Kobe Bryant announced, among other things, that he didn’t force Shaq out and that he would like a trade.

Now the trade rumors are going to start swirling. Can Minnesota get him to play along side Kevin Garnett? Can “plug in your home team (that isn’t the Denver Nuggets)” get him?

With all the rumors, though, the trade announcement might not really mean much, though.

Here’s why…

Kobe Bryant is paid an enormous amount of money. Any team trading for him is going to have to have the personnel to trade. And they aren’t going to want to end up like the current Lakers by trading every good player on their team for him. If you are running a fantasy league, you do that. If you are trying to win a championship, you don’t.

AND

He still has two years left on his contract before he could even exercise the opt out clause clause in his contract. What that means is that the Lakers do not have to trade him until midway through the 2008-2009 season, sometime before the trade deadline. (They obviously don’t have to even trade him then, but they might get nothing for him if they don’t.) At least this off-season, anybody wanting to trade for him will have to make a deal that is good enough that the Lakers would trade him. That means they are going to want one or two very good players in exchange for him or they won’t trade him — because they don’t have to.

What that means is that we probably are going to get a lot of rumors but not much action except possibly by the New York Knicks or the Portland Trailblazers.
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Why the Knicks?
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Isiah Thomas would trade his mother if he thought it would help (or even if he didn’t think it could help but he was allowed to do it). In this case, though, trading for Kobe would probably be a good thing. He has a bunch of expiring contracts, some flashy players that Phil Jackson might be able to do something with, and the Knicks could care less how much over the salary cap they are. Phil could probably get a lot out of two or three players from the group including Stephen Marbury, Steve Francis, Quentin Richardson, Jamal Crawford, and Channing Frye. And you’ve got to be crazy to think the Isiah wouldn’t give any or all of them up in a heartbeat for Kobe. If I were the Lakers, I would think that Crawford, Richardson, and Frye would be perfect for the triangle offense.
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Why the Blazers?
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As long as the Blazers didn’t trade the first pick in the draft, they would have Greg Oden and Kobe Bryant on the same team. Does it matter (initially) who else is on the team? They have some pretty bloated expiring contracts (to make the trade work), they have some good young talent that the Lakers could rebuild with (Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, Jarrett Jack, Martell Webster), and they have the very talented, highly paid, but somewhat troublesome players (Zach Randolph, Darius Miles). They obviously wouldn’t have to trade all of them, but you’ve got to think that you could get something done by trading Roy and Randolph for Kobe.

Actually, looking at those two scenarios, both of them make a lot of sense for both organizations. You wonder if they should have made those trades even without the trade demand. After all, the Lakers aren’t getting any better with Kobe by himself.

But who knows what the Lakers are thinking anyway.