Last year the Optimism Thread was @karacha 's baby, but before that she was mine! I'm takin' her back! This thread is where you come to feel good about where the Lakers are at. Did they make a controversial move? Did they lose a game and you found a moral victory? Are some of these other threads getting you down with brutal honesty or unnecessary pessimism? Well come post here why you're feeling positive about the day and the next day and the year in general! This thread is for my eternal optimists! My happy-go-lucky brethren! My friends of great faith! Sound off below, but bring on the happy!
We went from having a possibility of losing our pick after having a horrible season to having the number 2 pick.
Just to reiterate what we've been swimming around now for the last few weeks since we knew we were getting the #2 pick... How fortunate are we? I mean other teams take decades to rebuild. Some teams live in this bottom five area. The faces down here in the lottery are usually pretty familiar. You've got Utah, Sacramento, Philadelphia, Orlando, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Charlotte... Cleveland before LeBron went back. Look at these teams and they've got a handful of really young and talented players but they can't get over the top. Milwaukee was finally "competitive" the last couple of seasons but they're not in the playoff push. Part of it is just that teams don't have great scouting personnel, some teams just panic with picks and take potential over talent. I think the reality though is in a lot of drafts there's really no transcendent talent. There's really not that many guys out there. I mean look at the 2013 draft. If the Lakers had the number one pick there, they'd be looking at Victor Oladipo, Otto Porter, Cody Zeller, Alex Len, Nerlens Noel, and... Anthony Bennett. I mean who among those guys is a game changer? Who among those guys takes their team to the next level of the NBA? Good players? Maybe a couple of them, but I don't see franchise players in there. The last two drafts though have just so happened to be very strong to correspond with two of the worst Lakers teams of all time. Not only do we end up in a position to land top young talent, but the two times we're in that situation we just magically happen upon Julius Randle. Randle before the draft was looked at as a Top 3 talent and for reasons I still don't understand he slid all the way to the 7th pick for us. Now we get into the Top 2 when we could have lost the pick altogether and we've got a shot at what looks like the best PF/C prospects we've seen since Garnett and Duncan. I'm optimistic we'll land a fantastic talent this summer in the draft, maybe even a valuable pick later too. I'm optimistic we'll add that talented young man to our others like Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson, Tarik Black, and even the more fringe guys like Jabari Brown and Ryan Kelly. We've got a chance to put together a group of young talent that we can have for the next 10-15 years and turn into a dynasty. We're so ridiculously fortunate.
I agree! The funny thing is I am probably the most optimistic person on the board yet I created the WMC. I come to your Optimism thread to recharge lol
I love being optimistic, but your thread is more practical for day-to-day emotions. That's why they work man! This site and this community rock!
All season I feared losing our top 5 pick, I would have been happy to get the 5th pick. To get the 2nd though, I couldn't believe it, it was the boost of optimism we desperately needed. Now we have our pick from all the top players except maybe Towns, or Okafor if he still goes first. But to be guaranteed that one of them will be available, that gets a hell yeah from me. I kinda locked in to wanting Okafor back in April before we knew if we'd have our pick and where it would be, but that dream that somehow it might happen was alive deep in the back of my mind and I'm thrilled it might happen. He was the top prospect going into this college season, and I saw no reason that should have changed unless free throw percentage is a huge deal to a team. So yeah, we might end up with the best player in the draft a year after selecting at least one of the 4 best players in that draft at 7. I'm excited for Clarkson, Randle, whoever we draft, and whatever free agents we pick up, and to watch this team start to rebuild and grow by developing young talent. Only concern is the usual one, health, please let our rookies and 2nd year guys stay healthy this season and let Kobe be relatively healthy for his final season.
Have you guys ever thought about meeting in person to see if there is a "connection" Punk and I met one time. Nothing.
Who says we haven't? Also the truth is we're the same person. We just sign on in different accounts to get attention.
Building off of @Doc Brown 's idea: Step 1. Draft Okafor Step 2. Draft Justin Anderson Step 3. Sign Wade 3/50 million. Step 4. Sign Rondo 1+1/11.234 million. Step 5. Sign Ellington to BAE. Rondo/Clarkson Wade/Ellington/Brown Kobe/Young/Anderson Randle/Kelly Okafor/Black/Sacre Mix and match as needed (Rondo to the bench, Young out in favor of Anderson, etc).
