The first season grade for the team is in and it’s from Chad “I’ll go public with rumors faster than Hacksaw†Ford on ESPN Insider. Without giving out specifics of pay-per-view content, he blames everything on Kobe, including saying he forced Rudy T. into retirement. That made me more suspect of Ford than before, if that was possible.
Then he gave the team a C- for the season, which sounds about right to me. (I chalk him being right up to the “a broken clock is right twice a day” theory.)
The way I see it, the Lakers are that kid in class who did very well then suddenly had big changes that disrupted his life at home, and when that happened his grades fell. That’s to be expected. What you really want to see is the kid not continue the downward spiral and turn into a laughingstock but shake out of it and return to form.
In the case of the Lakers that return to form will not be instantaneous, but there needs to be substantial progress next season. That means smart moves in the off-season, starting with bringing a top-flight coach.
In the coming days I’ll be doing more of an in-depth end-of-season report card/look to the future, starting with team management (likely on Thursday). I hadn’t planned to give an overall grade, but C- seems right to me.