From Mike Bresnahan, LA Times: The 131-character dispatch arrived mournfully within two hours of sunrise May 4, at 7:58 a.m. to be exact. “When u give Give GIVE and they take Take TAKE at wat point do u draw a line in the sand?” Kobe Bryant wrote on his Twitter feed, adding the hashtags “hurt beyond measure,” “gave me no warning,” and finally, “love?” Bryant’s career with the Lakers has often been pushed aside by internal family matters, the recent court battle over his memorabilia the latest in a string of cheerless events. Bryant and his mother, Pamela, are contesting in court whether she has the right to give a New Jersey-based auction house dozens of his basketball mementos from high school and his early Lakers career.

From Drew Garrison, Silver Screen & Roll: It’s well documented that the Los Angeles Lakers don’t have much to offer in the way of contracts during free agency. There are pipe dream players out there like Jose Calderon or Kyle Korver whom we’ve discussed already. There’s something in the realm of a five percent chance either player would accept the small tender L.A. can offer. Realistically, the Lakers are going to need to dig deep to fill out their needs. Depth-wise, the biggest issue through 2012-2013 was the small forward position. With that in mind, there’s no reason to believe there won’t be a new small forward in the rotation next season. There’s also no reason to believe it will be a “sexy” name with eye-popping stats, or that it needs to be. The Lakers best route would be to target a younger player who has yet to prove himself worth a big contract, which brings us here: Wesley Johnson is an ideal target for the Lakers this Summer.

From Mark Willard, ESPN LA: At a certain point, a Band Aid is not sufficient. Sometimes surgery is required in order to fix the bigger problem. The Lakers have applied a series of Band Aids since their title run in 2010. In 2013-14, they can only do more of the same. But 2014-15 is different. Most Lakers fans are thinking in terms of bouncing back from this season and its disappointments next year. But they should be thinking about the promise of the year-after-next. The word patience doesn’t usually go over well in LA. and the Lakers will never ask for it publicly, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need it from their fans right now.

From Andrew Ungvari, Lakers Nation: I can’t get mad at the average fan for not knowing the finer points of the NBA’s current collective bargaining agreement (CBA). It isn’t the easiest thing to digest, and besides, who needs rules when it comes to fantasizing about ways in which the Lakers can get better, right? As soon as it seemed as if people finally got a grasp on the old CBA, the league’s owners decided to lock the players out and many of the major issues in the old CBA were either tweaked, repealed, or replaced. And while I can’t be mad at fans who don’t know about the changes, I have every right to be angry at respected members of the media who should have done their homework by now. I only have so much time with which to answer the questions people send me on Twitter or let those aforementioned writers know that they incorrectly reported something that will most likely be read by hundreds of thousands of people. Instead, I figured I’d use this space to educate you in the simplest way I can on some of the more common fallacies as they pertain to the Lakers and what they can or cannot do this off-season to improve their roster.

From Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo Sports: Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach Steve Clifford is interviewing with the Milwaukee Bucks for their head-coaching job on Monday, league sources told Yahoo! Sports. Milwaukee has interviewed Nate McMillan and Houston Rockets assistants Kelvin Sampson and J.B. Bickerstaff for its head-coaching job. When Hammond reached out to gauge Stan Van Gundy’s interest in the job, Van Gundy declined but delivered a strong recommendation for Clifford, league sources said. Clifford spent five years on Van Gundy’s Orlando Magic staff before joining the Lakers in the summer of 2012. Clifford fits the profile of the kind of hands-on, defensive-minded candidate that Hammond has been seeking to replace interim coach Jim Boylan. Clifford will also interview with the Charlotte Bobcats in the near future.

From Drew Garrison, Silver Screen & Roll: Pau Gasol will undergo a FAST Technique procedure on both of his knees Thursday to help with the tendinosis he suffers from, reports Dave McMenamin of ESPN. The procedure will eliminate scar tissue in his knees while also preserving healthy tissue and is considered “minimally” invasive. Tendinosis, also commonly referred to as chronic tendinitis, indicates that the damage to his tendons in his knees is at a cellular level. The Los Angeles Lakers will announce an official timetable on his return after the surgery, but there is no indication that this will have negative long-term implications.According to the official FAST (Fasciotomy and Surgical Tenotomy) Technique website, Gasol’s recovery will likely take six weeks:

From Dave McMenamin, ESPN LA: For a franchise that has won 16 titles, any Los Angeles Lakers season that doesn’t end with a championship is considered a failure. But rather than just dole out a blanket “F” for the Lakers’ disappointing 2012-13 season, we’re going to break down each part of the team’s production in groups: Our series ends today with the coaching staff and front office. We have already covered the starters this week and the bench backcourt and bench frontcourt last week.

From Eric Pincus, LA Times: Veteran guard Steve Blake had his best year with the Lakers, when he was healthy. After two difficult seasons with the team, Blake shot 42.2% from the field and 42.1% from three-point range — a big leap from last year’s 37.7% and 33.5%, respectively. Early in the season, an abdominal strain sidelined him for more than two months.  A hamstring injury shut him down halfway through the Lakers’ first-round sweep by the San Antonio Spurs. Blake missed 37 regular-season games, averaging 7.3 points and 3.8 assists.  When Steve Nash sat out in April, Blake stepped into the starting lineup to help the team finish the season with a 7-1 record. In that stretch, Blake averaged 12.6 points a game.  With Kobe Bryant out with an Achilles’ tear, Blake helped carry the offense for the team’s two final, must-win games (scoring 23 points against the Spurs and 24 against the Houston Rockets).

From Kurt Helin, Pro Basketball Talk: When you’re in court battling your mother, you know the relationship is strained. As we told you before, Kobe Bryant’s mother Pamela hooked up with an auction house to sell off some of Kobe’s memorabilia she had — a Lower Merion High School game worn jersey, replica Lakers championship rings and more stuff Kobe’s mother had at her house. Kobe then went to court to block the sale. The auction house is involved in the case as well, asserting its rights to sell.

From Gabriel Lee, Lakers Nation: Professional sports is the most impactful when we, the fans, actually care about the player(s) in our favorite team’s jerseys. At some point over the past year, I began to shift my allegiance from the teams I supported throughout my childhood to the players whose values I share. That epiphany actually happened last summer when the Lakers decided Andrew Bynum wasn’t reliable enough to be their franchise player for the post Kobe-era, so they swapped him for Dwight Howard. Every Laker fan I interact with began to celebrate the trade. I had mixed reactions. On paper, the Lakers had just upgraded their injury-prone center for one that had a much more impressive resume (he led his team to the Finals in 2009, 3-time Defensive Player of the Year, etc.). The way Howard had forced his way out of Orlando made me sick to my stomach. He threw his head coach under the bus, got his general manager fired, opted back into his contract before the trade deadline before demanding a trade again in the summer, all the while blaming everyone but himself for the Magic’s shortcomings.

The Lakers’ post-season storylines are a pretty slim volume right now. We’re in a bit of a holding pattern aside from shedding a couple pretty decent assistant coaches and to be honest, the Bernie Bickerstaff interim romp was one of the highlights of the season.. Darius wrote about assets yesterday and that’s about the only game in town, studying our cards and considering the possibilities. Wholesale changes may not be in the books this summer. Signing Dwight is a priority, he’s a franchise cornerstone. We all hope that Kobe will come back strong for the final year of his contract. I’m not particularly keen on trading Pau unless meaningful long term value is returned. As for Steve Nash, he’s pretty beat up. Maybe his imprint comes from mentoring but it’s doubtful we have any meaningful generational metamorphosis until the summer of 2014.

For the here and now, it’s about the playoffs. The second round is shaping up in epic nature. The Knicks and Pacers are one-all. Chicago stunned Miami on their home court and are playing with free money tonight. Memphis and OKC are tied up, a tactical battle orchestrated by a couple crafty old point guards in Lionel Hollins and Scott Brooks. And then there was the double-overtime Spurs-Warriors battle the other night – GSW came agonizingly close to a huge upset. Game two is tonight.

Dave McMenamin for ESPN LA hands out grades to the Lakers coaches and management.

The Great Mambino gathers the SS&R crew for a roundtable – the worst season in Laker history?

Lucas Sheiner & Ben Pickman for BustaSports with a Jordan Farmar interview as he looks toward an NBA return.

Eric Pincus for the LATimes wraps up Steve Blake’s year, his best as a Laker although injury-shortened.

Sam Smith for the Chicago Bulls blog writes about Jimmy Butler, getting it done.

Kelly Dwyer for Ball Don’t Lie on George Karl earning Coach Of the Year.

Ethan Sherwood Strauss for Warriors World on reasons for optimism.

Racm for Pounding the Rock with a preview for tonight’s Game 2 of the Spurs/Warriors series.

And finally, from the ESPN archives, a print interview with Lionel Collins conducted ten years ago, reflecting on the ’77 Championship Portland Trailblazers.

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What’s next for the Lakers? Nothing that won’t wait for another day. The draft is still six weeks away and debating the number 48 pick really isn’t exactly barn burner material. This is the place where I’d normally go on about the winding road or some such nonsense but I got nothing. Signing off now.