Build a Future and Appease Kobe

In our last challenge, most members were very eager to get rid of our young players without being concerned about the future of our team. Swapping our young and promising talents for older and more experienced players does not guaranty instant success.

It’s easy to showoff your knowledge with household names like Jermaine O’Neal, Ron Artest, Jason Kidd and C.Webb. It’s easy to build an All-Star team around Kobe on the paper. But how much do you know about young talents? In 1996, Jerry West brought Shaq to LA and everybody applauded him, but West also traded his starting center, Vlade Divac to the Hornets for the young Kobe Bryant (1996 13^th pick.). It takes the ingenuity of “The Logo” to build a contender team.

Today, Lakers are lost somewhere between their glorious past, disorientated present and uncertain future. They have the best player on the planet and don’t know what to do with him. They have surrounded him with some experienced players like Derek Fisher and Lamar Odom, as well as young talents like Andrew Bynum and Javaris Crittenton. But is that enough to build a future and appease Kobe at the same time?

This challenge is about assembling a contender team to appease Kobe and have a chance to win now, and at the same time, you must add young talents to be contender in future as well. You must follow these rules to participate in this challenge…

Your proposal has to secure the future of the franchise while appeasing Kobe.
All trades must comply with NBA and CBA trade regulations
Support your ideas with facts but please keep it under 60-70 words (4-5 lines)
Do not spend more than $5-Mil in luxury taxes
The word “FINAL” must be on top of your final proposal to be reviewed.
Identify yourself on top of the post, for example: “This is Larry Bird at Pacers”
Only proposals with a link to a trade machine will be accepted and reviewed. If you’re trading for an unsigned agent, it would be difficult to use the machine, just post names of your outgoing and incoming players.
This challenge will end on September 8 and the winner will be announced 2 days later.
You can also suggest keeping the present roster. Just post a comment and tell us why.
Do not trade Kobe.

You may also counter those offers made by the Lakers by identifying yourself as the owner or GM of the other team on top of your posts.

Competent owners build a team to be contender now while embedding young talents in the roster to be contender in future as well. Thus, we will award the winner with the Certificate of General Manager of the Month, issued by the TheLakersNation, for the month of September.

References:

A. For player’s stats:

http://www.nba.com/statistics/

http://www.nba.com/hotzones/

http://www.nba.com/draft2007/board.html

B. Team salaries and salary caps and trade regulations:

http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm

http://www.hoopshype.com/salaries.htm

http://realgm.com/src_gm_resources.php

C. Trade calculators and trade machines:

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/features/trademachine

http://realgm.com/src_tradechecker/1/