ON THE SPOT

“None of us can ever have the presence that Jerry has walking into a room. There’s really no value that you can put on the fact that you have Jerry show up at a function. He walks into a college game or even an NBA game and someone says ‘There’s Jerry West.’ ”

-- Mitch Kupchak,

Aug. 7, 2000, the day he

took over for Jerry West

*

The NBA logo isn’t the only thing West apparently casts a shadow over.

As the Laker dynasty grinded to a startling halt in recent months, a city mourned the trade of the self-proclaimed Most Dominant Ever, Shaquille O’Neal, and talk-radio shows crackled with criticism over the Lakers’ lack of direction. One of the insinuations: West wouldn’t have let this happen.

Is it any wonder Mitch Kupchak has a large photo of a great white shark, jaws open and ready to attack, on the wall across from the desk in his office? He admires the ferocity of great whites, but the photo holds a more symbolic meaning: To be the general manager of the Lakers is to be poked, prodded and devoured whenever there have been too many years between victory parades.

A choppy-water metaphor would accurately describe the off-season for the Lakers and Kupchak, who is about to enter his fifth season as the inheritor of what was once West’s empire.

O’Neal was traded to Miami. Phil Jackson was not asked to return as coach. Derek Fisher left for Golden State. Kobe Bryant signed a seven-year deal with the Lakers only after a serious courtship with the Clippers. Rudy Tomjanovich replaced Jackson after Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski declined the Lakers’ offer. Gary Payton and Rick Fox were traded to the Boston Celtics. Karl Malone has remained in retirement limbo.

Little, if any, positive press has been sent the Lakers’ direction since their meltdown against the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals.

“There’s a lot of criticism that comes with this territory,” Kupchak said. “I feel that [after] playing this game, working with Jerry and being a GM now for five years, I’m qualified. We try to do what we feel is best, not only for the next day, but for survival and prosperity over a five- or 10-year period. That’s really why we did what we did this summer.

“If you could somehow assure everybody that Kobe would sign, Karl would come back, Gary would come back, Shaq would come back, and have one more year to have these guys together, there’s no doubt that’s the best way to have the team this year. But all those questions could not be answered in June and early July.”

Which, in turn, left more questions, including a rather simple one: Exactly who is Mitch Kupchak?

Long before he rode in the parade as a general manager overseeing a championship team, Kupchak was a toiler as an NBA player, a 6-foot-9 power forward who had no problem throwing elbows if it led to an extra rebound or two. He was drafted in the first round by the Washington Bullets in 1976 and never cracked the starting lineup, although he averaged 14.6 points during the Bullets’ championship season in 1977-78.

The Lakers made him one of the NBA’s first big-money free agents in 1981, but he blew out his knee 26 games into the season. He missed the 1982-83 season, returned to play a reserve role on the Lakers’ 1985 championship team, and retired in 1986, taking a job in the Laker front office.

When West resigned, Kupchak was the clear candidate to take over the Lakers’ basketball operations.

Kupchak and West are still close, even though West has been the Memphis Grizzlies’ president since April 2002. They have talked throughout the summer.

“He knows what I’m going through,” Kupchak said. “He’s got his own team to run, but we did talk and sometimes we’d drift into an area that is a little gray. He’s a very candid person. I don’t think that’ll ever change. But I would never ask him, ‘What do you think, what would you do, what should you do?’ That’s not our relationship. That’s not fair to him. I have to make a decision and whatever that decision is, I have to live with it.”

The most controversial decision was the trade that ended a run of eight mostly dominant seasons, three ending in championships.

If O’Neal was looking for one last reason to leave the Lakers, he found it at a fateful news conference within days of the Lakers’ Game 5 loss to the Pistons. O’Neal interpreted comments by Kupchak to mean the Lakers were eager to trade him, particularly after Kupchak spoke favorably about Bryant in response to a previous question.

O’Neal canceled an exit meeting the next day with Kupchak and Jackson. His Mulholland Drive estate was put up for sale. He headed back to a home in Orlando and was traded 26 days later for Lamar Odom, Brian Grant and Caron Butler.

Critics contended the Lakers didn’t get enough value for O’Neal, that they didn’t wait long enough for the best possible offer. Kupchak said it was important to shuffle the deck quickly.

“We knew by trading Shaquille we were probably going to get back three players at least,” he said. “How do you go through free agency if you don’t know what those three players are going to be? To do it in the reverse order made no sense. How do you pursue Vlade Divac if you still have Shaquille? How do pursue a power forward free agent or a small forward when you think you can get a Lamar Odom through a trade? The first piece was really to make our best deal with Shaquille. We felt an urge to get our team in order.”

Kupchak does not regret speaking frankly about O’Neal’s availability at the news conference. He based his comments on sagging contract-extension talks with O’Neal, who had two years left at a total of $58.3 million. O’Neal wanted two more years, but the Lakers and his representatives were about $9 million apart.

“I knew what they had told me a month or two earlier, which was if they didn’t get the extension, they were going to want a trade, so I indicated that anything’s possible,” Kupchak said. “Anybody’s tradable. I’ll say that about our team today. We have no intention of trading anybody at this time, but anybody can get traded. If Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] can be traded and Julius Erving can be traded, anybody can get traded.”

One of Kupchak’s first duties as general manager was to negotiate a three-year, $88.4-million contract extension for O’Neal. After that news conference, O’Neal hugged Kupchak.

There was no embrace when O’Neal left the Lakers in July.

Kupchak, thinking optimistically, has pinned success in the next few years on the continued development of Odom and Bryant.

“Lamar is on the verge of being an All-Star,” Kupchak said. “He could make it, he maybe not could make it, but he’s close and he’s only 24 years old. Kobe’s 26. If they both continue at the rate they’re going, they’re probably both going to be All-Stars for eight to 10 years.”

Bryant and Odom are the only Lakers with significant contracts after the 2006-07 season. Yao Ming and Amare Stoudamire could both be free agents that summer.

Kupchak cannot comment on other teams’ players, but the possibilities make sense: A big-name signing down the road could rearrange the franchise in the same way O’Neal’s acquisition in 1996 marked the first step toward three titles.

“We have some financial flexibility,” Kupchak said. “We could luck out in two or three years with free agents. Big free agents. We now have the ability with some planning to be well under the cap.”