Swaggy P to the rescue

Swaggy P will be in Los Angeles for another four years. By Keith Allison, via Wikimedia Commons

Don’t worry Lakers fans. On the biggest day in NBA free agent history, your Lakers weren’t left out. No, they didn’t get LeBron, Carmelo, Bosh or Wade. They didn’t trade for Kevin Love and they didn’t lure a free agent away from any other team.

Instead, they reportedly locked up Nick Young for four more years.

Co-hosting the Sports Bite on ESPN Radio 1280 this week, Mike Wozniak asked me in as many words how long Lakers fans should be prepared for the team to be bad for.

I got the answer today. About four years. Don’t get me wrong though — I love Nick Young.

If my team can’t be good — and let’s be clear, the Lakers are going to be bad again next season — I at least want them to be entertaining. Nick Young is definitely that.

Young will give fans a reason to be in the building. On one side of the court you’ll find Kobe Bryant. Bryant, the consummate professional, will continue to hone his craft late into his career. He is a beacon of the Lakers’ dominant past and his riding off into the sunset sometime in the next few years will mark the end of a great era in Lakers history.

Contrast that with Nick Young. Swaggy P is as entertaining as they come. I watched three quarters of a game last year where he went toe to toe with LeBron James. For as much as Young is really bad defensively, he has never seen a shot he doesn’t like and he doesn’t have any conscience. If Manny Ramirez were a basketball player, he might be Swaggy P. Think about it — no defense, offensively gifted, comes off as slightly air headed. It’s a perfect fit.

In the town where he went to college, the USC product should be an entertaining sideshow while the Lakers try to rebuild. He will do things from time to time that keep them in the spotlight. He will have lots of memorable moments over the next four years. Don’t expect him to lift the Lakers a lot higher than they went this year.

What’s that you say? You’d like a full hour of Nick Young offensive highlights from last year? You got it!

YouTube is great, isn’t it? Here are some sweet older highlights. Hunker down, Lakers fans. The next four years are going to be at the same time impossible to watch and, if we’re lucky, impossible to turn away from.