An Affordable Victory

Although the Lakers haven’t done much to improve their team, they still have a good one. Beginning their season at home for only the sixth time in 34 years, the Lakers looked sharp Friday night in defeating Denver, 98-96, winning without Anthony Peeler and Eddie Jones, who were injured, and without Cedric Ceballos playing at 100%, because of a back spasm.

They also won without Alonzo Mourning.

Red-hot rumor in town for a few days was that the Lakers would make a trade with the Charlotte Hornets for their money-hungry center, Mourning, who wants to be paid some ungodly sum, reported to be as much as $15 million per season. (If Alonzo Mourning is worth 15 mil a year, Michael Jordan must be worth 15 bil a year.)

“He’s a wonderful player,” Laker General Manager Jerry West said of Mourning before the Laker opener, “but I don’t know, these salaries scare me.”

Visions of Mourning in the Laker lineup, controlling the middle while Nick at Nite Van Exel runs the backcourt, must have kept West awake at night, wondering if the cost was worth it. Del Harris has a nice little club to coach, but Mourning would have given him an overnight championship contender.

Instead, Pat Riley got the prize, as his Miami Heat acquired Mourning on the day the NBA season began. Had the Lakers been in the hunt for expensive Alonzo, right to the end?

“Well, you talk to people,” West said, his way of saying that he didn’t exactly tell Charlotte’s people to stop annoying him.

Mourning obviously would have meant a lot to the Lakers, who look remarkably similar to the team last season that made the playoffs but couldn’t quite get over the hump to the Western Conference finals.

Is there any reason to believe this season’s team could? Well, maybe, because the Lakers proved last season they could play straight-up against teams like San Antonio, and the Spurs proved they could play straight-up against teams like Houston, and the Rockets won the championship over Orlando.

Therefore, you could deduce that the only place where San Antonio, Orlando and Houston are superior to the Lakers is at center, where Vlade Divac is hardly a stiff, but not quite an A-list big guy.

So, how do the Lakers elevate themselves to that level?

Hot Rumor II has the Lakers saving their pennies, just in case Shaquille O’Neal should elect to become a free--OK, not exactly free--agent a year from now. That would be the coup of the ‘90s for West, but it is such a wild longshot that nobody should count on it.

The thing is, the Lakers will free up a lot of money after this season, and could be in a position to improve their roster greatly. You never know, this kind of long-range planning could pay off.

Meantime, they still have an entertaining product to offer, a team that hustles and isn’t afraid of anybody. It is a team certainly capable of winning 50, possibly even 55 games, but it is also a team stuck in a conference in which only Minnesota is a pushover.

The Lakers can get by with what they have. They have proven scorers in Ceballos and Van Exel, who combined for 50 points in the opener. Divac held his own against Dikembe Mutombo, getting 16 points and 10 rebounds and toughing it out late in the game after taking a nasty spill.

It is to their credit that the Lakers beat a good opponent on a night with a couple of key individuals hurting and with Elden Campbell pulling down a grand total of zero rebounds.

Alonzo Mourning would have made a difference in this club, made it stronger and meaner. But at what price? You wanted too, too, too much, Alonzo. Say hello to Riley for us.

The opener got sloppy for the Lakers, with a 18-point lead disintegrating in the second half, but Van Exel is just too good to let the Lakers quit, and Sedale Threatt came up with several good plays off the bench.

The additions of Corie Blount and Fred Roberts will hardly turn this into a championship team. And guys like Mourning come along only so often.

But it isn’t as though the Lakers find themselves in any sort of desperate situation. They are deep enough to make another run in the playoffs, and to give their fans their money’s worth.

Next year, we will see how the Lakers spend that money.