Far be it form me to accidentally defend Kobe, even by proxy, but Gasol was not Top 10 before, nor after arriving in Cleveland. This idea that being able to play in Kobe's shadow somehow makes you some god is ridiculous and I am getting really annoyed at the ridiculous largely media and Laker fan driven overestimation of a 1x All Star who is about a 18 and 8 or 19 and 9 guy by nature. Good player, but people are being ridiculous. He's just another good big man. The player that Kobe needed of course, but strictly a second fiddle. Top 10 guys are guys who should get HOF consideration. With Dirk, Duncan, Bosh, Amare, Boozer, Jefferson etc. all sitting at the position, he might not even be Top 5 at his own position.
If a guy is Top 10 you shoudl be able to take him from hsi current team, trade him to a team without a superstar, and build a contender around him. In no way is Pau in that class. I can name 8 guys ahead of him on that curve without even blinking: LeBron, Wade, Kobe, Dirk, Howard, CP3, Melo, Durant, and have far too many contenders for the last two spots for a guy who's averaged 20-10 once in his whole career to nab it: Duncan, Yao, Roy, Amare, Bosh, our own Tyreke if he contiues his upward arc, Deron, Rose (with improvement) Joe Johnson, Nash etc.
And the subtext to all of this is of course that somehow there is now a rule that in order to keep a young superstar player you have to win a title with him by the time he's 25. Which just qaulifies as a "are you serious"? The kid isn't even truly in his prime yet, but if you haven't delivered him a title by then its perfectly justified for him to pull up stakes and ditch you no matter how close you are because obviously he's never going to win one with you. Afterall, just look at all those poor ringless one team guys like Jordan (first at 27) Hakeem (first at 31) Isiah (first at 29) Admiral (first at 30) etc. Poor bastards having to wait until they were old enough to drink before their teams finally delivered a title to them.