Pope is represented by LeBron's people. That's the underrated part of this. Good rental signing. He's not the most effecient scorer, but it's not like Stan runs the most effecient offense.
I would say not much. We were the last team with Cap Space left really, he just wants the most money he can get and to secure a better contract next year.
Because every year going back to ClubLakers the group picks an obscure player that no one has really heard of and annoints him the “key to everything.” I also call this the Marcus Banks Effect.
Marcus Banks gained notoriety because one of the members, Sky or Real Deal, was promoting him endlessly and when Ainge tricked simpleton Mitch with the Payton late physical, there was mass hysteria that suddenly f***ing mediocre Marcus Banks was a defensive bulldog the Lakers needed. Fun times
good signing. i was pretty worried about us paying big cash for one year to rondo. yeah, not sure the level of trust can exist on either side to structure said arrangement. what dallas does with dirk is sign him to one-year deals every year. normally, this won't matter, as your cap hold exceeds your current salary, so you don't get to pull any fast ones. but dirk just signed for 5 million, so his cap hold is going to be lower, but they'll still have his bird rights because he's been with the team 3+ years. thus, they can keep his low hold, sign folks, then give him a ton of cash if they wanted. if the lakers wanted to do this with kcp to max advantage, they'd have to convince him to sign for two years at low money (right smack in the middle of his prime, after he's already "lost" 62 million). but if they could, they could sign FAs around him, then go over the cap to retain him later. and you can bet david stern would attempt to rise from the basketball grave to reason that s***.
I think it's a great plan but it would have been easier if Mitch did not leave a flaming pile of s*** on his way out
btw, the other thing i like about the signing is that if plan A doesn't work (as folks know, i'm HIGHLY skeptical), we have a year to get kcp comfortable in la and convince him to sign a reasonable long-term deal. same with lopez. in other words, could help organic growth in the absence of superstars saving the day in FA.