WASHINGTON — Here in the nation’s capital, where Kwame Brown heard the first of many a boo while stinking with the Wizards more than he ever did with the Lakers, Pau Gasol arrived to replace him.

Experiencing Gasol’s gentle, kind demeanor first-hand at the Lakers’ team hotel in our first interaction, I thought how many Lakers fans will at some point have some dissatisfaction with Gasol for being — like Brown — not outwardly tough enough. But unlike Brown, Gasol has a passion to be great at playing basketball: You never heard Brown use such strong verbiage to convey a desire to be a basketball winner.

And there is a legit comparison to be made between Gasol’s hunger for winning after being stuck losing in Memphis for 6 1/2 years and how Boston is getting the best from Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen after they were stuck losing in Minnesota, Boston and Seattle for years.

I’ll have much more to say about Gasol’s arrival in this week’s Tuesday column — and in just about every Lakers story I write, I suppose — but for now let’s take one last look back at Brown. Word out of Memphis — and this is just so typical of his irresponsibility — is that Brown missed his flight from L.A., so he didn’t arrive until the Grizzlies’ game with Utah on Saturday night had already started.

Maybe he was late to LAX because he was out shopping for an Elvis mask like the one he found in Dallas and loved so much. It’s ironic that I related that anecdote in my column about Brown last week, and now he winds up in Graceland. But I was frankly a little stunned at the reception that column on Brown received, probably underestimating the level of frustration and/or hate people have for a talent-waster such as Brown. More than seven times as many people on the Web read that Brown column compared to the always well-read regular Lakers story that day, for example.

Just for kicks, here are two of the e-mails I got about that column:

1. “Excellent, lucid, non PC assessment. Thanks for the great reporting!”

2. “Great article on Kwame Brown! It couldn’t have been written any better!!!”

3. “Of all the things humanity has ever written, from the date writing was invented in ancient times, your article on Kwame Brown is the stupidest.”

But the general theme in the e-mails was appreciation for a deeper analysis of him. I’m glad I got that column out there, because as I’ve been telling readers who e-mailed to say they gained some level of understanding about Brown from it … that column and the fact that the Lakers got something out of Brown by using his expiring contract to get Gasol seem to have left a lot of Lakers fans at least with some degree of peace with regard to Brown.

Isn’t it nice — because it sure isn’t always easy — to end something without a lot of rancor?

Posted in: 2007-08 • Pau Gasol |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.