Thug Life

So, in light of the past 48 hours, I have decided to scrap parts four and five of my series, Busy Off-Season.

I was all ready to put together an article showing how the Lakers needed a gritty veteran big man. Despite winning a championship last year, we were missing that tough minded individual. A thug if you will; or at least an enforcer. Never did it occur to me that this would come in the form of Ron Artest.

While there are certain inherent risks when signing a guy like Artest — will he charge after a guy in STAPLES for giving him a funny look — you certainly can’t deny the man’s talent. Only a few seasons ago, he was playing in Indiana and moved his way into the MVP race with his all-out play on both ends of the court. Everyone talks about how versatile Lamar Odom is, but have you seen this guy?!?

At only 29 years of age, and still in his prime — having never really had a contract to match his skills — he chose to sign with the champs for the mid-level exception, which is enough proof for me to think that he wants to go to a winning situation and make it work. I realize this is not a good year to expect a huge contract and that is more what forced Ron into this situation, but now that he is here, I want to believe that his only concern will be to win a ring. He is older and wiser and has come a long way since his Detroit ROCK City days.

The two proposed mid-level deals that I mentioned before are:  Three years, $18.5m, or five years, $33.5m. This will not affect the Lakers ability to re-sign Lamar Odom, however, since he is our free agent and we own his Bird-Rights; meaning we can sign him for whatever it takes, regardless of whether we are over the cap. (Everything you would ever want to know about the NBA’s salary cap can be found here, including Bird rights and soft cap).

With the news that Ron Artest will for all intensive purposes be a Laker come July 8th, the Lake Show will get the best perimeter defender who is built like a tank. At 6′7, 260 lbs Artest is a force to be reckoned with and he’s got a mean streak to go with it (and we’ll take it). The one thing you know he will bring every night is an intensity and a great desire to win.

For all his ‘problems,’ playing on the court has never been the issue. He averaged 17.1 ppg, 5.2 rpg, and 3.3 apg, as well as 1.5 spg and a career high 2.2 3pg, shooting 40% from behind the arc in his lone season in Houston last year. He is a unique talent, a rare specimen of brute force and skill. Not only does he outweigh Al Horford by 15 pounds, he can defend everyone from Tony Parker to Kobe Bryant to dare I say he could put up one heck of a fight bodying up Shaquille O’Neal.

As far as the rift on the court you saw last season between Ron and Kobe, I think it was more due to competitive juices (and Ron wanting to get under his skin). I don’t see them being a problem together. Even with all the trash talking and elbows flying, there is a mutual respect you could see between the two. Besides, I think Kobe and Phil Jackson will be able to control Ron’s antics off the court and on the court he’ll be just fine. You figure Dennis Rodman was much more difficult and distracting than Artest, so I think it will be child’s play for Phil next year.

My Uncle was actually the one to break the news to me the other day when he heard it on LA’s sport talk and he immediately questioned me about Ron Ron’s shot selection. It’s true, he has never had the best selection, and never really shot a great percentage from the field (42% for his career; only shot above 45% in a season once). However, what I saw last year, especially in the playoffs, and especially after Yao Ming got hurt, he became the number one option. At that point, he proved he is not the type of player that can carry a team and I think he felt he had to do too much, thus the poor shots. Luckily for the Lakers and Artest, he won’t be expected to be the number one, or even number two option thanks to Kobe and Pau Gasol.

I still want to recognize the fact that things can go one of two ways:  Either he focuses less on scoring and more on defense, accepting his role, or he can’t handle all the attention that Kobe and Pau and even Lamar Odom will get and ends up shooting way too many shots because he is not getting enough. While he only played in a few games last year with Yao and Tracy McGrady — the clear cut one and two guy — at least he showed he could step back and fit in.

I was the first to say the most important thing the Lakers need to do this off-season is sign Trevor Ariza, and while I hate to see him go, I am glad the Lakers resisted over paying for him. I thought based on where Ariza is at in his young career, as well as the poor economy and few teams with the money to spend or want to spend, that he would end up with a four year, $20m contract. The Lakers were willing to give him a five year, $33.5m contract and he felt like that was a slap in the face. For everything Ariza does, it is the things he doesn’t do (no handle, can’t create his own shot, not a lock down defender) that make me think he wasn’t worth any more. Then you factor in the fact that he needs a player like Kobe to get him good looks to be effective, and he is only worth the mid-level.

Besides, Artest is 10 times the player than Ariza is now and showed that, while he has worlds of talent, he can also just be one of the guys. In 27 games in which Artest played third fiddle to Yao and McGrady, he averaged 14.1 ppg, 4.7 rpg, and 2.8 apg. He also shot 38.6% from the field in those games versus 40.1% on the season. He may have scored three fewer points per game, but took fewer shots, as you would expect. The team still was 17-10 (.629) and could have been much better if guys stayed healthy and got more time to gel together on the court. I have no worries whether Artest can make it work on the court.

My concerns, if any, are over his health. His teammate from last year, McGrady, is the one known to be brittle, but Ron has actually never played an 82 game season in his 10 years in the league. He has only played 70+ in four seasons (although two others he played in 69 games). He has missed an average of 21.6 games per year. Okay, so 72 of those games were due to his year long suspension, so really he has missed an average of 14 games a year due to injury. I think that’s just more a result of his physical play, and being in his prime, I’m not too concerned (plus the Lakers can always fill in his spot with Luke Walton for a short period of time).

The amazing thing is that Artest will fit into the triangle perfectly. He can bring the ball up, distribute, create for others or himself, post up, step out and hit the three (did I mention he hit more than two a game last year and shot it 40%). Best of all, Kobe will never have to defend the other team’s best player. And if we do face a team like the Spurs in the playoffs, we can put Artest on Richard Jefferson and Kobe on Manu Ginobili (or visa versa) and shut those two down.

There could not have been a more important signing and I am going to go out on a limb here:  The team the Lakers will put on the floor next year will without question be the most talented team ever assembled…at least on paper. Factor in Kobe (30), Artest (29), Gasol (28), and Lamar (29) are all in their prime. If Andrew Bynum stays healthy and continues to improve, that will just be icing on the cake!

As long as the Lakers re-sign Odom to something reasonable ($8m a year), this team will most certainly have a three to four year window to win that many rings, even with the rest of the league improving.

I want to leave you with a good point made by ESPNs Ric Bucher. While everyone will agree that the Lakers may not have won without Ariza — and the fact that he is young and only going to get better — this swap for Artest is certainly a better move for the team in the short term. The Lakers don’t have to wait for Ariza to get better, they can now rely on a ‘chiseled-vet’ and a known commodity.