COMMENTARY : Lakers Left Comfort Level to Take a Chance on the Future

Pete from San Pedro and Harold from Hacienda Heights might not understand this one, but that was the finest moment in the Jerry Buss-Jerry West administration.

Doug Christie has a surgically repaired knee so scary that the Lakers passed him over in the draft. Benoit Benjamin is Benoit Benjamin. Sam Perkins was a good and valued employee. They aren’t the point.

The Lakers said goodby to the glorious past and the comfortable present Monday to get on with the rest of their lives.

If it was easy, more teams would do it, but look around.

The Pistons, once a great power, are sticking with Isiah Thomas, Dennis Rodman and Joe Dumars, now about to turn 32, 32 and 30, respectively, three seasons after the glory run ran out. The Celtics clung to Kevin McHale and Robert Parish until their trade value was gone.

The Lakers could have kept Perkins, gone 44-38, made the playoffs and talked of respectability.

Instead, West offered around his meager resources, found a deal he could live with and rolled the dice.

“In my talks with Jerry Buss, I think he was concerned the direction the team was going in,” West said.

“To me, sports is the ultimate gamble, and every once in a while Jerry likes to gamble a little bit.”

This was a deliberate understatement. Buss once offered to flip a coin with Clipper owner Donald Sterling for the top pick in the draft at a poker game at Pickfair.

Even for West, who liked Benjamin in the 1985 draft and would have bid for him had he become a free agent in 1989, this is a reach. But the Lakers were over the salary cap and could only trade slot for slot, which meant they had to take back a player with a salary within 15% of Perkins’.

Also, the SuperSonics insisted.

Aside from his contract, which has three more seasons at $3.175 million left, Benjamin is little further along than he was when he left the Clippers three seasons ago, one of the most reviled figures in local sports history.

It isn’t that Benjamin is a bad person, simply an unfocused one.

“Benoit Benjamin’s a very talented basketball player,” TNT’s Dick Versace said recently.

“He can score. He can rebound. He has the whole package. He just doesn’t open it up very often.”

The SuperSonics had to move him because they couldn’t build a doghouse big enough for him. Since Jan. 2, Coach George Karl had played him a total of 113 minutes. Last week, Karl fined him $500 for missing a shoot-around. Observers say that Karl, who cleaned out Joe Barry Carroll’s locker in Golden State, was beginning to twitch when he passed Benjamin’s.

Publicly, the Lakers point to Benjamin’s numbers--career averages of 13 points, eight rebounds, 2.5 blocks, or as West noted, about the same as Perkins this season.

They think with more experience and fewer expectations, something good might happen.

Privately, they add one thing: “There’s no downside.”

And there isn’t.

If neither Benjamin nor Christie works out, the Lakers will reach the lottery that much sooner. They were not going to win a championship with Perkins. They won’t lose one because of Benjamin.

Hamstrung by their aging roster, long-term contracts and pending balloon payments, the Lakers have few moves available and must be bold when they have the chance.

The hard part is having the resolve to break up their team and watch attendance, rather than sagging to 13,500 most nights, plummeting below 10,000.

But that’s the way it has to be.

Once, teams drafted out of Street & Smith’s annual yearbook and Red Auerbach stole players and retooled on the fly. The Lakers had the sun and the money and never stayed down long.

These days, there is a salary cap and everyone works harder and you have to get your lottery picks the old-fashioned way: You have to earn them.