Photo: Harry How
Colin Cowherd: “Of all the big brands in America right now: the Yankees, Notre Dame football, Duke basketball, Celtics, Green Bay Packers, 49ers… Whatever the big brands in America are, none are as hopeless today and have a bleaker future than your Los Angeles Lakers. They’re not good now, the future is bleak, they have no draft capital coming up in the next few years, they don’t have any young and ascending stars, they don’t have a front office with a history of clever trades, they don’t have any cap space, and has an ownership group who doesn’t want to pay a penny on that stuff. The Lakers did what LeBron James what Cleveland and Miami did. They gave the franchise to LeBron, and if you give the franchise to LeBron here’s what happens: he does not like playing with young players so you have to get rid of your young players. First thing he did when he got to LA; all you young players, get them out of here. He pretended like he liked Kyle Kuzma, he faked like he liked Lonzo Ball, and he got them out of here. So your roster gets much older. In Miami it was like Mike Miller, Shane Battier, Ray Allen, and Udonis Haslem. It gets OLD fast. You gotta get rid of your young players with LeBron and he doesn’t care about draft picks, so you gotta trade those to get veteran players. It was all good when LeBron was in his prime but now he’s out of it, hurt a lot, and not available a lot. It took Miami and Pat Riley 4-5 years to rebuild the draft capital, get emerging and ascending young players, and become a consistent playoff team, and that’s WITH Spoelstra, Riley, a great owner, and a great culture. The Lakers right now don’t have any of that. Do Lakers fans understand this? You are staring down the barrel of a decade of irrelevance and you were mostly irrelevant for 8-9 years before LeBron. The reluctance to move Anthony Davis is beyond me. I don’t get it, I’ve been on this for two years— MOVE HIM. They don’t have the courage to trade LeBron before he breaks Kareem’s scoring record but you have to consider it, don’t you? You’re not winning with him, he doesn’t want to play with young players, and he’s just going to get older. The Lakers don't have any athletic wing defenders, they don’t have any shooters; you’re not close. The solution to me is: you’ve got two tradeable pieces, I’d move one now and consider the other one later. Don’t you have to? LeBron is in year 20, you can’t even take a phone call? They’re not going to move him before Kareem’s record is broken but do people understand what you’re looking at here? This is bleak. I’m not anti-Lakers, I’m anti-franchise that doesn’t appear to have a plan. What are we doing here? It’s not working and getting worse.” (Full Segment Above)
Watch Colin Cowherd explain why he thinks the Los Angeles Lakers franchise is ‘staring down the barrel of a decade of irrelevance' with the way the organization appears to be perfectly content with sinking down to the bottom of the ocean with rapidly aging LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Russell Westbrook.
Check out the segment above as Colin details why the Lakers have now become the worst big brand in American sports.
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