Tag: onthisdate

On this date: Lakers trade for Russell Westbrook

On July 29, 2021, the Lakers made a bold but controversial trade for triple-double maestro Russell Westbrook.

During the 2020-21 NBA season, the Lakers were the defending champions, but injuries to Anthony Davis and LeBron James derailed what looked to be a promising shot at back-to-back world titles.

After losing to the Phoenix Suns in six games in the first round of the playoffs, L.A. and general manager Rob Pelinka went to work, trying to fortify the roster.

He reportedly had a trade lined up for sharpshooting off-guard Buddy Hield, and the team reportedly had a shot at acquiring DeMar DeRozan. But the Lakers turned both opportunities down because James reportedly pushed them to instead trade for Russell Westbrook.

Westbrook had come off a season in which he had averaged a triple-double for the fourth time in the past five years. The thinking was he could take the ball-handling and scoring load off an aging James, while also allowing the team to win games in case of an injury to the four-time MVP or Davis.

According to reports, James, Davis and Westbrook had met in person prior to the trade and talked about how things could work between them. All three supposedly talked about making certain sacrifices to contend for a ring.

Of course, that’s not remotely how this past season turned out.

Westbrook wasn’t nearly as much to blame as many fans claim. James and Davis spent a considerable amount of time out of action due to injury. In addition, guard Kendrick Nunn, who was expected to make a significant impact, missed the entire regular season because of a bone bruise.

But the 2017 league MVP has been a hard fit because of his bad outside shooting, lack of off-the-ball activity and defensive flaws.

If the Lakers don’t trade Westbrook and he is still on the roster come October, it will be on him to prove to critics the team didn’t make a mistake by trading for him.

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On this date: Shaquille O’Neal signs with the Lakers

On July 18, 1996, the Lakers started a new golden era when it signed Shaquille O’Neal, who was then the most dominant big man in the NBA.

After Magic Johnson announced in 1991 that he was retiring due to testing positive for HIV, the Los Angeles Lakers went into a tailspin.

The franchise had boasted perhaps the greatest team in NBA history during the peak of the Showtime era in the mid-1980s, but in the 1990s, it looked like it had lost its luster and good karma.

General manager Jerry West, who was just as competitive as an executive as he was during his Hall of Fame playing career, was determined to get back to the championship level.

He knew his team needed a major superstar, and in the summer of 1996, the biggest one, literally and figuratively, was available: Shaquille O’Neal.

West had to clear lots of cap space even to be able to make an offer to the dominant center. It involved trading the Lakers’ starting center, Vlade Divac, to the Charlotte Hornets for a 17-year-old named Kobe Bryant, a move that was viewed as nothing more than a gamble at the time.

Afterward, the Lakers and Orlando Magic went back and forth in a real-life game of poker, making bigger and bigger offers to O’Neal.

In the end, he felt the Lakers were more appreciative of him. Therefore, he signed a new contract to join the Purple and Gold.

In doing so, O’Neal became the latest of a line of legendary Lakers centers that included George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The big fella would team up with Bryant to lead the team to three straight NBA championships in the early 2000s after it went through some growing pains in the late 1990s.

To this day, although O’Neal played with several other teams after leaving L.A., he is most associated with the squad that is the gold standard of basketball.

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