title contender with Shaq.
LAL were a mid-seed playoff team without Shaq and a title contender with Shaq.
I am saying (or at least trying to! I might be doing a bad job of it) that Shaq would not have left Orlando if the new team he was joining wasn't also a title contender. That Shaq would not join a team that won only 20-25 games the year before and had little talent on it's roster.
This 2015 LA Lakers team is not a title contender with one move. They are a 20-25 win team. One major star joining their team gets them to 40 wins (.500 team). An MVP like LeBron or Shaq gets them 45-50 wins which is only a borderline playoff team in the West (and a first round loss even if they make it).
My point is = it is much easier to convince a top FA to join when you can clearly show him that he will have a chance a play for a Championship there. The 1996 Lakers had that. They were 50 win team. The 2015 Lakers do not have that. They are a 20-25 win team.
(2) Orlando low balled Shaq early in the negotiations. Orlando opened negotiations at $54 million over 4 years. The Lakers opened at $97 million. Orlando raised to $88 million. LA went away and freed up more cash. Then LA offered up $121 million. Orlando balked. Hesitated. And it wasn't until the very late in the negotiations -- when Shaq had all but decided he was going to LA -- that Orlando finally decided to stand up and match LA's offer (by offering less money with more cash up front and no state taxes to match or even better LAL's offer if you believe Orlando).
LA Lakers put the most money on the table throughout negotiations until the final moment when Orlando finally decided to match the offer. Who knows what would have happened if Orlando had not have screwed up the early part of the contract negotiations.
Money and bad negotiating tactics by Orlando's front office and owner definitely played a role in how everything played out.
I will give you a tp for the debate for starters. I don't think we really have a way of knowing what Shaq would have done if the Lakers were a 25 win squad in 1996. He may have still gone out there because he really wanted to make movies. I think how appealing the Lakers roster is also up for debate.
At the time they had two solid but non-star guards in Nick Van Exel and Eddie Jones. A quality starter big man in Elden Campbell and a high volume scorer low level all star in Cedric Ceballos. If I am not mistaken they also traded a starting caliber NBA center and semi-star in Divac for a project rookie (Kobe) prior to Shaqs arrival in the offseason. To me it was pretty shocking they somehow won 53 games with the roster they had (Although Maybe Magic Johnson return helped a lot because he was still getting close to 15-5-5). On the surface that roster doesn't seem like a clear title contender to me and it seems like their were other factors that were pretty important in Shaq's departure like the proximity of Hollywood, perhaps anger at Orlando for the negotiations you mentioned and maybe some interest in continuing the Lakers big man tradition.
All in all, in my opinion the move with Shaq kind of showed that there were some factors that make players go to LA besides the basketball team. However, you have presented totally reasonable arguments on why you don't feel those were big factors.
With respect to today, I don't know if someone like Kevin Love would value being in LA more than he would being on a contender because he likes the LA lifestyle and is from there. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
On a side note looking back at the 95-96 season the West was really brutal. Like East today brutal at the bottom. The 8th seed Kings were under .500 and after Mitch Richmond their second best player Olden Polynice with Tyes Edney also playing a prominent role. Isn't that nuts? They beat out a 35 win Denver team to make it that had Dikembe Mutombo, a 35 year old dale Ellis, Mamoud Abdul-Rauf and an effective rookie Antonio Mcdyess. I was pretty young then but funny to think how weak the lower end of the West was that year.
Topic: Lakers quietly shaping landscape of NBA? (Read 9056 times)