It appears Kobe to stay, Odom and Ariza still in question.
June 16, 2009
The Los Angeles Lakers will celebrate their NBA Championship with a parade Wednesday, but there is already talk about next year, especially who will stay and who will go, according to the Los Angeles Times.
According to the Times, Kobe Bryant(notes) will return. Bryant will be 31 in August and has accumulated plenty of mileage in a 13-year career, but he just finished averaging 32.4 points, 7.4 assists and 5.6 rebounds in the Finals on the way to his first Finals MVP award. Suddenly, a five-year, $135-million contract, the maximum for a player his age, doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. His legendary off-season workout habits should keep him in competitive shape for most of a five-year deal, and it would be a public-relations fiasco if the Lakers let him walk.
Bryant wants to come back. He said during the Finals that he couldn’t envision playing for another team next season. Only something completely unforeseen would keep him from returning to the Lakers, the Times reported.
But what about Trevor Ariza(notes) and Lamar Odom(notes)?
According to the Times, it was believed only one of them would stay, until the Lakers high-stepped through the last two weeks of the playoffs with relative ease, winning the last two games of the Western Conference finals against a physical, feisty Denver team before disposing of Orlando.
The recent sentiment is that there might be room for both Ariza and Odom. Lakers Coach Phil Jackson even said as much last week, saying it wasn’t “written in stone” that the team would have to make an either/or decision with the two players, according to the Times.
Basically, it comes down to owner Jerry Buss, who has stepped up financially numerous times over the years, most recently by signing Andrew Bynum(notes) to a four-year, $57.4-million contract extension last October and, before that, absorbing an extra $49 million in salary by acquiring Pau Gasol(notes) in February 2008.
Source: Los Angeles Times
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