Brandon Ingram Discussion: He Is Who We Thought He Could Be

Right. I'm also saying don't bench him so I'm a little lost at who guys are targeting with their comments.

I agree with all of that. And my main point with all the young guys for I don't know, what, two or three season, (yes, even Russell) has been to stop just throwing them to the wolves, yanking them back to the bench every time there is a problem, and actually commit to their development.

 

RE: attracting free agents.

What's wrong with winning more games with Kuzma starting, and having a potent bench of Ingram and Clarkson? Does Lebron or George care about Ingram's development or the promise he shows? I'd imagine they'd love to play alongside productive and selfless team players like Lonzo and Kuzma. If this season is an audition for free agents, it's Kuzma over Ingram and it's not even close imo.

 

I was all in on the youth movement. I wanted to keep all the youngsters. Stretch Deng at the end of this season and try to sign one high profile FA and be handicapped a bit while the kids grew. The least patient people being discussed so far are the FO. Their insistence on throwing away years of slow progress for a foolish 2018 plan that we've seen fail multiple times to our own organization, not to mention other orgs in the NBA, and banking on some actual or perceived charismatic change in the FO. That's what annoyed me. If they'd gotten someone that's a similar prospect to Russell, instead of an aging 1 year rental (Kuzma doesn't count, we would have him either way) I wouldn't care about trading him. Instead we traded for "flexibility" and cap space.

 

LOL .... why?

 

First off, I agree with you @wcsoldier81 This isn't a quick fix type of thing. LA needs to attract FAs with a good collection of youth, but there is precedence here. LaBron paired up with Bosh in choosing Miami where there was a promising young player there in DWade, even though Miami was struggling with a 47-35 record (5th in the East) and having been nearly swept by Boston (lost 1-4) in the first round of the playoffs. LaBron then chose Cleveland knowing that Love was also heading in and that the team had another promising young player in Irving even though the season before, that team had a 33-49 record (10th in the East). So based off track record alone, LaBron will look to pair up again in LA with a young promising player even with a piss-poor record. As you said, it really depends on the young player(s) we highlight.

We've seen way too many times how to groom the youth the wrong way (see DLo, Randle here). So when it comes to BI, you need patience and stability (which is why I think the FO will give Luke a longer leash...way too much coach turnover the last few years). You need the right culture around these young guys. Brook is a stand up guy by all accounts. KCP came in and I'm sure the FO wants the youngsters to take up good defensive principles. Nance is a great character guy and locker room presence. Kuz and Hart seem like great character guys and it helps that they are a little bit older as rookies. So when it comes to Zo and BI (who are both babies in this NBA landscape), you want the right culture/environment around us, especially if you want one, if not both these players to finally hit as stars! I mean, the last star we drafted was Marc Gasol (and I'm sure that last name helped us in nailing that pick).

At first it was fans not liking that LA was continuing to swing for the fences and not properly giving our youth a chance to grow. Now its trade him or bench him for some Ws right now. The thing with the 2018 plan is that none of our real assets get traded to bring in a star....as opposed to how Bynum/LO led to Howard/Nash. And that is where some fans have completely lost track of what this roster presently stands at. Outside of Lopez, there are no stars to really build around. With the aforementioned team, you had Kobe and Pau to build around as a win-now team. So why trade assets to bring in a star, when just one star on this team can't really compete for the here and now, especially in the loaded west. With the 2018 plan, you at least bring in a pair of stars and surround the youth with them. If that doesn't work out, you at least have those young pieces as trade bait to bring in a 3rd star.

Which brings me to what you said @abeer3. Russell was a malcontent. Reports had it that teammates were happy he was gone and that he wasn't the "leader" that this team needed and wasn't fun to play with. You got all the off court antics as well with him.....meanwhile you haven't heard a peep out of BI in those regards. DLo laid the gauntlet towards his exodus by "liking" that comment that spoke ill of the Lakers picking Zo at #2. Like I said before, you don't want that nonsense around if you want to bring up your young player in the proper manner. We're lucky that Zo is so well-composed, so in that regard, he probably could have made a Zo-DLo pairing work...however, why even mess with that scenario if it isn't a 2 way street? Or would you rather have LA continue to be in the news for all the wrong (off-court) reasons? With the Zo hype train, BI could have taken it a certain way, but he didn't. There wasn't any shade or slick social media quips thrown into the fray. Its easy to know which mentality was easier to mend and forge forward between DLo and BI.

Behind the scenes factors have led to BI earning a starting spot and being deemed "untouchable". Whether that leads us into developing a star or increasing his trade value, I see it as a win-win all around. If he was or was not involved in PG and Cuz rumors is a mystery. But what we do know is that Pritchard was out to get us, so PG was essentially blocked from us unless we gave up the farm. In terms of Cuz, he just came in from a toxic environment in Sac (which they cleaned up this offseason as well). Put Cuz on this team with all the possible losing this season and we might have a Dwight redux...you just never know.

All in all, the moves made were 2 fold. We traded away possible deterrents that could have impacted our culture change here, all the while creating flexibility. You had owners and GMs come out saying that Indy/Chicago could have gotten a whole lot more for PG/Butler....but that same narrative was never said about DLo. What the FO did was clean up the locker room without sacrificing the youth movement (we just brought in 4 rooks folks and intended to do that with the trades we made)....all while creating an option to bring in stars to correctly influence our young core and possibly making us a win-now team in the new future, with added flexibility of trading for another star down the pike. Perfect.

 

Don't mind Lopez. But as of right now, which could change 2 seasons from now, we traded the wrong young piece.

Ingram should have replaced Russell in the Lopez deal. IMO.

 

In hindsight, yes. But no one knew we'd draft 2 players that are better than both of them.

 

Awww geeze Pops ..... you're doing it again. These people know me.

 

right. had we not dumped youth for cap space this summer, we'd all know what the plan was: try to develop young guys for a couple years until they're ready to carry some weight, at which point, we will also have some cap space.

once we went all out on the cap space plan, the philosophy had to shift more than it did, imo.

 

Went all out for cap space plan? Really? Deng is still on the roster....and we presently have the assets to move Deng off the roster. Did we do it?

You would think we were 3 years in with the amount of dismay some of you guys are showing towards the new regime. 3 games folks.

My only complaint this early in the game is Luke needs to implement a better half-court offense cause you can't rely on 1)pushing uptempo and then 2)running iso as your means for an offense. But again, these guys are all playing for the first time together due to injuries in preseason/training camp. Give it a bit more time to marinate you guys....damn, tough crowd.

 

I think a big part of that is because people see him as a one year rental.

 

We could still have had PG in 2018 though if Deng was stretched and we likely would be a more promising destination then. There's little pointing to Dlo as a bad influence, mainly coming from him recording Nick admitting to being a tool.

 

what makes you so confident a star comes? magic is all talk at this pt, lebron/pg don't care bout the youth here if we're not winning

 

What makes me so confident? We just had our worst era of basketball and PG was still "hellbent" on coming to LA. In my post above I just laid out LaBron's blueprint from moving from team to team and the precedence is there regardless of team record. Reports of both these guys aiming for LA came out after Magic got involved with the Lakers. Pritchard throwing tampering accusations actually led to LA receiving a fine, meaning they did find something there. No contract extension or verbal commitment from PG or Melo after Russ re-upped.

Connect the dots bud....I can't understand how y'all think the plan is dead already.

Btw: @abeer3 @ElginTheGreat : not targeting you guys or anybody in particular towards BI and a potential benching. I'm just broadly addressing the insinuations by the fanbase that we traded the wrong guy this offseason and we doomed ourselves by doing so, since BI is inevitably a bust. For some reason folks are more eager to connect those dots, however.

 

We've heard, every single off-season, that some star or another was "hell bent" on coming here/home. DeRozan, Russell, and even rookies like Okafor and, now, Ben Simmons.

 

pg already made subtle hint after russ ext....he said it would made his decision "easier" when time came