I was going to be happy as long as we picked Towns, Okafor, or Russell. We now have a very young and promising backcourt in Clarkson and Russell. The same can be said with Randle @PF. On top of that we have enough cap room to chase after a big name FA this offseason and the offseason after that when Kobe's contract comes off the books and he retires. Things are looking good for us
I'm super excited. Just can't wait to see if we can get LMA - if that's the case I'm gonna pop some champagne and I'm pretty sure we'll be back next year with an even bigger free agency. But I just hope we see some more wins again.
Among all the players I ran stats on, the highest wing score in my system was D'Angelo Russell. The highest score for a Big was a tie - between Towns and Upshaw. Purdy good haul.
I turn 35 this year and I've been a Lakers fan for about half my life. At first I was a casual basketball fan, watching the Bulls and Magic. I loved watching MJ and Penny at the time. Eventually I'd become a die-hard Kobe fan, and I've never missed more than 10 games a year since the 2000-01 season. Even when we were losing during the Smush/Kwame era, I had to watch Kobe. Admittedly, it was a man-crush. Having said that, I probably watched more summer league / preseason games than regular season games this past year. Randle getting injured was a huge blow, but after Kobe hurt his shoulder, I was done. I still checked the scores and Lakers related news but refused to watch games. It was too depressing. There was nothing to look forward to. I honestly thought I had lost my passion for the Lakers. I wanted to rant but Clublakers had zero activity. I then stumbled across Lakersball, and right around the same time, Clarkson started to play well. I also learned about the Top 5 protected lottery pick and realized what it meant to the Lakers. I started studying and following the chances of us keeping the pick. Randle's amazing workout videos started to surface. We got the #2 pick. I studied all of the top prospects. Okafor was my guy but we ended up with my 2nd favorite prospect. I am hooked again, and it's a blessing. I want to thank you guys for this amazing community. I think I would have retired, along with Kobe, as a Lakers fan if it wasn't for Lakersball. I'm really excited about this upcoming season.
I realize you said "community" and all that, but I know that post was directed at me. So you're welcome. But this next season will be exciting. I think we just leapfrogged some teams with the Russell pick as it pertains to bigs. DeAndre Jordan should REALLY look at us hard. He has to be self aware enough to know Paul is responsible for a great deal of his offense. Does he think Devin Harris is going to help him light it up? Russell could continue to fool the casual fan into thinking DeAndre is an offensive juggernaut. He also goes to a team with youth that should be able to keep him relevant for more years. I mean, Dallas will fade into oblivion once Dirk retires.
Change thread name to optimism-what star is coming to LA to be part of the new chapter and carry the legacy of the Lakers.
Bro hugs BTW, have we heard from Jazzygirl on the Russell pick yet? Where the heck has Kasumi been? Did she quit us too soon? Where's the women?
I met one last night. She fell asleep on me hugging a portrait of Patrick Willis while I took a pee. As a 49er fan I didn't know if it was cute or sad lol.
To think back on last offseason and what we saw develop this offseason is like winning the lottery. We are talking about adding Lemarcus frigging Aldridge to a exciting young team!!!
I finally can honestly post here, guys. I finally feel good about this team. Partly thanks to some luck (and heck, we deserved some luck after these horrible years with injuries and stuff) and partly because we've been slowly building something that might actually be special. Like many others, I wanted Okafor in the draft, as I honestly love his game, and I actually plan to root for him and watch him play through next season. Even if he's not a Laker, I would still love to see him have a great season and shut up all the people who killed him in this last month (but hopefully Russell does even better). That said, I'm really glad with D'Angelo, as I do think he will become an impressive guard in this league for many years. Just like Okafor may become a special frontcourt player, Russell might just do the same in the backcourt. I've said this a lot of times (not in this forum), but the most important day of the season for us was not draft day, it was lottery day. Considering our situation, our future plans were about to change A LOT depending on our luck there. Russell? Okafor? Towns? I wasn't even thinking about that until after the lottery. I was thinking "hey, Winslow might be a nice addition, and maybe with some luck Mudiay." I was thinking about maybe getting a valuable rookie against the possibility of not getting anything at all... we ended up having a lot of luck by cracking the top 3 in a draft with 3 clear favorites. Now everything was good for us. I always felt that whatever we ended up with, I was going to be glad, and that's how it is. At the same time, a lot of reports and stuff of Randle improving quite a lot came up, making our future even brighter, and all the while we have old Kobe recovering and getting ready to enter maybe his final season, probably as hungry as he's ever been.... And we even have a good amount of money to spend in free agency! While Kobe has been kind of forgotten, and the media hasn't really shown love for us, there were a lot of people I knew, usually haters of our team, that were actually sympathising with us, almost rooting for us because of our incredibly bad luck (and the fact we sucked)... but now, now I'm finally reading a lot of haters of th Lakers everywhere. In the levels I'm more used to... which is one of the better signs for me that we're going the right way, that we're becoming part of the map again. We've honestly have no idea how our team will do next season. Young unproven players, old guy coming from a lot of injuries, new players... I mean, we can say whatever we want, but truth is that we're really a mystery next season. Russell could very well end up proving to soon be a superstar or could end up being a bust and just a good, but nothing special point guard (I imagine something in between, showing talent to be a future multiple times All-Star), and same thing with Randle. Kobe could come in fantastic shape, or age might have just become too much of a weight. But the thing is, whatever happens, at the very least, it should be fun to watch, it's definitely promising, and it looks like it will get even better next year. We suddenly look like a team that will give a lot to talk for the next few years, when not long ago we looked like a bad team with not really a lot to build with. I like how our future looks right now, and I even think our present will be very fun. Hopefully the injurie woes are over now, which would make next season something really, really fun.
