This Mag/Rob blew it with DLo and Jules thing is getting old. D'Lo and Jules are 4th and 5th year men respectively and are currently focuses on their teams. Zo and Kuz are 2nd year guys and BI in his 3rd. In salary cap space making the players who are closer to their first big deals are going to be the first to be jettisoned. Assuming you have decided you are unwilling to pay them a lot. The fact that Jules got what he did from NOP has no bearing on what we would have had to pay to retain him. He wanted bank from us and he said as much, saying that it was all about his contract. He is a Mintz client and so is DLo. The market wasn't ideal for him yet do so Mintz said lets do a 1&1 somewhere else where you can show your stuff and get a payday next year. There is no way he was going to extend that courtesy to the Lakers (a 1&1). His touches and attempts went up as he was told they would in NOP and he will get that payday. was he worth us losing a max FA spot over? Mag/Rob did not think so. All of this blame is pointless unless they do fail to get us that 2nd KEY top tier player while retaining the young core we still have or 2 stars using youth/first round pick + cap space. I'm not saying they are flawless, they aren't but the basic plan is still in place.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles...rs-top-2018-free-agency-and-nba-draft-targets Standard, or maybe even below market price for his production. The FO made up their minds on Randle the minute they got in place. Luke started Nance I over him which was laughable as he was a great fit next to Lopez as shown later on. The Lakers screwed up the entire Randle situation, they just did, I can’t be convinced otherwise. Especially taking into account that Randle missed his entire rookie season after breaking his foot in game 1 of that season. Then he played 81, 74, and 82 games in the next 3 years, showing superior durability to any other first round picks we had taken after him. So we really dumped him after his 3rd year in the league, and he’s now blossoming in his true 4th, same as Russell is in his 4th, which I would bet is pretty typical of lottery picks that do pan out eventually. Russell I will give on somewhat though. I don’t know if he has the motivation to become quite the player he has if he isn’t traded. Reports were he didn’t want to work, recent reports have said he thought he was a star already and Kobe’s successor before having earned it. We also traded him and got a good draft pick, but more importantly a really good big in Lopez. Had we kept Lopez around and he helps us get to the playoffs this year, the Russ trade stings less, but in the moment it was at least more excusable than letting Randle walk, essentially swapping him for Rondo. Still, we didn’t get the chance to SEE if Russ would have panned out here, if he would have looked good next to Lonzo, and we’ll never know, they simply gave up too soon on him. Now he’s absolutely balling, and I’d actually be curious to take a poll here on if we could trade LeBron for Russ right now how many would do it. Not that Russ is LeBron or ever will be, but he barely turned 23 while LeBron is 34, and I don’t see LeBron putting up 27 in a quarter to lead his team to a win, and Russ’ team is 7th in the east standings while our team might not even match our win total from last season. Your main point is true, the plan isn’t s failure if we land a 2nd star this offseason, but this isn’t going to go away until we do, and if we don’t it’s going to hang over the franchise for as long as it takes us to get back into contention. We’ve hitched ourselves to the LeBron wagon, so this is different than had we landed Paul George or Kawhi or someone else in their 20’s. LeBron means you have a short window, you have to win now, where a younger star player would have given us opportunity to continue to develop the young talent while we improved over time, where we built back up. Now we have to win now, and stuff like Rich Paul trying to force AD here mid-season shows LeBron feels that way after pretending to be more patient when he signed. It’s all the concerns I had in him coming here before he did and that I pushed aside once he signed come true, the kids probably traded off for players he wants, the coach he wants out in place, him basically running the org. Now if we DON’t land that 2nd max guy this offseason and NO refuses to deal with us, we are kind of stuck in old Kobe time all over again. One decling star not good enough to do it alone anymore, and no way to improve while he’s here, and that is friggin scary. Anyway, I defended the Russ trade for a year and a half and I just can’t anymore, it was a loss for us because we didn’t end up needing the space the trade cleared and we didn’t keep Lopez. I mean, we have up on this kid after 2 seasons, it's tough to take right now
there was nothing revolutionary or "big picture" with the Dlo move cause ANY GM could've used a former #2 pick that show "some" promise, as a salary dump asset. I praised West for his move to dump Griffin and got blasted for being a clipp fan troll and that example was used to support the rationale of how Mgmt treats other players. Well in that instance it wasn't a good PR move either but the ramifications of that move for West is still going on in a "positive" way, i.e. they dont have an enormous contract on their books anymore for a player who's isn't exactly Mr. Iron Man and they now have 3 picks to show for that move (4 if you count Landry Shamet who was included in the Harris trade)....while we on the other hand have to watch another tanking season as well as watch Dlo slowly progress into the star some thought he would be....as a side note, Bk only gave up 2 2nds to dump Mozgov useless arse for Howard and subsequently bought him out, we could've done that this past off-season w/o the Dlo trade but still do the nance/clarkson trade, waive Dung and would've had enough cap for James still since we didn't end up getting that 2nd max this past off-season
I wasn’t opposed to us getting rid of D-Lo, but I admit it sucks watching him play well, then watching our oft injured PG clank free throw after free throw.
Alot of things are being assumed so let's make some more assumptions... Magic/Rob had an agenda with DLo due to BScott...but Kob had no say on the matter? Kob played with both Jules & DLo and Rob is Kob's daughter's godfather...so we're all going to assume our only intel on DLo and his immature ways here, were only from BScott? Bron woulda came alone and all we had to do was stretch MozDeng to make it happen...but had Bron ever come alone before that? Creating 2max was to make all parties happy. Mintz would have Paula come back home and get Jules paid. Bron gets his sidekick. Paula wanted out of Indy and was willing to forego the supermax...cause he wanted a team-up. He got that in Okc with Russ. Without Bron and even helping KCP get some of his lost bag back, AD isn't angling hard to come to LA. AD wants out of Nawlins cause they let Boogie go and he wants a team-up. If it was Jules, he wouldn't demand a trade half way into that team-up. Stars want other stars in this team-up league. Neither DLo nor Jules are those type of stars yet. Bron came here alone, but I'm sure he's expecting a team-up soon and that could be this summer with capspace or via trade for AD. As for MozDeng... They were making roughly 70m in their final 2 years. So if we stetched both last summer to make room for Bron, we put roughly 14m of dead cap on our books for 5 seasons...finally coming off the books in the summer of 2023. Instead we got Deng's buyout dead cap of 5m coming off the books in the summer of 2022. The difference of 9m of dead cap is significant in that it's going to be on the books the entire time Bron is here and is about the equivalent amount of the non-tax payer MLE. Unless there's an unexpected Boogie signing to the taxpayer MLE of 5m type of deal, it would be Bron, Dlo, Jules, 14m of deadcap and the remaining kids and that's it. No help on he horizon unless the Pels want to do an AD swap with us, in which case, would they take back a Jules on 18m+ deal? Would they value a RFA DLo (who's about to get paid) enough? We're acting like 40pt efforts by DLo and Jules on high usage would just work flawlessly with Bron, BI, etc. Oh and then there's the defensive end... I'm sorry...but this narrative of DLo/Jules saving us is faulty in that it didn't really lead us anywhere before and both these dudes need ball in hand to put up numbers....how does that exactly work here if that's the case? Also the Nets traded for DLo, yet didn't give him an extension this year and will play the RFA game this coming summer with the option of bringing in 2max players...so have they mistreated or mismanaged the DLo situation? Atkinson is playing DLo significant minutes... meanwhile, Luke, who is not the current FO's hire was not playing Jules, BLo, Zu, etc those type of minutes. How exactly is that on the FO again? I understand the frustration, but there is alot of revisionist history. The FO set up a situation where Bron, Paula and Jules all team-up and Klutch is happy with that 18m KCP 1yr deal to create a path for Bron, while Mintz is happy securing Paula a homecoming and Jules with a new bag. Instead, Mintz's crew reneged and somehow that opportunity that the FO presented to each party is suddenly Rob/Magic's fault. What? Lastly the narrative of the same deals still being there are flawed. DLo had an injury riddled season last year. If we try and wait to package him with Moz last summer, do the Nets still say yes?
What I mean to add on Jules though is that Mintz was not going to give us a 1&1 so even if we would get him a bit below market and we knew we needed to wait another season for another big FA, we could not sign Jules and keep the cap space.
As great as it looks I will take the intangibles of a leader over a scoring machine everyday and twice on Sunday. Players can get better at shooting, which historically they always do. You can’t train or teach what Lonzo brings to the table. I was one of the ones that was happy we traded him (DLo). Hindsight is now 20/20 and I am still happy we traded him. You can always find a scoring type player. You can’t find a player like Lonzo/Rondo/Kidd.
I think it’s becoming obvious that when your team sucks, fans will pile on in every conceivable way whether rational or not, and they won’t apologize for doing so LOL.
Then imo we should have gone the long route, if it didn’t work out we could have still traded Randle later on a contract that team friendly. We’re sitting here watching teams that have built almost entirely internally succeed and/or at least put a fun product on the floor, a couple examples being Denver and Brooklyn. Then you have teams like Philly who have signed key guys like Reddick who have paid off big when they aren’t necessarily stars. We should have stuck this out and built for long term success instead of trying to go after Golden State now when that is not happening. I got impatient with the losing, we all did, but had we stayed the course we could have been building to another Van Exel, Jones, Divac Lakers team, a stepping stone to something better, at least being respectable again. But no, we had to try and shortcut and sell everything for the home run, and if we don’t land any star free agents this offseason or next we will be starting a rebuild all over in a few years. I praised deals at the time that now I just don’t know about or am convinced were bad. We had Russ, we had Randle, we had Lou Williams for cheap, and they’re all killing it for their respective teams.
Yup. This 1000%. Never liked the win now mentality of this new regime. If they told us fans.. “Hey guys listen, we know haven’t been winning for a long time by Lakers standards, but we want to build for the future, so we wanna build through the draft and through the development of players. It’ll take some time, but we want to win long term. Bear with us and you’ll be happy.” I’m sure we’d all be okay with that. It’s not about winning a championship or two. It’s about being a dynasty, We Are the Lakers!!. Our current direction is not this and it hurts my feelings.
well according to Rob the plan is for sustained winning but so far with their moves, I can't tell if its win now, win later, or winning at all? lol
I don't think it's piling on though when a lot of us have questioned most, if not all these decisions. It basically shows that dudes and dudettes on message boards have a better handle on the Lakers than the greatest point guard of all time.
-Dlo trade wasn't necessary but I understood the move -Randle handling is something I hate mgmt. more so....the 12mill annual salary as per rumored reports was more than fair for his lvl of production even at that point in time....at 12mill Randle even with a 15/9 stat line is still a tradable asset but nope gota keep playing that MAX lvl FA game tho
On another note, I really really really wish that they had just kept the same team as last year and added Paul George. The first call they should have made at 12:01am(est)/9:01pm(pst) should have been to Paul George. Then you go and solidify the back up point guard position and get a big man like McGee that would have complimented the second unit once Lopez was off the floor. Resign Randle and call it a day. I know hindsight is 20/20, but even before they made their moves last year, this is what I was hoping for. There was a certain continuity that I saw. The chemistry was building. The team showed flashes of getting better and better until the injuries hit, and even then they still competed. It’s not a coincidence that we were beating playoff teams last year without a superstar or even star for that matter. But truth be told, the bigger issue is our coaching staff imo. I didn’t realize how bad it was until this year, seeing how this team was coached. I really think an overhaul of the coaching staff, whether that means keeping Luke and changing his assistants or not, is a must. It’s just not working. No matter what roster we put out there we suck.
This is all I’m saying. Doesn’t seem to matter who’s in the coaching chair, Potato Head, ‘Antoni, Bor0n, Luke. Doesn’t seem to matter who’s in the bosses chair, Jeanie, Jim, Mitch, Magic, Pelinka. Something is rotten. Nepotism runs rampant, there’s no one to check Magic on his decisions, and as multiple Lakers podcasts I listen to lately have said, there’s not one person in any FO or staff position with the Lakers you point to and say “they’re the best (or even one of the best) in the business”. A franchise this big, this important, this powerful, should have some of the best people you can get in the FO, the training staff, PR, friggin Gatorade and towel boys, everything, but we keep going with nepotism. And if Luke is fired and Magic hires a friend, a tough minded old school coach who can’t acrually coach, I’m gonna lose my s***. Bill Oram joked on the Locked on Lakers podcast yesterday that we’re stuck in an identity crisis loop every few years. Hired Bor0n because we wanted a tough old school coach, it didn’t work so we hired a young player friendly new age coach in Luke. The joke came when he said we should just hire B0ron again and then in a few years hire Luke again and just repeat the cycle until we’re all dead. It was funny because of how silly it was, but also because of how accurate it is. Maybe this isn’t the right business for Jeanie if she can’t put the right people in place, or even be bothered to do a long search of qualified candidates, if the default go-to move is always “hey they used to be a Laker, they’re hired”. In the end, at least in my case, I don’t look at this so much as revisionist history, as re-evaluation. I defended moves in the moment that have proven to be really bad in the end, moves plenty here did laugh at and question in the moment. Sure it’s with hindsight that we can critique this stuff so hard, but it’s because aside from signing LeBron and the Lou Williams trade, probably every move the FO has made has been mediocre or bad.
I always thought Russell is the most talented kid we drafted out of the lottery, IMO. Essentially, Magic chose Zo over Russell; and from that standpoint, Zo better be a damn good basketball player and soon if he isn't traded...
but that wasn't a choice that had to be made, which makes it even sillier. could have had two damn good young guards with size in your backcourt. or...you could have traded dlo for talent instead of air. basically, anything but what you did.
