The Almost Kobe Trade

Sources told Bucher on Wednesday that the Lakers had been in talks this week with the Chicago Bulls and Sacramento Kings about a possible three-way deal. The Lakers would have acquired Ron Artest and Ben Wallace. The Kings would have gotten Ben Gordon and P.J. Brown. And Bryant would have landed in Chicago.

That deal is apparently now dead.

Sooooo close. I don't want to see Ben Gordon go, but if it means bringing in Kobe, I would learn to live with it eventually. I;m not a big Kobe fan, but I can't deny that having him in a Bulls uniform would exponentially increase our chances of representing the East in the NBA Finals.

I can't believe that deal had any chance of happening. It was not sooooo close. Sounds like media fictional rumor mongering to me. The Bulls would land the best player in the league for one undersized shooting guard and an aging one-dimensional rebounder? Not a chance. If the Lakers did trade Kobe for Artest and Wallace, then they truly are idiots. That would be the dumbest trade perhaps ever in the NBA.

What I have been hearing consistently from reports in Chicago and LA is that the deal won't happen without the Bulls giving up THREE of their starters or a #1...and Deng has to be one of them. The Bulls won't do that deal. It appears Deng is the deal breaker for both sides. I'm afraid that for the Bulls to get Kobe, they are going to have to part with Deng and two of these: Hinrich, GOrdon, Thomas, Wallace and a #1 draft choice. Now would you make the deal?

Yea, that newest report cracked me up. The Lakers get old, possibly past their prime players to trade away Kobe. I suppose the Bulls liked this trade though.

That's why I said soooooo close, because the Bulls almost got away with one there. The only person out of the three the Bulls would be losing in the that trade that I would hate to see go, was Ben Gordon. Wallace and PJ Brown can go, but I'd like Gordon to stay, especially as a bench player. He's been a beast in the past coming off of the bench especially late in the game and would be a great compliment to Kobe.

That is....if they play the same position. I actually have no idea.

I think you missed my point, Larry. This deal was never a possibillity. Consider the source. Rick Bucher has pretty much lost his job as ESPN's NBA "insider" because he wasn't inside anything, was out of the loop and got too much wrong when he did say something. He is clearly grasping at straws trying to break a story here. And somebody on the inside is playing with Bucher and giving him nonsense to see how foolish he can make himself look. And, predictably, all the ESPN shows run with his nonsense as if it had even one minor shred of truth. I'm sure insiders are having a good laugh at Bucher's expense. Pax is likely one of them...laughing about this, knowing that this combination was not even discussed as even a remote possibility becuase it is so one-sided. Too many of these "insiders" hear one shred of something from one person and they run with it as a "scoop". Somebody is playing Bucher like a fiddle and the dumbass fell right into it. Weeks from now, when Kobe lands somewhere, somebody should ask Pax whether this report had even 1% of truth. I can hear Pax laughing now.

Kobe WILL get traded. And maybe to the BUlls. But it will cost the Bulls a lot more than Gordon and Wallace.

But it would be the coolest thing ever if that's all they lost.