i agree some part....his name in trade rumor is business, playing well but still getting jerked around with pt is NOT
The one thing I can't stand with professional athletes is going out to the media with their own agenda. If his agent had anything to do with his past actions, to gain leverage or any ish, I don't know, but one thing's for sure, when you don't deal with something in closed doors, it's gonna look damn ugly. It'll make the player look bad, and the franchise look bad. I have very little sympathy left for JR because of how he overcame his leg injury and because of his family. How he has approached the whole situation is just...
Probably means that he can't stand 99% of professional athletes. Unfortunately even the best players like LLLLLebron, Cousins and George for example love to use the media for their own agenda. That's the world we live in.
He takes a picture of himself without a shirt in the offseason, wears a "pay me" sweatshirt walking into an arena, not seeming too happy when interviewed after a win because he played not enough minutes, etc. This is how he is telling the front office that he has worked hard, wants max money, wants more playing time, wants to be in the starting unit--through the media. His actions tell me the kind of "professional" he is, and I don't like it. The same has made it look like management has treated him unfairly, truth or not. This Randle vs. Lakers front office thing has put both sites in a bad light, why I deemed the situation ugly. Could they have dealt with this privately? I don't know. Could JR's agent put Julius himself up to this? I don't know. But I do know that he is doing this for himself and his family, and that is the one thing why I still have sympathy for him, apart from him recovering from his injury, which makes me root for him to succeed. Like some of you here, I, too, am conflicted on whether I want him to be here or be gone next year. Hope I cleared that up for ya, LT. In 20 years you may be right, I may eventually be sick of it all entirely, good or bad. But for now, I just can't stand those using the media for their own selfish reasons. Agreed, that IS the world we live in.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying. BTW I missed the pay me sweat shirt incident somehow. How long ago did that happen?
Actually I'm not dogging on him at all. I'm actually calling out the Randle apologists that want the FO to treat him with kiddie gloves. Jules busts his butt on the court and I'm super appreciative of it. Like you said... He's the anti-Deng and that's why I'm hell-bent on moving that Deng contract off our books. The thing that rubs me the wrong away is that there is an expectation that we need to treat Randle better and I just don't agree with that notion since he hasn't contributed to a title here in LA, let alone a playoff berth. He treated this as much of a business as the Lakers FO has. Some fans keep whining about his minutes but looking at the year as a whole, more minutes to Randle does not equate to more Ws. Also fans are s***ting on Luke, but Mintz, Randle's agent, has sung Luke's praises and has said nothing critical of how Luke is handling Jules minutes. Lastly if rumors are to be believed, we're trying to deal Jules to his hometown of Dallas. We didn't exactly deal DLo to Siberia. Not to mention, we're trying to bring his other client back home. We are doing our best to make agents and players happy all while meeting our bottomline of becoming title hunters again. That's good business and all this "mistreatment" of Jules is sensationalism conjured up by Randle stans.
Again, huge fan of all the dunking, even got one on Porzingis. Hell of a game, he was unstoppable in the 2nd half.
It's a roller coaster being a fan with Julius on your team, but his positives outweigh his negatives more often than not. I'm in no rush to deal him right now unless someone wants to take Deng with him.
There's no question that you don't trade him for the sake of trading him. You got to make that deal really count cause he's probably the most valuable asset we have that's currently on the table. Ideally you want to keep him on a team friendly deal that allows us to recruit 2 max players. If not, then bring in 2 max players and gain an asset that helps us possibly bring in a 3rd max type. 1) Trade for a proven (max type) star 2) Trade to dump Deng 3) Trade for a pick or future unprotected pick 4) Trade to bring back a young talent on a team friendly deal You can repackage the latter 2 in a star-related deal as well. But that would be my priority in dealing Jules if he's for sure not going to stick. He's a great asset and LA needs to horde those assets right now. If he doesn't go by the deadline, I truly feel that we have something lined up (whether its a modest extension or draft day deal) that makes all parties happy. Mintz has yet to raise a stink about how we're handling his client, so I'm pretty sure we got something in our back pocket already. Btw, dude balled out today and again its all positive cause it increases his trade value, it increases the FOs outlook of retaining him/ keeping him here and we won further killing that Boston 2-5 pick option.
