Four of their players will one day be inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame, but the Purple and Gold have looked less than respectable so far in the 2012-13 regular season.
Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant were both awarded MVP trophies earlier in their careers while Dwight Howard seems destined to claim at least one of them before all is said and done, but the Lakers are fighting at present time to reach the .500 mark record-wise.
The futility of Mike D’Antoni and his stars is awfully reminiscent of the 1998-99 Houston Rockets.
That Rockets team featured three of the greatest 50 players in NBA history: Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen.
Barkley had joined the team a year earlier, while Pippen came on board prior to the start of the 1998-99 campaign, with many expecting Houston to be a huge contender with their Hall of Fame frontcourt.
That team failed to live up to expectations and was ultimately eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in a shortened season resulting from a lockout.
This was Pippen’s first season with the Rockets, and also his last.
As training camp approached in the fall of 1999, the former Chicago Bull requested that Houston trade him, given that his squad was an underachieving one.
A disappointed Barkley went to the press and signaled that he had sacrificed financially for the small forward to join the team and obtain the compensation he felt was coming to him. In response, Pippen sounded off to ESPN (insider):
I wouldn't give Charles Barkley an apology at gunpoint. He can never expect an apology from me. If anything, he owes me an apology for coming to play with his fat butt.
The six-time...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers
