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- Jan 9, 2007
As a few of you know I work for the Texas Legends, Mavs D-League team, in the basketball ops dept..
While on a recent road trip I had the luxury of talking basketball w/ our coach Del Harris for 4 hours..It was cool listening to his stories about coaching Shaq and a young Kobe and hearing how he dealt w/ their personalities etc, the Kobe air ball fiasco in Utah, Magic's last comeback and watching Dirk develop over the years as a Mav's assistant coach..
He mentioned to me that during the 1997 draft the Lakers had a deal in place that would've sent Eddie Jones to Toronto for the pick that would've brought T-Mac to LA. At that time the high school to pro's thing was still pretty new and management decided against it because they did not want two teenagers and Eddie was coming off a good season..
It made me think, if that deal would have went through how do you think it would've turned out? Would LA have been an even stronger dynasty, or do you think T-Mac would've left for the money just like he left Toronto? Could Shaq have co-existed w/ Kobe and T-Mac? Would the Lakers management have been more patient w/ him and would he have benefitted from a mature Kobe and have multiple championship rings?
While on a recent road trip I had the luxury of talking basketball w/ our coach Del Harris for 4 hours..It was cool listening to his stories about coaching Shaq and a young Kobe and hearing how he dealt w/ their personalities etc, the Kobe air ball fiasco in Utah, Magic's last comeback and watching Dirk develop over the years as a Mav's assistant coach..
He mentioned to me that during the 1997 draft the Lakers had a deal in place that would've sent Eddie Jones to Toronto for the pick that would've brought T-Mac to LA. At that time the high school to pro's thing was still pretty new and management decided against it because they did not want two teenagers and Eddie was coming off a good season..
It made me think, if that deal would have went through how do you think it would've turned out? Would LA have been an even stronger dynasty, or do you think T-Mac would've left for the money just like he left Toronto? Could Shaq have co-existed w/ Kobe and T-Mac? Would the Lakers management have been more patient w/ him and would he have benefitted from a mature Kobe and have multiple championship rings?