1. Shaquille O’Neal was declining fast
In the 1999-2000 season, O’Neal played what was arguably the most dominant basketball any human being has ever produced. He averaged 29.7 points, 13.6 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 3.0 blocks a game en route to his first and only MVP award.
Along the way, he totally eviscerated many a gameplan put together by opposing coaches.
But after that first championship in 2000, O’Neal became more and more complacent. Each year, he would arrive in training camp fat and out of shape, and it would take him longer and longer to get in shape and have a sense of urgency as the season progressed.
The 2003-04 season marked a precipitous decline in O’Neal’s game. His scoring dipped to 21.5 points a game, and he was no longer able to catch the ball in the paint and instantly explode off one foot and dunk on opponents.
Instead, he had to load up and gather himself before attempting a shot, which gave defenders enough time to corral him and prevent him from scoring easily.
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With O’Neal no longer a dominant player, and now merely a very good one, the Lakers needed a third scoring threat. For the reasons mentioned earlier, they failed to acquire one.
For proof of concept, the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s were able to compensate for the aging Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In 1980, they traded no-name scrub Don Ford to the Cleveland Cavaliers and swapped 1982 first-round draft picks. The one Lakers received was the number one pick, and they used it on Hall of Famer James Worthy.
Worthy not only allowed the team to shift the offensive focus away from Abdul-Jabbar, but he also was the heir apparent to the aging Jamaal Wilkes.
A year later, L.A. dealt the over-the-hill and disgruntled Norm Nixon to the then-San Diego Clippers for Byron Scott, who had just been the fourth overall pick in the 1983 NBA Draft.
It’s too bad the Los Angeles Lakers of the early 2000s couldn’t do what their counterparts did twenty years earlier to allow a dynasty to last for an entire decade.