J.A. Adande and Israel Gutierrez are teaming up this season for a look at the NBA from two perspectives, called West Side/East Side.

J.A. is in L.A., a la the West Side. And Israel is down in Miami, home of the NBA champs, representing the East Side.

Enjoy.

There's no need to constantly reference the Miami Heat when analyzing whether the Lakers' superstar mashup can work. The Lakers have enough of their own history to draw on. There's nothing the Heat have done that the Lakers haven't done first, including firing a coach during the season, replacing him with Pat Riley and going on to win a championship.

Either way, there's a distinct difference between the Lakers squad that fired Paul Westhead 11 games into the 1981-82 season, the Heat team that dumped Stan Van Gundy 21 games into 2005-06, and this Lakers squad. In this case, there's no talk of this team's main player loudly complaining about the coach.

In 1981, Magic Johnson told reporters that he couldn't function in Westhead's offense any longer. Seven years ago, Shaquille O'Neal let the Heat powers that be know that he didn't have confidence in Van Gundy (whom he later dubbed "The Master Of Panic.").