For Lakers, Shakeups Not Limited to Roster

Forget about the Gasol to Minnesota rumors. Never mind the ongoing Mike Brown saga. Who cares about the transition of power in the Buss family? The biggest shakeup in Lakerland happened yesterday and it didn’t involve anyone directly related with the team.

Yesterday it was announced that the Lakers will have a couple of new play-by-play announcers in both radio and television.

Gone are Joel Myers and Spero Dedes who are being replaced by Bill Macdonald and John Ireland respectively.

Macdonald’s move to calling games with Stu Lantz on television should be pretty seamless. He’s been a SoCal sports fixture for years and has called his fare share of Laker games including Kobe’s 81-point performance. The surprise comes in the departure of Dedes who had verbally agreed to become the new TV announcer once it was decided Myers would not return.

Dedes is a rising star in the broadcast world so you felt it was only a matter of time until his many commitments would make it difficult to work fulltime for the Lakers. However Broderick Turner reports that Dedes is headed to New York to take the Knicks job. An interesting move to say the least.

Ireland, another SoCal sports fixture, will step in to call games alongside Mychal Thompson for 710 ESPN next season.

Perhaps a sign of things to come, these moves might just be the model for what we can expect for the Lakers in the coming months. While it appears any deal with the Wolves is dead now that David Khan wants Andrew Bynum that doesn’t mean Mitch Kupchak isn’t going to make any bold moves between now and the start of the draft.

But that is a much different topic.

For now it’s time to once again get used to hearing a new set of voices bringing us the Lakers during our commutes and evenings in front of the TV.