Mike Monroe: It’s business as usual with Howard to Lakers

Friday couldn’t have been any worse for Spurs fans unless Manu Ginobili had blown out both knees in Argentina’s Olympic semifinal loss to Team USA.

The team they most love to hate landed the NBA’s most dominant big man.

By adding Dwight Howard to a starting lineup that already includes Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol, the Lakers zoomed past the Spurs and Thunder to become the best team in the Western Conference.

Andrew Bynum may well have been the best center in the West last season, but he is both injury-prone and churlish. He missed only six out of 66 games last season, but in the previous four seasons he played in only 204 out of a possible 328 games.

In contrast, Howard is a veritable iron man. He missed only seven games in his first seven seasons before missing 12 last season.

Indeed, he had back surgery in April to repair a herniated disk and may not be at full strength when training camp begins in October, but hoping for a slow recovery is a measure of how impactful the deal was.

“Who knows how injured he is,” said one NBA general manager. “He has a back injury. There’s always risk even if you are perceived to win the trade.”

Can Howard really be a major upgrade over a player who scored 16 points and grabbed 30 rebounds when the Lakers handed the Spurs one of their two losses in 17 games in April?

“Bynum is a very good player,” said a Western Conference GM. “He just doesn’t have the explosive qualities Howard has.

“Clearly, the Lakers have been able to get the most physically dominant big man in the league. They had that in Shaq and now it seems as though they have the next legacy and transfer of power.”

The scariest part of the deal for the rest of the West?

Howard will have to prove himself worthy of his new team and teammates. That means a more serious approach — less clowning.

He may call himself Superman, but Howard won’t be the alpha dog on the Lakers. Bryant runs that team, and he’s already made it clear Howard must wait his turn before calling himself “the man” in L.A.

Remember what happened to the last Lakers All-NBA center who called himself Superman and clashed with Bryant?

Shaquille O’Neal had been an MVP and helped the Lakers win three championships, but Bryant saw to it he was traded away.

Howard’s Magic teammates wouldn’t stand up to him when he was being a diva in Orlando. Bryant won’t go along with that, and neither will Nash. Between them, they own three MVP trophies. Howard will have no choice but to fall in line, and a more focused Howard should frighten the entire league.

“Let’s be honest,” said another West GM. “Dwight hasn’t done anything in Orlando. Of course, (Pau) Gasol hadn’t done anything in Memphis when he was traded to L.A. You think wearing that purple and gold uniform made him feel more like a winner?”

Denver also became a tougher stop for every team in the West with Friday’s trade, but that hardly matters to franchises like the Spurs and Thunder that measure success by whether or not they are playing in June.

The Western Conference power structure starts at the top again with the Lakers and threatens what many of us believed had the makings of a new NBA dynasty in Miami.

Don’t doubt for a nanosecond that commissioner David Stern hasn’t already begun to consider the ratings bonanza a Lakers-Heat NBA Finals could produce next June. For all his talk about structuring a collective bargaining agreement that makes it possible for small-market teams to compete with mega markets like New York and L.A., Stern knows the benefits of having his best teams in his glamour markets.

Didn’t he famously declare some years ago that his ideal Finals would be Lakers against Lakers?

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Twitter: @Monroe_SA

Mike Monroe: It’s business as usual with Howard to Lakers

Friday couldn’t have been any worse for Spurs fans unless Manu Ginobili had blown out both knees in Argentina’s Olympic semifinal loss to Team USA.

The team they most love to hate landed the NBA’s most dominant big man.

By adding Dwight Howard to a starting lineup that already includes Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol, the Lakers zoomed past the Spurs and Thunder to become the best team in the Western Conference.

Andrew Bynum may well have been the best center in the West last season, but he is both injury-prone and churlish. He missed only six out of 66 games last season, but in the previous four seasons he played in only 204 out of a possible 328 games.

In contrast, Howard is a veritable iron man. He missed only seven games in his first seven seasons before missing 12 last season.

Indeed, he had back surgery in April to repair a herniated disk and may not be at full strength when training camp begins in October, but hoping for a slow recovery is a measure of how impactful the deal was.

“Who knows how injured he is,” said one NBA general manager. “He has a back injury. There’s always risk even if you are perceived to win the trade.”

Can Howard really be a major upgrade over a player who scored 16 points and grabbed 30 rebounds when the Lakers handed the Spurs one of their two losses in 17 games in April?

“Bynum is a very good player,” said a Western Conference GM. “He just doesn’t have the explosive qualities Howard has.

“Clearly, the Lakers have been able to get the most physically dominant big man in the league. They had that in Shaq and now it seems as though they have the next legacy and transfer of power.”

The scariest part of the deal for the rest of the West?

Howard will have to prove himself worthy of his new team and teammates. That means a more serious approach — less clowning.

He may call himself Superman, but Howard won’t be the alpha dog on the Lakers. Bryant runs that team, and he’s already made it clear Howard must wait his turn before calling himself “the man” in L.A.

Remember what happened to the last Lakers All-NBA center who called himself Superman and clashed with Bryant?

Shaquille O’Neal had been an MVP and helped the Lakers win three championships, but Bryant saw to it he was traded away.

Howard’s Magic teammates wouldn’t stand up to him when he was being a diva in Orlando. Bryant won’t go along with that, and neither will Nash. Between them, they own three MVP trophies. Howard will have no choice but to fall in line, and a more focused Howard should frighten the entire league.

“Let’s be honest,” said another West GM. “Dwight hasn’t done anything in Orlando. Of course, (Pau) Gasol hadn’t done anything in Memphis when he was traded to L.A. You think wearing that purple and gold uniform made him feel more like a winner?”

Denver also became a tougher stop for every team in the West with Friday’s trade, but that hardly matters to franchises like the Spurs and Thunder that measure success by whether or not they are playing in June.

The Western Conference power structure starts at the top again with the Lakers and threatens what many of us believed had the makings of a new NBA dynasty in Miami.

Don’t doubt for a nanosecond that commissioner David Stern hasn’t already begun to consider the ratings bonanza a Lakers-Heat NBA Finals could produce next June. For all his talk about structuring a collective bargaining agreement that makes it possible for small-market teams to compete with mega markets like New York and L.A., Stern knows the benefits of having his best teams in his glamour markets.

Didn’t he famously declare some years ago that his ideal Finals would be Lakers against Lakers?

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Twitter: @Monroe_SA

Buck Harvey: Ex-Spur loses his seat as the GM

Chris Paul lobbing to Blake Griffin will be fun. Knowing the Lakers will be envious in the same city will be, too.

David Stern will receive a few compliments, and the New Orleans franchise will receive a few offers. The Hornets, with both a sensible payroll and a promising future to market, will be easier to sell.

But there’s someone who doesn’t know what his job is after this, or even if he has one. The general manager of the Hornets was off to the side while the NBA ran his team for him, and what happened Wednesday didn’t help him.
Before, Dell Demps’ peers thought he’d gotten a raw deal.

Now, didn’t Stern do a better job than Demps?

Demps knew the NBA ride could be a rough one. He made the Spurs’ roster in 1995 as a free agent; when he took his seat on the team plane for the first road trip that season, he felt a sense of accomplishment.

He felt something give, too. As the plane took off from the San Antonio airport, his seat became untracked along with that of a teammate, Chuck Person.

Both were injured, with Person suffering a herniated disk.

Demps sat back up. He patched together a 10-year playing career that stretched from the Philippines to France and beyond. Later, he took a job in the D-League, then scouted for the Knicks before coming back to the Spurs.

Here, he learned how to run his own operation with the Toros. Those who worked with him in the Spurs’ organization thought this: Demps was competitive and smart, and aggressive in both his thinking and his execution.

Little wonder he teamed with a former Spurs teammate, coach Monty Williams, in New Orleans in the summer of 2010. And from the first day, his challenge was Paul.

Paul was already impatient then, wondering if he should go elsewhere. Demps met with him immediately upon becoming the Hornets’ general manager.

“They made the right choice hiring Dell,” a source close to Paul said then. “We knew the Spurs talked very highly of him, so that’s all we could go off. But (Paul) said it was a great meeting.”

Demps did what every other GM in the league would have tried to do. He massaged his star. He outlined for Paul what was possible, knowing all along that his star might change his mind. Paul did eventually.

But Demps wasn’t any other GM. He didn’t have to answer to one owner, or even a group of owners. He had the league.

Stern should want to get out of this conflict of interest as soon as possible. It looks bad, and it feels worse. Various officials around the league see too many possibilities.

Such as the lottery. It’s always been a moment of game-show paranoia. Now it’s possible an NBA-owned team will have two chances.

This trade was as messy. Stern and Demps tried to frame it Wednesday night in a teleconference as a cooperative effort. When Demps came to the league with the three-way deal that involved the Lakers and Rockets, Stern said they talked in gentle terms.

“OK, let’s see what else we can do?”

In truth, the NBA vetoed Demps’ trade and took over his responsibilities. Demps was crushed.

Many around the league thought a lot of his initial proposal. Demps had gotten three veterans (Lamar Odom, Luis Scola and Kevin Martin) who would have made the Hornets competitive.

Still, it was a middling mix, as well as one whose budget and lack of star power wouldn’t have impressed potential buyers. The NBA accomplished all of that — without Demps’ assistance — when it landed a younger talent in Eric Gordon and the promise of Minnesota’s unprotected lottery pick in a deep draft.

Wednesday night, Demps said he was excited for the Hornets, and maybe he is. But this wasn’t his trade, and he wasn’t running his team. He was untracked again, and likely to be unemployed.

bharvey@express-news.net