Lakers’ Best Option Is Being Nice to Rice

It’s funny how the Lakers and Glen Rice need each other now more than ever, with a degree of co-dependency we didn’t see even during the NBA finals.

Rice never seemed completely happy that the Lakers weren’t prepared to give him a large contract and/or priority status in their offense.

Coach Phil Jackson and the Lakers seemed intent on proving they could win without him, leaving him on the bench for long, critical stretches.

Now if Rice wants to make big money and play for a worthwhile team, he needs the Lakers to work out a sign-and-trade deal.

And if the Lakers want to address their needs, primarily at power forward and backup center, they need other teams to take an interest in Rice and send some quality players to Los Angeles in exchange for him.

If the Lakers, who presumably haven’t abandoned the goal of winning championships, think they can earn another banner without him, why should anyone else consider him a vital piece?

For one thing, not too many teams have the equivalent of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant occupying the driver’s and shotgun seats. Put Rice in an offense where he’s the first or even the second option and his value goes up.

Heck, the New York Knicks wanted Rice, and they already had Latrell Sprewell and Allan Houston.

The problem for Rice and the Lakers is that there aren’t many teams like the Knicks, who find themselves in a win-now mode every year and are unafraid of the looming luxury tax.

Some saw New York’s interest in Rice as an indication that Houston was about to be shipped elsewhere. All that mattered to the Lakers and Rice was that another team wanted him and was reportedly ready to offer him more than $50 million over five years.

The Lakers were set to receive backup center Chris Dudley from the Knicks and power forward Christian Laettner from Detroit as part of the four-team trade that fell apart Monday.

While that might not be as important as the moves made by the Miami Heat (adding Eddie Jones and Anthony Mason), the Portland Trail Blazers (once the three-way-trade shipping off Brian Grant and landing Shawn Kemp goes through) or the San Antonio Spurs (Derek Anderson), it’s starting to look a lot better than anything the Lakers did before that proposed trade or any options available to them afterward.

One scenario that has surfaced has Rice taking a one-year deal with Chicago, which has all of the money that Grant Hill, Tim Duncan and Tracy McGrady passed up. That’s a worst-case situation for nearly all involved: Rice goes to a team that is somewhere below rebuilding and just above irrelevance, and because the Bulls don’t need to do a sign-and-trade to get him, the Lakers receive nothing in return.

As salary-cap room around the league disappears and player movement slows to a halt, the choices available to Rice and the Lakers dwindle.

Is it possible that they could somehow find a way to reconcile? That would be the most unexpected move of all. The Knicks and Patrick Ewing could wind up stuck with each other, after he was all but packed up for Seattle--and after a New York tabloid already declared “GOOD RIDDANCE.”

Everyone says the Knicks “have to” move Ewing and the Seattle SuperSonics have to ship out Vin Baker after their names came up in that monster trade rumor.

But what if they can’t? Economics and roster realities matter much more than feelings. After all, the Lakers were prepared to ask O’Neal to be a teammate to Laettner, a rival from college days whom Shaq once mocked on a rap album, and Dudley, who threw a basketball at O’Neal’s backside in a skirmish two years ago.

Are the Lakers and Rice so far down the path of divorce that they can’t find a way to reach a compromise?

My position on Rice is the same as it was when there was all of that frenzy to make a deal before the trading deadline: Don’t move him just to move him.

As inconsistent as the Lakers’ outside shooting was last season--which Portland made blatantly obvious during the Western Conference finals--losing Rice would only make it worse.

And watching him leave without any compensation for the Lakers would only add to the mistake they made by trading Jones and Elden Campbell for Rice, J.R. Reid and B.J. Armstrong in 1999.

The new salary-cap rules have made player transactions look like elaborate money-laundering schemes.

Look at the great lengths the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics had to go to just to move Danny Fortson. It took a total of four teams and nine players . . . and all the Celtics had to show for it was the oft-injured Robert Pack and John “Hot Rod” Williams, who apparently is still in the NBA.

And any doubt that money matters more than anything else to the players was erased this summer. That’s why Kendall Gill passed on the Lakers’ $2.25-million exception to get $5 million more with the New Jersey Nets. It’s why you read about the possibility of Maurice Taylor signing for the exception in cities like Houston or Seattle--teams that can conceivably get under the salary cap in the near future and give Taylor a substantial raise on his next contract--instead of taking the Lakers’ exception.

So the Lakers and Rice find themselves cornered. They backed themselves into this position. They’re waiting for someone to offer them a hand, apparently unwilling to simply shake hands themselves.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.