Front and center on ESPN.com right now is a series of articles discussing how the Lakers are imploding. For all of my dislike of Shaq and Kobe and their narcissism, I have some sympathies for Shaq and Phil Jackson’s point of view. I know a few folks at work who think that Kobe single-handedly took them out of several of the games against Detroit. You can debate whether that’s fair or not, but it’s clear that Shaq wasn’t causing too many waves.

So, Phil Jackson has left, there’s a good chance that Shaq will be traded (because he wants to be), and Kobe is officially “testing the free agent market.”. Yeah, I could gloat, but this is almost sad how fast they’re all scurrying.

The next question then becomes what’s going through Gary Payton and Karl Malone’s heads right now? It’s clear from a number of reports that they were aware that the core of the team wasn’t likely to come back. Every other article mentioned that Jackson was telling his team, this could be the last year this team is together, so they probably knew what was coming. In both their cases, you gotta figure that they either feel foolish coming over here (imagine if they had sacrificed for one of the other top Western Conference teams?) or just cursed. Either way, it’s over for both. Lots of great players never get a chance to win a title in most sports. Karl and Gary will join that illustrious list.