Lakers Are Forced to Look to the Future

Jerry West’s upbeat comments on the Lakers were a breath of fresh air after months of dire predictions by the naysayers. And who’s more knowledgeable regarding basketball, Jerry West or Bill Plaschke?

Gloria Mathys

Rancho Palos Verdes

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Mark Heisler offered several sobering scenarios about the Laker future, but he missed the one everybody is afraid to mention -- trade Kobe!

Kobe got himself in trouble, Kobe got Phil fired and Shaq traded, Kobe scared management into acting hastily and getting nothing for Shaq. Kobe wanted to be in command, so let him restructure his contract so the team can come back with some real players on its roster. If Kobe balks, and he would, trade him for three or four quality guys.

Steve Fogel

Los Alamitos

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Instead of spending time debating who would win a best-of-seven-game series between the 1985 and 2001 Lakers (1985 in no more than five) we should focus on who would win a series between Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, Kobe Bryant, Chris Mihm and Luke Walton against their Carl’s Jr. Bobblehead dolls.

With the exception of Kobe, we know the dolls would put forth a better effort.

Erik Schuman

Fountain Valley

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Like a lot of kids who grew up in the ‘50s, collecting baseball cards was the big thing to do. In order to collect those cards, however, we had to purchase the gum that tasted like cardboard that came along with them. Most of us threw the gum away and kept the cards.

Monday night, after seeing Magic, Worthy, Kareem, etc., and the hourlong special on the history of the Lakers, it occurred to me that watching the current Lakers play is like throwing away the bubble gum to get to the baseball cards.

Terry Sullivan

San Clemente

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Thank God I don’t have to worry about who the Lakers are going to start at center next year. Now that Kobe has endorsed re-signing Vlade Divac, all our problems are solved. Maybe Kobe can check on the availability of Benoit Benjamin so Vlade can have a backup.

Patrick Duff

Aliso Viejo

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Calling on my 35 years on the Southland journalism scene, I had to dig down deep Tuesday morning to answer my sports-fanatic friend’s query of why the Laker game story was placed on Page 7 of Sports:

“Because it was only an eight-page section.”

Jerry Clark

Glendale