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EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Pau Gasol left his exit meeting with general manager Mitch Kupchak on Tuesday with an increased sense that he may have played his last game with the Lakers.

“The future is uncertain,” Gasol said. “There’s no doubt about it. It’s a possibility that I could be gone and there’s a possibility that I could stay. I don’t know the exact percentages of it. But I’m prepared for either way.

“I understand the challenges that the franchise is facing, the decisions that they have to make in order to keep the team in the direction that they want to -- looking at the present and the future and also understanding the business side of it. So, it’s a lot going on. I wish things were a little simpler, but they’re not. So we’ll see.”

If the Lakers keep next season's payroll at about $100 million, as it was in 2012-13, the team would owe about $85 million in additional luxury-tax penalties because of the more punitive stipulations in the league’s new collective bargaining agreement.

Could Gasol and the rest of the Lakers' major pieces all be back next season? Kupchak said that possibility is “in play.”

“We haven’t ruled anything out as of now,” he said.

Yet Kupchak used similar language to admit that the opposite is also a possibility: "When you lose, everybody is in play ... whether it's Pau or anybody else, we'll look for ways to improve the team."

Gasol's contract has one year remaining at $19.3 million. From a financial perspective, the assumption was that the Lakers would try to trade his expiring deal or opt to use their one-time amnesty provision on the 12-year veteran.

“(Kupchak) couldn’t really tell me, ‘Hey, thanks for everything you’ve done, it’s more likely you’re going to be gone,’ or no, ‘Don’t worry about it, you’re going to stay here. We’re going to make it happen,’” Gasol said. “Which is to be expected. I appreciate Mitch’s honesty and everything that he’s done and the franchise has done for the last two years to keep me here and have me on the team.”

The two-year time frame Gasol was referring to started with his nearly being traded and has included a second-round exit from the playoffs last season, coach Mike Brown's being fired early this season, and a first-round sweep at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs last week.

Gasol, who turns 33 in July, said his experience with the Lakers changed significantly after the three-way trade between the Lakers, Houston Rockets and New Orleans Hornets was vetoed by NBA commissioner David Stern on the eve of the first day of training camp for the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season.

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LOS ANGELES -- Last week, before the Lakers' already nightmarish season seemingly veered completely off the tracks with Kobe Bryant's ruptured Achilles tendon, Bryant was still confident that the Lakers wouldn’t just make the playoffs but that they could win a championship.

As he sat in front of his locker following the media scrum he said, “Look at what the Kings did last year. They got into the playoffs as the eight seed and won the Stanley Cup. We’re trying to do the same thing.”

Bryant attended a number of the Los Angeles Kings' playoff games with his daughters during their magical and improbable run to the Stanley Cup last summer and didn’t understand why it couldn’t be duplicated on the basketball court this summer.

“There’s no reason we can’t do it,” Bryant said. “Everything resets in the playoffs.”

Of course, that was before Bryant was lost for the season and we found out that Steve Nash's assortment of injuries weren’t just day-to-day bad but taking-two-epidurals-just-to-practice bad. Nevertheless, Bryant’s stance doesn’t change and neither does the Lakers’ goal heading into the playoffs.

After the Lakers clinched a playoff berth that Bryant promised would happen back when the Lakers were well below .500, he tweeted, “And to think some said we wouldn’t make it.. #keepcalm #believe #playoffs now #makehistory”

He later tweeted, “Playoff promise fulfilled #ontothenext”

It doesn’t make sense that the Lakers will be entering the playoffs, without Bryant and possibly without Nash, as confident as they’ve been all season. But that’s exactly the way the Lakers were feeling after their 99-95 overtime win over the Houston Rockets on Wednesday to clinch the seventh seed and a first round match-up against the San Antonio Spurs which begins on Sunday.

They are finally moving the ball the way Mike D’Antoni envisioned they could. They are finally playing defense with the kind of intensity that Dwight Howard hoped they would. And they are playing inside-out and relying on their bigs as Pau Gasol and Howard have pleaded for since November.

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Tim Grover knew what had happened almost instantly. The look on Kobe Bryant's face just wasn’t right. The way he stayed down on the ground, the way he grabbed the back of his heel -- it all pointed in a bad direction.

“I knew,” Grover said. “I knew it was something serious.”

Grover has been Bryant’s trainer since 2007. He’s nursed him back from all sorts of serious injuries and helped him find a work-around to knee issues that once threatened the guard's career. So long as Bryant had the will to do the training and attack the problems, Grover would give him solutions and courses of action.

It’s why Grover’s longtime client Michael Jordan recommended him to Bryant after Jordan retired, and why he’s essentially been at Bryant’s side ever since.

But a torn Achilles tendon -- which Bryant suffered April 12 in the fourth quarter of the Lakers' 118-116 win against the Golden State Warriors -- was something altogether different. You can’t do any strengthening exercises to get you back on the court in a few days. You can’t push through the pain. You’re just out, for a good long while.

“It didn’t hurt me as much as it hurt him,” Grover said. “But it’s pretty damn close. I just know how much this means to him and how hard he’s worked to be in this position.”

In the first few hours after the injury, Grover knew what needed to be done. Research everything, give Bryant his options, think it all through with him, help him make the best decisions. Was it better to have surgery right away or wait? Are there options besides surgery? How long would the recovery really take? Who has made the best recovery from a similar injury?

“The guy who jumped out at me was [David] Beckham,” Grover said. Immediately, he began reading up and making calls to Beckham’s camp to find out the keys to success.

As frustrating and heartbreaking as the situation was, there was no time to dwell on it.

“Kobe always wants to know everything,” Grover explained. “Every detail. Why we’re doing this? What our options are? He’s very detail-oriented.”

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LOS ANGELES -- Kobe Bryant knew exactly what had happened the moment he crumbled to the floor.

He didn't want to believe it but the feeling was unmistakable as he tried to get up and put pressure on his left foot.

As Pau Gasol stood in front of him, Bryant looked down at his leg and looked up at Gasol and angrily uttered an expletive.

He would utter the same expletive twice more, each time his voice taking a more somber tone as the reality of it all sunk in before he finally looked at the official and called a timeout.

"I knew," Bryant said, shaking his head. "For sure."

Bryant had never suffered a torn Achilles tendon before but had heard the horror stories from others who had, and it's one of the easier injuries for players and trainers alike to diagnose on the spot. Quite simply, when that tendon pops and recoils, you know.

"I was just hoping it wasn't what I knew it was," Bryant said. "I tried to walk it off hoping that the sensation would come back but no such luck."

And what was that sensation like? "I had no Achilles," Bryant said. "That's the sensation."

Bryant was trying to get around Harrison Barnes with 3:08 left in the game Friday night and the Los Angeles Lakers trailing the Golden State Warriors 109-107 when he fell to the ground.

Amazingly, Bryant limped back onto the court and made two free throws to tie the score before limping off once again and being helped to the locker room by Lakers center Robert Sacre and team trainer Gary Vitti.

"I made a move I make a million times, and it just popped," Bryant said. "It's a terrible, terrible feeling."

After the game, it was impossible to tell that the Lakers had just defeated the Warriors 118-116 to maintain a one-game lead over the Utah Jazz for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West. If anything, it looked as if the Lakers had just been eliminated from the postseason and were staring into the harsh reality of a long, uncertain offseason.

Players dressed quietly in front of their lockers, answering questions from reporters with soft whispers as if they were speaking at a funeral.

"It's sad to see him go down like this," Dwight Howard said. "He works so hard just to play. ... I could just see it in his face. When you injure yourself to the point where you can't play, it hurts. It's a deep hurt."

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PORTLAND, Ore. -- Kobe Bryant emerged from the showers late Wednesday night and limped through the nearly empty visitors locker room at the Rose Garden, stopping briefly on his way to the training room to change so he could acknowledge Metta World Peace.

"You always backed me," Bryant said with intense appreciation.

Bryant was winding down from what can only be described as an epic performance by the 17-year veteran -- a season-high 47 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 blocks and 3 steals with only 1 turnover, a statistical line never before recorded in the league, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

And all those stats paled in comparison to Bryant's playing all 48 minutes, each and every second of the game, to help L.A. sweep a back-to-back for the first time in 16 tries this season and beat the Trail Blazers 113-106 in Portland, where the Lakers had lost 12 of their previous 14 games.

But World Peace and the rest of Bryant's teammates might not quite have his back the way he thinks they do.

After 79 games and with the Lakers on the edge of a playoff berth, holding a one-game lead over Utah for the No. 8 spot in the West with only three left to play, Bryant's teammates don't seem to be content to just feed the "All hail Kobe, the living legend" propaganda machine and ride his coattails into the playoffs.

If the season is worth saving at this point after all the trials and tribulations every player and coach in the locker room has gone through, it has to be saved as a team, the right way. If it's going to come down to Bryant playing hero ball from now until when the Lakers' season ends, there's a sense that Bryant's teammates would rather have an early summer if it means acting as the stage crew for Bryant's one-man show.

"It's bittersweet," Pau Gasol said when asked about Bryant's dominating performance against the Blazers, in which he played all 48 minutes in a non-overtime road game for the first time in his career. "Because, I think it's spectacular and it's very impressive and it's remarkable to be able to play 48 minutes and score 47 points. That's incredible. On the other hand, I'm a player that likes to see a little bit more ball movement and better balance. I've always been [like that]. That's just how I perceive this game.

"But again, he was incredible tonight. He scored a tremendous amount of points that I never scored in my life. So, like I said, it was very impressive and it's not something that you do every night, of course."

Gasol was quick to add context to his quotations, making it clear from his tone that this wasn't an issue of jealousy for the attention Bryant would receive for the feat, or a lack of appreciation for the talent Bryant has. And Gasol is certainly aware he might not be a Laker today and definitely would not be a Laker finally getting consistent post touches in Mike D'Antoni's system if it wasn't for Bryant supporting him.

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LOS ANGELES -- It was bound to happen sooner or later. The effect of all those minutes is taking a toll on Kobe Bryant.

What was left of him after playing all but 73 seconds the previous two games and 42 more minutes in the Los Angeles Lakers' 86-84 win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night could barely get up out of the chair afterward.

"I'm f-ing tired," Bryant said, when asked why his voice sounded so rough. Bryant is one of the best-conditioned athletes on the planet. He puts his body through rigorous workouts during the season and over the summers to be able to handle workloads like this. But even he might have a limit.

You could see it in his weary expression in the second half of Friday's game, but not in the stat sheet. Bryant had another 24 points, nine assists and five rebounds Friday. But toward the end of the game, he didn't seem to have his legs as he missed five of his six fourth-quarter shots.

Pau Gasol, for one, was a little concerned afterward.

"I'd like to see him be a little less aggressive early on and be more aggressive later in the game," Gasol said. "He needs his legs to be effective. And with the amount of minutes he's playing lately, it's normal that he's tired at the end of games.

"He's just playing a lot of minutes. I already said two games ago that I was concerned about it. But he's the best at making plays down the stretch. That's why he's got the ball in his hands, and we count on those plays, especially in close games like this one."

LOS ANGELES -- Kobe Bryant was running on fumes. Pau Gasol had just a few more jumps left in his sore right foot. Antawn Jamison's sprained right wrist was throbbing after another hard fall. Steve Nash was still in street clothes because of a sore hip and hamstrings.

But whatever the Los Angeles Lakers had left was left on the court Friday night in a gutty 86-84 win over the Memphis Grizzlies that kept their playoff hopes alive another night.

"This is the big push for us," a weary Bryant said after logging another 42 minutes Friday. "It's a very tough stretch, but we're excited for it. If you're going into the playoffs, you want to go in playing the best teams.

"There's no point in being all excited to get to the first round to get your [butt] kicked. You want to be going into the playoffs feeling like you're playing well, playing against top competition, so you're ready for a No. 1 seed."

These are the most desperate times of the season for the Lakers. All the turmoil, all the drama, all the intrigue and dysfunction that has landed them in this ugly place -- fighting for their playoff lives with a roster full of future Hall of Famers -- all that is the past.

The last six games of the season ultimately will determine whether they go down as one of the biggest flops in recent history, whether they're just a garden-variety disappointment or, maybe just maybe, there's a little magic in there after all.

And fittingly, with their backs up against the proverbial wall, the Lakers relied on the 1-2 punch that led them to back-to-back NBA titles not so long ago.

Bryant and Gasol combined to score 43 of the Lakers' 86 points Friday. They made the big plays and the small ones. They facilitated for the rest of the team, they organized the offense, but mostly they just led the way.

"You've seen us run it over the years," Bryant said. "It really is unstoppable."

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, with just Bryant and Gasol on the court together (and Dwight Howard off the court) Friday night, the Lakers had a plus/minus rating of plus-46 over 12 minutes. With just Bryant and Gasol on the court this season (and Howard and Nash off the court), the Lakers have a plus-20.4 rating, the highest of any of their two-man combinations.

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Kobe Bryant joins Jimmy Kimmel to talk about his performance against the New Orleans Hornets, the challenges this season for the Los Angeles Lakers, their playoff chances and Dennis Rodman's trip to North Korea.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- The Black Mamba has already shed his skin several times this season as Kobe Bryant transformed from the league's leading scorer to one of its most effective passers.

In the last three games, Bryant seems to have finally settled into his ideal version of himself to help this Los Angeles Lakers team win.

Bryant is averaging 35.7 points, 8.3 rebounds and 6.7 assists on 59.7 percent shooting in his last three games, as the Lakers have gone 2-1.

"I think I just found a balance," Bryant said after practice Wednesday. "I think as a team we found a balance in terms of me being able to keep them involved but still being able to find my rhythm. I told you guys I wasn't really too concerned with my scoring, I would be able to find a rhythm and do both and I've done that."

Just like when Bryant made the switch to "Magic Mamba" and channeled Magic Johnson as he doled out 39 assists over the course of three games in late January and L.A. went 3-0, his recent uptick in scoring wasn't preceded by a planned-out discussion with his coach.

"The conversation is always the same, 'Be aggressive,' " Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni said. "He has to read the situation and how he feels physically and how they're playing him. There's a lot of things that go into it. It-s hard to pre-determine how to play, but during the game you have to understand when you want to be aggressive to the hole or aggressive to passing and trying not to blur the two. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but I think he’s doing a good job."

Steve Nash, who has had to shift in reverse with Bryant -- going from distributor to scorer, instead of the other way around -- said he figured Bryant would return to his scoring self eventually.

"The odds were that it was coming because he hadn't made his shots for a while, which is very uncharacteristic," Nash said. "Some poor souls were going to take the brunt of that Murphy's Law."

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LOS ANGELES -- It was easy to summon the kind of emotion and passion that would have made their late, great owner Dr. Jerry Buss proud and get a win over the Boston Celtics on Wednesday.

It was easy to back up Kobe Bryant's playoff guarantee at shootaround on Friday.

But Friday night it was back to the reality of a season where nothing has come easy, as the Lakers needed all of Kobe Bryant's 40 points to eke out a close 111-107 win over the Portland Trail Blazers at Staples Center.

Bryant hit 15 of his 23 shots and all nine of his free throws to lead the Lakers to their second straight win. Dwight Howard added 19 points and 16 rebounds, even though he re-injured his right shoulder near the end of the first half.

J.J. Hickson and Nicolas Batum each had 22 points for Portland, which lost its seventh straight game.

How it happened: Once again the Lakers let a struggling young team gain confidence and shoot the lights out in the first half (51 percent).

But Bryant kept them in it with 18 points in the third quarter, and the Lakers finally pulled it out late in the fourth with several key defensive stands and four clutch free throws by Bryant over the final 12.9 seconds to preserve the win.

What it means: The Lakers have known for a while now they need to win about 70 percent of their remaining 27 games. There is very little room for error anymore. Games like this one -- against a Trail Blazer team they'd finally passed in the Western Conference standings -- are essentially must-wins if the Lakers have any hope of getting into the playoffs.

Hits: Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni revealed before Friday's game that Kobe Bryant has been dealing with a shoulder injury and said it may have been the cause of his 1-for-35 shooting on 3-pointers coming into the game.

Bryant might be in pain, but it didn't show in his performance Friday. He scored 29 of his game-high 40 points in the second half, keeping the Lakers in the game just when it seemed as if the Blazers might steal this one.

Misses: Steve Nash had a terrible shooting night, missing nine of his first 10 shots, and finishing with just four points on 2-for-11 shooting. He even missed a technical foul shot late in the fourth quarter. You know it's bad when Steve Nash is missing free throws.

Stat of the night: For once the Lakers got a lift from their second unit as Antawn Jamison (16) and Jodie Meeks (10) combined to outscore Portland's reserves, 26-14.

What's next: The Lakers head to Dallas for an early game on Sunday (10 a.m.), when Bryant can share his thoughts -- or respond as he sees fit on the court -- to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban after his comments Friday that the team should consider whether to amnesty the final year and $30 million on his contract.

LOS ANGELES – Despite starting 2013 with a loss and a below-500 record, Kobe Bryant still expects the Los Angeles Lakers to make the playoffs and compete for a championship.

“I don’t think there’s a doubt about that,” Bryant told Colin Cowherd Wednesday on ESPN Radio when asked if the Lakers were built for the playoffs. “The problem is we’ve dug ourselves such a deep hole we got to do a lot of fighting just to catch up and get in that conversation. We firmly believe it’s going to happen but we have to do a lot of fighting just to get there.”

The Lakers are currently 9.5 games behind the Los Angeles Clippers in the Pacific Division and are the tenth place team in the Western Conference, 1.5 games behind the Portland Trailblazers for the eighth and final playoff seed. The Lakers can cut into that deficit on Friday night when they play the Clippers at Staples Center.

“It’s very deep, we’re very concerned but we’ve been playing well lately,” Bryant said of his concern for the Lakers right now. “The last eight games we’ve been playing pretty well but the hole we dug ourselves in the start is very deep so every loss now cuts a little deeper than it should. So we have to keep focused on how we’ve been playing lately and just continuing to get better from that.”

The one thing Bryant is not concerned about is possible dysfunction within the team about Pau Gasol’s role, Dwight Howard’s health, Mike D’Antoni’s rotation or anything else. Bryant actually thinks a little confrontation could be good for the team.

“I’ve been on teams where we’ve confronted each with Phil (Jackson) and Shaq (O’Neal) and we had altercations and yelled at each other and then you figure things out,” Bryant said. “I don’t want to be on a type of team where you feel like you’re afraid of confrontation or afraid of a little dysfunction because without having those things you really cannot get on the same page. You just walk around and everybody is comfortable being whatever and whispering about what they should be doing and what they want to be doing instead of having confrontations and ironing things out.”

Listen to full interview here.

LOS ANGELES – Don’t look to Mike D’Antoni for any answers when it comes to fixing the Los Angeles Lakers.

You can certainly ask him; just don’t expect to get much of a response. Not yet anyway.

Moments after streamers came down onto the court at Staples Center as the Lakers celebrated a 101-100 win over the Charlotte Bobcats -- a game in which they were behind by as many as 18 points in the third quarter -- D’Antoni could only smile as he sat in front of a room full of speechless reporters.

“It’s hard to ask questions, I know,” D’Antoni said. “I feel for you. I don’t know what to answer and I don’t think you guys know what to ask but I think we’ll try.”

That seems to be D’Antoni’s philosophy when it comes to figuring out the Lakers as well. He might not know the answers but he’s certainly trying to find them.

Coaches normally hate lineup and rotation questions. They’ll tell you they aren’t looking to change anything and if they do, well, you’ll be the last to find out.

D’Antoni, on the other hand, nodded his head Tuesday night whenever he was asked about a player changing his role with the team. Whether that’s Metta World Peace coming off the bench, as he did Tuesday, Jodie Meeks becoming the starting shooting guard, Kobe Bryant moving to small forward or Antawn Jamison and Jordan Hill being taken out of the rotation. Everything is seemingly on the table at the moment and few things, if any, are set in stone.

The first domino in what could be a never-ending spiral of lineup changes this season was Devin Ebanks starting at small forward with World Peace coming off the bench and playing power forward. Ebanks wound up playing less than five minutes but the tweak and the return of Pau Gasol earned Jamison and Hill DNP-CDs and a spot at the end of the bench next to Robert Sacre’s dance party.

“I want (World Peace) to play the four,” D’Antoni said. “We have to be able to change our team. I hate it for Jordan Hill right now, because he's the odd man out. He's played well. He's a good player. But for us to have a different team, a different look, Metta has to play the four. If he starts at the three, then once I get him to the four, it's too many minutes for him. He needs rest. So that's a whole process. And I think Metta, going forward, once he gets more comfortable with the four role, will be very productive as a four and our team will be very productive.”

As D’Antoni explained his reasoning, he finally paused before saying, “That's the thought. We'll keep looking at it.”

These are the kind of thoughts and moves a coach would fiddle with in training camp or the preseason or maybe in the first few games of the season. D’Antoni, of course, didn’t have the luxury of doing that so he is doing it now, as the 12-14 Lakers try to work their way above .500 for the first time since they were 6-5, following D’Antoni’s debut with the team last month.

“I'm just trying to figure out the best way to play the team,” D’Antoni said. “We'll keep looking at film, keep revisiting it. We have a couple of practices, and we'll keep looking at different combinations. And there'll be a couple of times during the season, injuries, sicknesses, illnesses, whatever, that we'll give another look to different people. And hopefully they'll be ready. I hope they understand. I tried to talk to them and get them to understand, but . . .”

Everyone won’t understand right now because D’Antoni doesn’t even fully understand at the moment. He’s still trying to figure out what kind of team he has and he’s not the only one with questions. His players are still trying to figure out what kind of coach they have and how they fit into his system.

Even when Steve Nash returns to the lineup, D’Antoni still wasn’t sure how much that would settle things.

“Obviously, I'll have Nash at the point guard, “ D’Antoni said. “But other than that, I've still got the same little problem.”

That “little” problem is figuring out where to play everyone else around Nash. It may seem like a daunting task at the moment but Kobe Bryant, who has had countless conversations with D’Antoni about his rotations and adjustments, thinks the Lakers are closer to figuring it out than it looks.

“I'm probably the one that's enjoying this process the most because it's the most challenging,” Bryant said. “I'm focused; I enjoy being focused about something and digging my heels in and figuring out the puzzle…. It's coming. We're still going to have peaks and valleys, but it's coming.”

That the Los Angeles Lakers are struggling isn't surprising. Everyone understood coming in they had a top-heavy roster built around stars, supplemented by the type of bench players who require talent around them to be effective. With Steve Nash and Pau Gasol in street clothes, the starting lineup is substantially weaker and a bench most hoped could be average (a major improvement over last season's awful) is stretched thinner than Keon Clark's calf muscles.

Bottom line, the Lakers don't currently have enough good players to beat good teams.

But there is struggling, and then there is this.

Right now, the Lakers are a legitimately bad team, and as a result, on top of their problems with personnel, they have a problem with belief. There is zero confidence in what they're doing offensively. Kobe Bryant doesn't fully believe in the guys around him (with legitimate cause) and the other guys don't believe in what they're doing. They're turning the ball over, dribbling to places they shouldn't, and gripping the wheel too tightly in a system built on free-flowing movement and energy. Bad offense leads to bad defense, and certainly the Lakers, who were about 0.1 seconds from allowing 71 points in the first half Thursday night -- upon further review, Raymond Felton's buzzer-beating 3-pointer didn't quite beat the buzzer -- have a significant problem on that side of things.

There is no continuity, no cohesion, no consistency in the Lakers' effort. Dwight Howard doesn't believe the guys behind him have his back (with legitimate cause). As you might suspect with a team surrendering points by the bushel, the Lakers do a lot of pointing. At one another. There are good moments, but nothing close to 48 minutes of sustained competence. Instead, they tend to bury themselves early and then work for a miracle.

As a result, the Lakers are facing their most significant problem: Math.

Over the past three full NBA seasons, the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference has averaged 48 wins. The Lakers, now 9-14 following Thursday's 116-107 fraternity-style paddling at the hands of the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, would have to go 39-20 to get there. That's a .661 winning percentage, the equivalent of a 54-win pace over a full season. Doable -- at least in theory -- for the roster assembled in the offseason, except nobody has any real idea of when that team will actually take the court, and the current group has shown nothing but the ability to lose to any team on any night. Sure, the Lakers made a late push against the Knicks, just as they did last week in Oklahoma City. But spotting teams huge leads and hoping they get bored (or that the star player turns an ankle) before staging a comeback isn't exactly sound strategy.

Who is willing to call Friday's game in Washington a sure win? I'm certainly not.

The rest of the conference won't wait around for the Lakers. Dallas will eventually get Dirk Nowitzki back. Minnesota gets Ricky Rubio back, maybe as soon as this weekend. The Wolves were strong last season with Rubio and Kevin Love available. Denver ought to get better, and so on. Even stipulating the Lakers will look like the team we expected once Nash and Gasol return (and there are reasons to believe they'll still have some issues), they've reached a point where the games in between are critical. Not for winning the conference (ha!) or pushing into the top four on the playoff ladder, but to avoid having to play .700 or even .750 ball just to make the playoffs. Somehow, someway, the Lakers need to win games with the guys available to them or they risk making their quality of play with Nash and Gasol a moot point.

I still believe they'll get in and I know we're not even to Christmas yet, but the threat is very real. Already the Lakers have taken giant bites out of their season's allotment of margin for error, particularly when considering this was supposed to be the easy portion of the 2012-2013 schedule. Nash said Friday he hopes to begin practicing next week, which could mean a return to the lineup around Christmas, barring any setbacks. But the Lakers have to assume he won't be back for a while, and start producing Friday in against the Wizards and in every game until he (and Gasol) are back.

As someone expressed to us via Twitter after the Lakers paid homage to the Cuyahoga River fire with their self-immolation act Tuesday in Cleveland, Nash is seen as the guy who can right the ship, and get the Lakers back on course. But even accepting this (no longer completely) conventional wisdom, there's only so much the two-time MVP can do if the boat is halfway to the ocean floor when he returns.

Without question, water is currently flowing in faster than the Lakers can bail.

The Lakers may be short on wins relative to expectations, but they've certainly not disappointed in the "things to talk about" category. This week has been no exception. Pau Gasol's future in Los Angeles is again being called into question, a future made a little tougher to predict thanks to the knee tendinitis putting him on the shelf for a still unknown stretch of time. Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant got into it during the first half of Wednesday's win over the Hornets in New Orleans. Is it a sign of an impending starpocalypse?

And, of course, Bryant became only the fifth player in league history to crack 30,000 points over his career. A remarkable achievement.

These are the three big issues on the docket in the newest edition of the Kamenetzky Brothers Lakers PodKast. Click on the module below to hear the show.

Editor's note: Throughout the 2012-13 NBA season we'll be asking our colleagues at The Heat Index to weigh in on the progress of the Lakers' newly minted super group. This week, Michael Wallace discusses the value of key players coming off the bench for championship teams.

MIAMI – When sizing up the Los Angeles Lakers for a potential NBA Finals showdown, few teams in the league are as equipped with tape measures as the Heat.

Miami's two key offseason acquisitions bring a combined three seasons of experience from facing Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Co. in the NBA Finals. Now, Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis see a far more potentially dangerous Lakers team developing in Los Angeles, with the additions of Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, than any of the previous squads each of their teams met from 2008 to 2010.

“They've got a lot of great players over there, Hall of Fame players,” Lewis said. “But we feel like we can match up with not just one particular team, but anybody in the league. We've got guys who can play multiple ways, and a team that can play multiple styles, regardless of opponent.”

The Heat's combination of experience, flexibility and versatility are considered their main strengths with a roster anchored by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Barring injuries, conventional wisdom suggests the Lakers are capable of matching -- perhaps even surpassing -- the Heat's star power in would shape up as the most anticipated NBA Finals matchup in decades.

But Lewis and Allen believe that a series with so much at stake against the Lakers, or any opponent out west, will ultimately be decided by the team with the more reliable supporting cast. That was the case last season, when even the best postseason of James' career might have come up short had it not been for Bosh's late-playoff return from an abdominal injury or Shane Battier's breakout play early against Oklahoma City or Mike Miller's magical shooting display in the Game 5 series clincher in the Finals.

By adding Allen and Lewis to a supporting cast that already proved to be deep and effective enough to win a title, the Heat think they took significant steps to further compliment their catalysts and boost their chance to repeat.

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