Bryant Not Leaving Lakers With a Choice

Here are the Lakers’ options with Kobe Bryant:

* They trade Kobe and get a perennial all-star in return, such as Kidd, Garnett, Duncan, Jermaine O’Neal, Iverson, McGrady, plus some draft picks and/or role players.

* They trade Kobe to a bad team as retribution for wanting to leave a team that has made him financially secure for life, and the Lakers pick up first-round draft picks for three of the next six years.

* They do nothing, Kobe opts out, and the Lakers have nothing in return. Next year’s starting lineup is Shaq, Cook, Medvedenko, Rush and Fisher. We might as well join the Eastern Conference at that point, because it is the only way L.A. will ever get into the playoffs again.

Matthew Roberts

Los Angeles

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Give me Payton, give me Malone; let Bryant and O’Neal stay at home! What a pleasure it has been to watch the Lakers without Bryant and O’Neal. I’d rather watch five guys play hard, unselfish basketball and lose 40 games, than watch a team win 60 games with the laziest player in recent memory and the most selfish player in NBA history.

Tony Beheshti

Dana Point

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Defense attorney Pamela Mackey invites a race game by saying, “There is lots of history about black men being falsely accused of this crime by white women.”

Can you imagine the prosecution’s saying: “There’s a lot of history of black men committing crimes like this against white women”?

Her kind of slanderous bigotry keeps our racial hatred and prejudices alive and well.

Richard Beatty

Newport Beach