The Lakers are focused on celebrating Kobe Bryant's career in this, his 20th and final NBA season. It was the reason the team hired Byron Scott as its head coach before the beginning of last year, with the tacit understanding that winning games wasn't nearly as important as making sure Bryant is comfortable and treated with respect as he's on his way out.
That extends to the development of the team's young talent for the future, which Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak admitted will have to take a back seat until Bryant is officially finished.
"Under normal circumstances [in a season like this], at some point, you would probably concentrate on just developing all your young players," Kupchak told ESPN on Tuesday. "But we can't do that right now.
"This [season] is really a justified farewell to perhaps the best player in franchise history. And, God willing, he's going to want to play every game and he's going to want to play a lot of minutes in every game, because that's just the way he is.
"And as long as that continues, which it should, then that's 30-35 minutes that you might give to a young player that you can't. How do you get a feel for your team going forward when you know that your best player is not going to be there next year? So it's really hard to go forward until he's no longer here.
"That's not a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all. It's something that I think is a good thing. In some regards, there's a silver lining. Our younger players can make mistakes and it can kind of go under the radar because Kobe garnishes so much attention. Every game, it's about Kobe. Even when he doesn't play, it's about Kobe. So in a lot of regards, there's a silver lining that our guys can develop under the radar and maybe make a mistake or make two mistakes and it not be a big deal."
The Lakers aren't apologizing for this, and in fact, Kupchak is being as honest as possible. The team doesn't have the talent to compete for a playoff spot this year, and rather than create controversy by reducing Bryant's minutes or even bringing him off the bench, they're content to let him play as much as he wants before riding off into the sunset.
And that means that the younger players on the roster will need to wait one more season to get the minutes to develop that they truly deserve.
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