The
story being pushed by Marc Stein and Chris Broussard at ESPN now is that the
Lakers are back in the discussion. I fail to see how the Lakers could possibly make an offer of interest at this point; they offered Pau and Odom before, but Odom is now gone, and they're not going to include Bynum or Kobe. And there is literally nothing else on their roster of interest. They do have two first round picks next year (their own and Dallas' in the Odom trade) but very late first round picks (as the Lakers pick and the Dallas pick are likely to be) have little to know value - teams sell their late first rounders for a couple million dollars all the time. That's just not going to fix the
Hornets. I'm baffled by this subplot, as I have been by several subplots throughout this saga. As John Hollinger suggests, this may just be an attempt to bluff the
Clippers into thinking the Lakers are making an offer of interest. Unfortunately for the league, it turns out the Clippers front office is not stupid. They can look at the Lakers roster as easily as I can and see that there's no way they can come up with a competitive offer. I have to say: I have really despised Stein/Broussard's coverage of this whole thing. They've pushed what seem to be bogus details throughout the ordeal.
Broderick Turner of the LA Times agrees with them on at least one point:
the two sides are talking tonight. I'm not sure what there is to talk about. The league should be pretty well aware of what's acceptable to the Clippers at this point, right?