Official Whine, Moan, Complain Thread 19/20-CLOSED "WE CHAMPS!"

I hope this thread will have at least a third less posts overall than last season... Not encouraged by all these reports that many notable free agents did not want to meet us. I hope our teams improve to the point where we slap them around on the floor soon.

 

Mozgov. Timofey Mozgov. 4 years 64 million dollars. At his peak, 10 points 7 boards. 64 million dollars for Russian Chris Mihm. Yeah..

 

This thread will be busier than the optimism thread...for the next couple of years at the very least.

 

These.

Through the last three years we've been swinging for the fences every summer and tanking during the year. The first time we met with Carmelo and he politely turned us down. It felt vaguely positive that we were able to get on his radar late in the game. Then LaMarcus Aldridge's first meeting is with us and it becomes a laughing stock. Our pitch men were so out of touch that they didn't even have a cohesive basketball pitch to give to Aldridge. They had nothing and we looked like complete fools. Even DeAndre effing Jordan laughed at us. Greg Monroe didn't even give us a chance and signed with the Bucks instead. Greg mothereffing Monroe. It was embarrassing, but the FO told us to hang tight because NEXT summer (this summer) we'd have TWO max slots and we'd get SOMEBODY to come take up Kobe's now slightly tarnished mantle. There has to be SOMEBODY right? Wrong. We couldn't even get effing meetings with the SECOND tier guys. We can't meet with Durant, okay I understand he's an MVP candidate and we're a 17 win team, but Hassan Whiteside? Some stupid meathead who has had less than two successful years in the NBA? DeRozan turns us down without a meeting? Batum gives us a phone call? Al Horford, who has never lead his team anywhere doesn't even glance in our direction? Now it's embarrassing AND insulting. Even worse: Durant meets with Boston who has a worse roster than we do and Al Horford SIGNS in Boston who has a worse roster than we do. So what happened? Was it just the record?

No. Ramona Shelburne said it on Twitter after we couldn't get a meeting with Whiteside: The Lakers hadn't even been working on it all year. The Lakers hadn't been recruiting all year. Nobody was out there putting out feelers and trying to get people to come to LA. Our Front Office is so out of touch that they assumed the Laker name and brand, which they'd dragged through the mud in their tanking effort and public squabbling, would be strong enough that two stars would conspire to join the team without being prompted. They just assumed Durant was out there with Horford eating dinner somewhere saying, "Hey you know what? We should join forces in LA and bring that franchise back to the top because they're the Lakers!" That was the way Mitch and Jim prepared for this summer. Now you can say, "well who would recruit them? Russell? Randle? They've done nothing in this league to be able to recruit stars" and that's true. You know who could recruit them? Kobe Bryant. Magic Johnson if given the opportunity. This is the modern NBA where the players want to be more included than ever. They're all friends and they all want to play together, but they're not going to do it themselves. Maybe Mitch and Jim knew it wasn't going to work? Maybe they knew after all their tanking to get these young players it wasn't going to matter? I don't know. All I know is if they thought they could walk into this summer and think players were going to line up to take our money to come to a 17 win team in a tough Western Conference then they're fools and they need to go. If they were tanking for 3 years to get high draft picks in order to assemble a young talented roster, then at least Jim still needs to go because the last three years have been a disaster. They better pray that Ingram is as good as we all want him to be because if he's not, we're doomed to another decade of this crap since we have one 1st rounder over the next 3 years.