Kupchak Does the Most He Can With Dominoes

Even if the big trade that brought Horace Grant and Greg Foster to the Lakers does not guarantee the Lakers a repeat championship, it should at least be enough to assure their fans and an increasingly jittery coaching staff that the team has solid guidance under Mitch Kupchak.

For his first trade since assuming the reins from Jerry West, all Kupchak did was take part in one of the biggest and most complex transactions in NBA history.

Then he had to do it again. And again.

But even when Versions 1.0 and 2.0 fell through, he regrouped and kept at it. Thanks to his patience and persistence, the Lakers are better off now than when they started the summer. As comparisons to West go, this last-minute save two weeks before training camp was more like the 60-foot shot Mr. Clutch made to send Game 3 of the 1970 NBA finals into overtime than anything West did as an executive.

“I worked with Jerry on these things now for several years,” Kupchak said. It was “nothing I wasn’t really comfortable with.” “I was familiar with the rules, I was familiar with the personnel here. It was a natural process for me.”

This wasn’t as easy as Kupchak makes it sound. It took the involvement of four teams and a total of 12 players (including a future Hall of Famer) for the Lakers to meet their primary objective of bolstering their frontcourt.

There are draft picks, cash and other players added (for salary-cap purposes), but the basics of the trade break down like this: the Lakers get Grant and Foster from the Seattle SuperSonics. Seattle gets Patrick Ewing from the New York Knicks. The Knicks get the Lakers’ Glen Rice and Travis Knight and Phoenix’s Luc Longley. The Suns get Chris Dudley from the Knicks.

If the scope of the deal was extraordinary, so were the circumstances that led to it. Still, give Kupchak credit for capitalizing on them despite bargaining from a position of little leverage.

The Lakers and Rice were through, and everyone knew it. The Lakers were desperate for power-forward help, and not many teams are eager to help the defending champion. Bad combination.

It took Ewing’s desire to leave New York, and the desperation of David Falk (agent to both Ewing and Rice) to create this opportunity.

Falk ran the risk of the most humbling off-season of his career. After releasing a statement ridiculing the Clippers for not signing Maurice Taylor to a $14-million a year extension last fall, Taylor wound up heading off to Houston for the $2.25-million exception this summer.

Rice also had arrived in town last year talking about $14 million a year, but as this season progressed and his value to the Lakers and on the general market declined, it became obvious he would have to settle for less. Under the salary-cap rules, his best option was still to sign with the Lakers and then have them trade him.

Falk brokered the original deal that would have sent Ewing to the SuperSonics, Rice and Seattle power forward Vin Baker to the Knicks and Detroit’s Christian Laettner and Dudley to the Lakers, while the Detroit Pistons acquired a bunch of scrub players that they could eventually release to create salary-cap room.

But the Pistons backed out. A smaller version involving only the Lakers, Knicks and SuperSonics was attempted, but it fell through because the Knicks did not feel as if they got enough for Ewing. A new team was needed, which proved to be a Phoenix squad apparently willing to do anything to get rid of the four years and $26.5 million remaining on Longley’s contract--even if it meant helping two Pacific Division rivals.

The arrival of Grant gives the Lakers a legitimate power forward, not the overmatched A.C. Green of last year or the undersized Robert Horry, who was the default starter until Wednesday. Foster gives the Lakers a good-sized backup to either Grant or Shaquille O’Neal, and he can knock down the open shot as well. The Lakers might even keep throw-ins Chuck Person and Emanual Davis. Person was once one of the league’s dead-eye shooters, but he has been injured in recent years. Davis is 6 feet 5, and you know how Phil Jackson loves those big guards.

Speaking of big guards, now that the Lakers have secured some forwards they can use part or all of their $2.25-million exception to re-sign Brian Shaw. Kupchak said they intend to bring Shaw back.

“Everything looks good,” said Shaw’s agent, Jerome Stanley. “We’ll see in the next couple of days.”

The Lakers didn’t do as well as the Portland Trail Blazers, who acquired Shawn Kemp and Dale Davis and still look like the favorites to win it all. But they did do enough to feel as if they have a good chance to defend their title.

If this was a summer of reward for Kupchak and even a small measure of redemption for Falk, it also will go down as the summer Bull General Manager Jerry Krause got played like a hillbilly on the streets of New York.

He has spent the post-Michael Jordan era tearing down the Bulls and clearing cap room for this year, only to be turned down by every A-list free agent. Then Rice flirted with a one-year, $7.5-million offer from the Bulls.

The Bulls took all the steps. They cut loose Hersey Hawkins, B.J. Armstrong, Matt Maloney and Chris Antsey to clear room for Rice under the salary cap. They were expecting Rice to come to town for a physical on Wednesday and have him signed by Thursday at the latest.

Turns out it was just one last negotiating ploy by Falk and partner Jeff Wexler, who sources said delayed the completion of this trade because the money coming Rice’s way ($36 million over four years) wasn’t as much as he would have received under the first version.

But the clearest sign that the deal was about to come through came in the early afternoon when the Bulls sent out a release that read: “The Chicago Bulls have announced that they no longer have any interest in signing free agent Glen Rice.”

They were just trying to save face. The truth was the Bulls got left at the altar. Can you picture Krause in a Vera Wang gown?

A much better image is Horace Grant in a Laker uniform, which, thanks to Kupchak, is about to become reality.