Just What West Needs: Another Advantage

Too many months with too little to do can make for some very frustrated basketball people.

Looking as if they had been set free--unlocked, you might say--Jerry West, Del Harris and Mitch Kupchak met the media Thursday, grinning unabashedly, measuring tasty opportunities, and celebrating the end of the six-month NBA lockout.

“I can tell you, it’s been pretty darn boring around here,” West said. “And to be candid with you, very depressing. I think we’re all a little bit more bubbly today.”

It’s not boring anymore.

From depression to . . . aggression?

In particular, West, the Laker executive vice president, did not shy from addressing some interesting parts of the NBA’s new labor deal and the benefits the Lakers might get from them.

Generally, with maximums set on salaries and stricter salary-cap rules, teams bidding for free agents in many cases basically will be offering the same salary.

The teams that land the best ones, West suggested, will be the ones that have player-friendly reputations.

So, if you’re a flashy, big-city team with a load of title banners and a tradition of taking care of your players . . .

“If I were every player in the league, I’d want to play for the Lakers, obviously,” West mused. “So maybe they’ll have a chance someday.”

Said an equally buoyant Harris, “I think everybody would love to play here. Why not? We’ve got the best city in the league, the best franchise in the league, we’re going to go into a new building next year.

“We’ve got so many advantages here and I don’t blame anybody for wanting to play here. . . . This is a great place to play and a great place to be.”

And Harris, convinced that the Lakers will be strongly in contention, also emphasized that he believes even a truncated NBA regular season will produce a deserving champion.

“What determines the champion, as we all know, is not the regular season,” the coach said. “It’s never been that way. . . . Fifty games is plenty to show which are the better teams in the league and to get position for the playoffs. And the playoffs are going to be the same, anyway.

“I don’t see how any championship is diminished here, because to win it, you still have to survive a tough schedule of 50 games in 90 days and then you’ve got to go through the playoff hurdle system just like always.”

On Thursday, West, Harris and Kupchak laid out the blueprint for this hurry-up training period.

The Lakers will make their regular training gym at Southwest College available to their players beginning Monday for unsupervised workouts; camp will probably start Jan. 18, in Irvine, San Diego or Santa Barbara; counting their three draft choices, but not including free-agent forward Rick Fox, the Lakers already have 12 players on the roster.

But that doesn’t mean West and Kupchak can’t cast interested glances at the big names on the long list of free agents.

“One of the things that we wanted to do is rebuild our team, and in rebuilding our team, we think we’ve acquired some very good young players,” West said.

“But after seeing them play together, maybe there’s some things that we can do to change the course of the team a little bit, maybe give us a little bit different look, and improve our team.”

A key new wrinkle in the labor agreement is the so-called “average” salary exception, expected to be about $1.75 million. The Lakers, as a team already at or over the salary cap, could offer a veteran free agent a three-year deal worth as much as $6 million under this exception.

“We’re excited about that,” West said, “because we’re going to be a capped team--most of the teams will be capped teams. And there are going to be some very attractive players out there that are going to have an opportunity to make a choice of where they want to play at the same salary.”

With a list that includes Scottie Pippen, Jayson Williams, Charles Barkley and others, does that mean the Lakers have a good shot at landing a major free agent?

“Well, you can’t tell,” West said. “We’re hopeful to do something real good here.”

Said Kupchak, the general manager, “You have an opportunity to get a lot of players, particularly players who have been around for a while and they might be in the later days of their careers and they’re looking for an opportunity to play a year or two or three more with a championship team.”

Kupchak said the Lakers have had some discussions the last few days with other teams, but are not allowed to make trades or speak to agents until the labor deal is official.

“One thing we can do is plant seeds right now by talking to other GMs,” Kupchak said.

Meanwhile, he added, the Lakers’ situation with Fox is unchanged. They want to re-sign him but do not have the cap space to match anticipated big offers from other teams.

Kupchak also indicated that second-round pick Ruben Patterson, a forward from Cincinnati, has returned from Europe and may sign with the Lakers for camp.