The Laker fans should thank Mr. West for giving them one of the best: Pau Gasol was as good as, if not better than Kobe last night…..

“The logo”, Jerry West(The NBA logo on the sides of the uniforms and on all official NBA business is West), was the GM of the Memphis Grizzlies, when he sent Pau Gasol to the Los Angeles Lakers, in a deal that would forever change the course of history for Lakers….(We had Kobe Bryant in Charlotte, when the Hornets drafted him in 1996. See more below…)

[Background on the Pau Gasol trade from Memphis to Los Angeles….On February 1, 2008, Gasol was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers along with a 2010 second round draft pick for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, Aaron McKie, the rights to Marc Gasol (Pau’s younger brother), and 2008 and 2010 first round draft picks.]

In the game-seven final last night, when Kobe Bryant couldn’t find the right side of the barn, Pau Gasol was the difference-maker….Kobe was hitting from the line and that is fine, but Gasol was “The Man”, that made LA champions for a 16th time…..

Gasol came to the Lakers in that trade and I am saying here today, that Pau Gasol was as good as, if not better than Kobe, in the finisher last evening at the Staples Center….

Sure, Kobe had the 15 rebounds to go along with his 23 points, but when KB couldn’t hit from the field, Pau Gasol was as good as gold, or money in the bank, for the LA Lakers…..

Who ever heard of the Boston Celtics now? Pau Gasol is the stuff that real dreams are made of and Rondo and his squad better get on back to Beantown and rest up for the next round/next year, with Cornbread Maxwell making excuses, as always all the way back to “The Garden”…..

Kobe Bryant should not have even been playing for his fifth NBA title with the Lakers last night…..Kobe would have been leading the Charlotte Hornets to another NBA Championship, if they would have had Michael Jordan in charge in the “Queen City” back in 1996…..But no, the Charlotte Hornets drafted Kobe and owned his rights and then they traded him to Los Angeles, for some cigarette-smoking center, named Vlade Divac…..

Remember this, back when it went down and out…..

The first guard to ever be taken out of high school, Bryant was chosen as the 13th overall draft pick by the Charlotte Hornets in 1996. However, according to Arn Tellem, Bryant’s agent at the time, Bryant playing for the Charlotte Hornets was “an impossibility”. Nevertheless, the Charlotte Hornets selected Bryant, seeing that there was a chance to trade with the Lakers. Prior to the draft, Bryant had worked out in Los Angeles, in which he scrimmaged against former Lakers players Larry Drew and Michael Cooper, and according to then-Laker manager Jerry West “marched over these people”. On July 1, 1996, West traded his starting center, Vlade Divac, to the Hornets in exchange for Bryant’s draft rights. Since he was still 17 at the time of the draft, his parents had to cosign his contract with the Lakers until he was able to sign his own when he turned 18 before the season began.

Trade references from www.wikipedia.org………

One thought on “The Laker fans should thank Mr. West for giving them one of the best: Pau Gasol was as good as, if not better than Kobe last night…..

  1. Definitely Pau “the Spainard” was the key ingredient to the Lakers. Yet for those that think LA was given the title, remember who the Celts got in trade or free agency:

    -Kevin Garnett
    -Ray Allen
    -Rasheed Wallace

    Where would Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo be without them?

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