Kupchak Offers Food for Thought on Future

With Ron Artest on the floor dressed in purple, Sacramento purple, I thought it’d be a good time to check in with Laker General Manager Mitch Kupchak.

Kupchak was eating dinner, I sat down, and surprisingly he didn’t lose his appetite.

He said the Lakers made an offer for Artest, but “what [Indiana] wanted from us,” he said, while declining to name names, “we weren’t willing to give up.”

So the Lakers held on to Andrew Bynum, I guessed, and Kupchak just kept eating, but while we were on the subject of long-range projects, I wanted to know what he had in mind for the Lakers down the road. If there’s another Kwame Brown coming this way, it’d be nice to be prepared.

He said the Lakers will have the ability to sign a midlevel, $40-million player for five years this summer, a starter, a veteran with the ability to push the team to victory in the close games they’ve been losing, which would allow them to compete with Phoenix, San Antonio and Dallas.

Whatever he was eating, I wanted some.

“I’m not intimidated by the teams in the Western Conference,” Kupchak said. “I think we’re one player away.”

As for the franchise player, the one everyone talks about who will join Kobe Bryant and make the Lakers’ championship timber again, Kupchak said that “it’ll be 2 1/2 years, the summer of 2008, before we can go after a max player.”

Chew on that for a minute.

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MOST FOLKS had the summer of 2007 pegged as the big free-agent year for the Lakers, which is, coincidentally, the start of the final year of Phil Jackson’s contract here.

But the acquisition of Brown and his guaranteed contract calling for $8,287,500 next season and $9,075,000 in 2007 pushed those plans back a season.

There has been speculation the Lakers guaranteed Brown’s contract for 2007 after trading for him, and although Kupchak declined to discuss Brown’s contract, he admitted the team had money earmarked for free agents, but those free agents had their contracts extended this season. So the Lakers spent that money elsewhere (Brown), pushing their free-agent plans back to 2008.

Now there are some people who think Kupchak should be eating his final meal as the Lakers’ GM because of the acquisition of Brown, but Kupchak said, “We’re pleased with the deal we made.”

“It’s the curse of being the No. 1 player in the draft, but he didn’t pick himself No. 1,” Kupchak said. “If this guy was a 20-point, 10-rebound guy, Washington would have never traded him.

“We traded for him because he’s a young player playing a position where we had a hole. I think next year he can be a 12-8 or 14-10 type of player, and we’d be very pleased.”

As if on cue, Brown then went out and scored a season-high 21 points against Sacramento, grabbed a dozen rebounds and made Kupchak look like a genius.

I’ll let you come up with your own punch line here.

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IT MIGHT be “possible,” Kupchak said, to trade for a franchise-type player. I mentioned Kevin Garnett’s name, and Kupchak never flinched. In fact, he ignored me, but went on to say the possibility of trading for a franchise player is “probably remote.”

So the Lakers, as you see them now but a year older, might very well be the Lakers you see next season, and the year after. So how do you like them so far?

“Quite frankly, I thought we’d be a little better along,” Kupchak said. “I think if you ask the players and coaches, there are five to six games we should’ve won. We’ve had several games where we have had big leads and then lost; we have to figure out how to hold on to a lead.”

A few minutes later, the Lakers jumped all over the Kings, running out to a huge lead and getting the chance once again to learn on the job.

This time they hung on to win, a valuable lesson that might come in handy next season if you’re into midlevel acquisitions, or 2008 if you’ve got the patience and faith in Kupchak’s ability to put a team together.

I’m sorry, I know you’re probably eating breakfast.

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THE KINGS introduced their new coach at a news conference, and don’t worry, he won’t be here long enough to learn his name.

The Kings fired a coach with the most wins in franchise history, who had his team nine games over .500, and replaced him with some guy off the street, who was 10-12 in a previous stint as an interim coach, and apparently not good enough to secure the job permanently, or find a job in hockey before the Kings called.

“The only thing the players should have to focus on,” he told the media in his opening remarks, “is tying their skates.”

That has to be a tremendous relief for the players, because a number of them were really upset with Andy Murray for expecting them to execute and play hard in every game.

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AT THE end of the game in Cleveland a few days ago, Bryant made it obvious to fans, peers and a TV audience that Luke Walton should have called a timeout to regroup rather than pass him the ball in a bad position.

I thought that Bryant, the so-called team leader, should have shown more poise and talked to Walton behind closed doors if he was upset.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” Walton said. “It’s one of those heat of battle things. We get along fine. And it’s not going to be the last time he yells at me.

“When I was in college, I yelled at guys. Now I’m just on the other end of it.”

I offered Walton a timeout to reconsider his comments, but he declined.