NBA: James wants to team up with me

In mid-July, the Lakers officially issued a statement that after Durant chose to opt out of his contract and become a free agent, he re-signed a 7+1, two-year contract with the team. Instead of increasing his salary, his salary was reduced by a total of nearly 1 million.

According to Durant himself, he wants to use this salary cut to help the Lakers share the pressure of salary space and improve the team's lineup.

But this explanation seems a bit pale, because the Lakers have no plans to recruit new players in the summer, and the contracts of the main players have not expired. The only one who is close to expiring is Nikola Jokic, who is still in the rookie contract period.

But Jokic's rookie contract will not officially expire until the summer of 2018, which is still a long time away.

To be honest, Jokic was a bit unlucky. Because Wang Chong, Durant and Thompson occupied most of the ball rights for the Lakers, his performance was not very outstanding, at least compared to the Nuggets when he averaged 16.7 points, 9.8 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game during the same period.

But as a second-round pick who failed to successfully enter the NBA in his first year, Jokic's performance has been enough to surprise many people. He averaged close to 10+10 per game, and also had certain mid-range and long-range shooting and supporting abilities, but he was paid the low salary of a second-round rookie, which was simply too good to be true.

Considering his age and the prospect of developing into the second Gasol in the future, Jokic's market price has not been affected by the decline in his personal performance. As long as he can show obvious progress in the new season, there will be no problem for him to sign a contract extension with the Lakers with an average annual salary of more than 2000 million after the end of his rookie contract.

Wang Chong also knows that he has let Jokic down a bit, so he will use his influence to try his best to get Jokic a maximum salary contract extension that is close to the one he originally had with the Nuggets.

Not long after Durant renewed his contract with the Lakers, Kobe announced his official retirement.

Even with the current strength of the Lakers' lineup, even if O'Neal's grandmother came to play, they could still win one or two more championships.

But for Kobe, this kind of championship really has no great value.

In fact, Kobe was very happy when he won his sixth championship, but he felt boring after winning it.

During the championship parade, the fans cheered the most for Wang Chong, Durant and other main contributors to the championship. Although Kobe received a lot of flowers and applause with his more than ten years of experience with the Lakers and a huge fan base, it was still obvious to hear the difference.

But there is no way around it. In the finals, Kobe could not help at all in the high-intensity confrontation between the two teams. His starting status was only a pseudo-starter. He would usually be substituted after one or two minutes on the court, and would only come on to play a little when the substitute players came on the court.

The result was that throughout the finals, Kobe averaged only about 17 minutes per game, contributing 7.4 points, 3 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game. It cannot be said that he had no effect at all, but the championship really had nothing to do with him.

The boring championship and the increasingly heavy and injury-ridden body also made Kobe lose the motivation to continue playing.

Moreover, during the regular season, Kobe had already expressed his desire to retire. Although this season's retirement tour is not as loud and impressive as Kobe's retirement tour in the 15-16 season, there is nothing more glorious than retiring with a championship.

Therefore, Kobe retired very decisively without any regrets.

At this point, Kobe's professional career has come to an end, and his career honors are limited to 6 championships, 1 MVP, and 1 FMVP.

Compared with the original, he has one less FMVP and two scoring titles, but one more championship. In terms of his career historical status, he is definitely not comparable to Jordan, who also has six championships, but it is still completely sufficient to compete for the top ten in history. After all, in this time and space, the top ten in history lacks a very controversial figure.

James, who has only one championship so far and won it by joining the Bulls, who have a championship team, will never be included in the discussion of the best in history.

Although Lakers fans miss Kobe's performance in the past peak period of the Lakers, they will not be sad or uneasy because of Kobe's retirement, because Kobe's retirement will only make the Lakers better.

His status in the team is there. Although Kobe did not have much playing time last season, he was always the team's starter. And whenever he was on the court, he had to hold the ball and play to some extent. He could not be completely treated as a transparent person.

But Kobe's ability is no longer able to support the high-intensity confrontation in the NBA, and he is a burden whenever he is on the court.

Now that Kobe has retired, the Lakers can free up more time for their main players and role players on the bench, and the team's overall strength will naturally increase.

In fact, role players are not important at all. As long as the Lakers can ensure that the three main players Wang Chong + Durant + Thompson are not affected by injuries in the new season, then the Lakers are destined to be the biggest favorite to win the championship and are likely to defend their two consecutive championships.

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The Bulls, who suffered a crushing defeat in the finals, were certainly unwilling to accept this. They have been actively seeking trades and signings throughout the summer.

Unfortunately, however, the salaries of James, Curry and Gasol Jr. have almost completely filled the Bulls' salary, and the only one among these three who can be used as a bargaining chip in a trade is center Gasol Jr.

Although Gasol has made great contributions to the Bulls in recent years and his performance last season was not bad, there is still a big gap between him and the two top stars James and Curry.

The Bulls are inclined to trade Gasol Jr. for an All-Star level star, plus a good role player, to greatly make up for the Bulls' current lack of lineup depth.

But Gasol's market price is there. This kind of functional center is indeed very useful, but it is also subject to specific conditions. The market value is definitely not as good as that of talented players like Anthony Davis.

The Bulls put Gasol Jr. on the shelf with great fanfare, and after asking around, they finally realized that there were no chips they were interested in on the market, so they had to give up.

Gasol himself was very dissatisfied with the team's behavior of putting him on the shelf, but he couldn't say anything. After all, he had a contract and would continue to play for the Bulls in the new season.

Does this script look familiar? Of course it is, because the Heat's Bosh, the Cavaliers' Love, and most of the Lakers' players except Davis have had similar experiences.

If you can’t beat your opponent, it means your teammates are too weak and you need to trade for better teammates. If even trading doesn’t work to get strong teammates, then change teams. Isn’t this a normal operation?