Lakers' lure is more myth than reality, even after they signed LeBron

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OAKLAND -- Klay Thompson spent much of his childhood in a home 50 miles south of downtown Los Angeles listening to his father, Mychal, spin tales about the Showtime Lakers and the championships won by the purple and gold.

Klay Thompson is eligible to become a free agent next July, so he’s destined for the Lakers, the franchise some players consider the ultimate destination.

He’ll look across the locker room and see LeBron James in one corner and Kevin Durant -- yes, KD -- in the other. Durant, also eligible to become a free agent in July, earlier this year bought a $12.5 million home in Malibu, so he must be gazing at a future with the Lakers.

So will end the glided era of Warriors basketball, shattered by that team in LA.

OK, this isn't a foregone conclusion. It’s not even plausible.

But that doesn't squelch the chatter. Whenever an NBA All-Star becomes available, there will be speculation related to the Lakers.

Though many NBA players own homes in the L.A. area, or spend much of the offseason there, the notion of the Lakers being NBA Utopia rings hollow. There are reasons why Magic Johnson was hired 19 months ago to engineer a franchise reboot.

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When Durant became a free agent in 2016, he met with six teams, including the Clippers. The Lakers were shut out. LaMarcus Aldridge met with them in 2015 and, unimpressed with the recruiting pitch, opted for the Spurs. A year earlier, Dwight Howard spurned the Lakers, practically crawling to Houston to join the Rockets.

Though this was all before Magic moved into a corner office and brought in former agent Rob Pelinka as his GM, their heralded arrivals haven't resulted in a line of players beating down the door of LA’s glamor sports team. They landed the Big One, LeBron, but the Lakers had hoped for another established star.

As Kawhi Leonard made it evident during the season that he wanted out of San Antonio, the presumption was he was yearning to be a Laker. He was traded to the Raptors, who have a year to persuade him Toronto is the place to be. If he still decides to leave for L.A. next summer, it is widely believed he prefers the Clippers.

There was no mistaking what Paul George wanted, whether he was in Indiana or Oklahoma City. Once he hit the market, he was a lock to join the Lakers. He grew up in SoCal, idolizing Kobe Bryant and rooting for the Lakers.

George opted out of his OKC contract in July, hit the market ... and re-signed with the Thunder. Never even met with the Lakers.

"The reason why I didn’t (meet with the Lakers) is that coming down to free agency and before it was about to open (on July 1), I felt really good where I was at,” he explained to USA Today in July. “I felt I was in a good place with Oklahoma. I wanted to come back to L.A. That story was true. The narrative on that was true. That's where my heart was.

“But this year, being in Oklahoma, I felt really good about the situation, I felt really good going forward, and I didn’t want to waste nobody’s time and take a meeting. ... I felt great where we were at, so I decided to do it early, to get it over with, and start to build."

To recap: George chose high-strung Russell Westbrook -- who also has a reputation for selfishness -- and the NBA’s third-smallest market over returning home to be a Laker and take advantage of all that Hollywood has to offer.

This came one year after Westbrook, a Long Beach kid who played at UCLA, was ticketed for L.A. and the Lakers. Nope. He opted to re-sign with OKC.

Look, the Lakers have a rich history and a deep roster of Hall of Famers. L.A. is an entertainment mecca with marvelous weather and great beaches -- things that undoubtedly attracted James. The team is discovering, however, that not every star wants to be a Laker. More don’t than do.

LeBron is the first franchise-altering free agent lured to L.A. in 20 years, since Shaquille O’Neal in 1996.

Klay Thompson hasn't implied he’d like to be a Laker, or that he wants to settle in SoCal. He consistently says his desire is to spend his career with the Warriors.

While Durant hasn't been as emphatic, he considers the Warriors as the league’s gold standard -- from the quality of basketball, to personal freedom and enrichment, to a culture in which players are treated like the massive assets they are.

KD or Klay conceivably could land in L.A. That can’t be dismissed. But there is no reason to believe either is eager for the day he can wear the purple and gold.

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