Meh. Another year. Another ESPN hit piece. I don’t like the Zubac trade at all but come on. You’d think we traded Shaq or Hakeem. And I questioned other moves but this roster could have made the playoffs with better coaching and less injuries. I’ve watched very little of this team play over the last few weeks and read much less of the “news” articles floating around and I definitely feel like that was the correct decision.
Yes of course with long history of ESPN hit pieces. This one however is richly deserved. Hell yeah Jerry West was laughing at that one and will be as long as Zu is on their roster. We just called up and said hey we love you guys and to show that how would you like Ivica Zubac for Chicken Marsala? No .... honest ..... no strings attached! As Khmrp said in another thread, even if we wind up with 3 star players he had no confidence in our FO assembling a smart roster to put around them with what they have shown. And when you look at the incredibly hard road to acquire it and promising talent our incredible scouting department gave to them for all that pain to Lakers Nation, and even some good trades from themselves brought to our roster..... just p****d away with bad decision after bad decision.
yeah the fact that it was magic who reached out to the clips first makes the entire thing even worse than it is
I'm with EtG on this in that there's more than meets the eye on this. You're not going to transform this roster into a title team overnight. But why is it that fans think we were sitting on a superteam? Was Zu getting that much play where he was unequivocally our starting center? We weren't winning anything before and it's not like we exchanged all our kids for these vet players on multi-year deals. Mus's offense accounts for 73% of his point production coming from 3pt land (which was tops among all centers). He was top 3 in 3pt attempts and then immediately got injured when he came here, so as maddening as that trade was, there was a bit of reasoning behind it. All these dudes come off the books this summer. Rondo and McGee both have already stated they're interested in coming back again. So we take care of our max spot and then start adding those complimentary pieces. We could have kept Jules on a QO and traded him like Cleveland did Hood this year (they got two future 2nd rounders for him). We could have legally traded Beasley alone for Mus, but if that source is to be believed, we ended up reaching across the hall to initiate a rare cLipper trade. Alot of stuff appears to be wtf, but if you consider that Rob was a player agent, I just get the feeling that he did these guys a solid. That's not all of it of course, but it's part of it. We didn't intend to match Zu (dude had 21 DNPs and played 15.6mins per), so let him stay in LA and let's see if the cLips will. Linderman of Excel agency reps both Zu and Mus. Excel also has free agents and notable players under contract (like BI who is soon up for an extension). Maybe we're trying to develop relations with that agency. It's not like we haven't done it before with Klutch. Also the recent Jones addition allows us to include him in a trade (AD) for salary matching purposes. That way, you can possibly spare someone like a Hart. Trading an RFA like Zu would have been far more complicated and probably not possible. Lastly setting Jules free maybe was part of opening up back the lines with Mintz. We did try to trade for Ariza and TRoss, who are both Mintz guys. Totally agree here. I've defended Luke, but when you look at player's minutes distributions and the type of offense and PACE he and his assistants favor, where does the onus of roster construction end and coaching contributions begin? When it comes to shooting, I just can't ignore teams that are winning in spite of not being an elite 3pt shooting team (like the Bucks & Rox). The thing that sets them apart is the volume of 3s they take. We take 30 attempts per game and make 10. Meanwhile the Bucks take 38 attempts and the Rox take about 45 attempts. If you look at teams shooting the 3ball well, it's SA and the cLips (who we were attempting to chase down for the 8th seed). Those teams take about 25 3pt attempts per game. So more than shooting quality, it's actually quantity that is setting some teams up to succeed in the regular season. We've historically seen that you can't outshoot the dubs in the playoffs tho. So at what point is it on the coaching to rectify this? For example, we make and take the same amount to of threes as the Blazers do this season. So what sets them apart in the standings? Team continuity (our roster had 8 players added this season)? Health (our top players only played 23 games together)? Defense (we rank better than Portland in defensive rating)? Coaching staff (Luke's small ball vs Stotts stilts: Nurk, Collins, Leonard and now Kanter are all 7fters and get a steady dose of playing time)? Luke wanted Moz....didn't play him much. Wanted Bogut... didn't play him much. Apparently loved Zu and Jules, but didn't play them much. Heck Nance didn't even get much run. We got BLo and even his minutes took a dip last year compared to what he's getting in Milwaukee this year. How is minutes distribution and shot attempts/selection on the FO?
McMenamim is Lebron mouthpiece . Lebron is just playing the blame game like Jeanie , Luke and Maginka. Guess what ? You all are responsible of this crap . As someone said Lakers are more of news network than a professional sports team these days . f*** ALL THESE MORONS .
I'm not as down on Mag/Rob as some but this is rose-colored glasses talk here. We have completely botched things with Mintz in almost laughable fashion. PG was begging to come here and we blew that. Jules and DLo found huge on court success leaving and have now put themselves in position for big contracts. While it is understood those 2 were cap clearing moves, from Mintz's perspective his clients left LA and were successful and are now about to be paid. Also note the Ariza and TRoss trades did not happen (for us) and both will be looking for new deals in FA this summer. As for the Lakers keeping in good player/agent communication leading up to Jule's FA, Mintz said this: “We still have no indication of where Julius stands among the Lakers' priorities, or if he is a priority at all". Again, a cap clearing move sure, understandable, but you aren't doing the agent or player a solid by keeping them out of the loop about your intentions. The foundation we've built with Mintz is a straw house if that.
First off, DLo and Jules were going to be out any Paula trade package, unless you think Pritchard was hellbent on getting gutpunched again by Mintz. Secondly, the Nets traded for DLo indicating they value him. Yet cap space is valued by them and they offered no contract extensions to him this year, instead getting DLo insurance by giving Dinwiddie an extension. This is no different than how we approached Jules. So did they too botch relations with Mintz? Third, that Mintz quote came directly in response to what Rob said: Also Jules said himself he was interested in teaming up with Bron (after the trade deadline passed). Then the summer comes and he wants out. So who is really trying to burn bridges? Lastly, we granted him an out. We could have easily held him hostage and made him sign the QO for 5.4m. We could have even given him more money and definitely the amount that the Pels gave him via buying out and stretching Deng and still bringing Rondo on board. Recall, we waited till Sept to stretch Deng so that it would be 14.3m in dead cap this year and 5m for the 3 following years. Applying his 7.3m buyout towards his 36.8m contact and stretching it in July would make it a 5.9m cap hit for the next 5 years. That gives us roughly 9m in additional cap space to not only sign the guys we signed this last summer, but give Jules the type of salary he got with the Pels. Bottomline is we did Jules a solid by offering him an out 1yr earlier than we had to. Bron was already committed to us at that point and Paula was out. We weren't forced to renounce Jules to still create cap space for anybody. We granted him an out when we didn't have to. No one could dispute that. The excuses that continuously pour out for the Mintz camp stays wild to me. Imo they a bunch of hypocrites and operated in bad faith.
Yep and that's what he excelled at ..... pulling his teams off the court, kids out of school and leaving in a snit if he was unhappy with something in that crazy fat head of his.
I think the rumor (if I remember correctly) was the #2 pick (turned out to be Ball) as the main piece the Pacers wanted. I don't think it's people are standing up for Mintz as much as we are just tired of the mismanagement of assets. I get the theory of building relationships with agencies, and that undoubtedly happens. But we are losing valuable assets at the expense of building these relationships. Like I said in another post, we're playing an all or nothing game. Even if everything you're saying is true, there's still no guarantee it will happen. And if it doesn't, we are shedding the resources we gathered from being bad because their contracts would interfere with the cap space plan. We could end up with Lebron, Kawhi, AD, and maybe Kuzma. Or we could end up with Lebron, Kuzma and Ball with Ingram gone because his contract will get in the way of cap space. And a Lebron, Kuz, Ball trio is about the worst possible thing that a team could have because it's just good enough to finish in the 8-10 range. No playoffs or being blown out in the first round, and a late lottery pick.
LOL. I don't every bother coming on the board much anymore; too much rationalization; I'm waiting for the summer; and if we FAIL, I'll be writing my thesis on the end of the Lakers in every thread...
There’s an excuse for everything in some way for this FO, I don’t even think you can judge them until at least after this summer. But some of the convenient excuses for some of these moves are ridiculous, which is why Luke is now moving into some of them.
Well I could only work with what I got. I'm attempting to rationalize with folks that view Zu as the next Laker legend center. Maybe my counterpoints seem outrageous cause I'm dealing with out-rage-ous expectations... Anyways, we're up in arms about losing out on a potential future 2nd round pick. If that's what y'all want to bury the FO with...cool. Meanwhile, we brought on this 23 year old Jones kid that has a non-guaranteed 1.4m that allows us to salary match in a trade (something Zu's RFA status impeded) or keep a warm body on a cheap deal to help bring the hustle and help round out the roster once we make our moves this summer and he'll be a RFA with a 1.9m caphold in the summer of 2020 if he sticks here. Zu is a great kid, but all I've seen in terms of wasting him as an asset is that we could have gotten future 2nd round picks for dude. If that's what we really lost in this trade then why are some of us acting irrational about it? Dude avg 15.6 minutes here. I too wanted to trade him for a future 2nd and I thought the FO missed an opportunity there. But the degree of backlash on this move is hard to rationalize.
Nobody said or acted like Zu was the next Laker legend center, literally nobody. Also, nobody is lamenting that we didn’t just get a 2nd rounder, people are upset at what the trade represents. A total lack of awareness by the FO and an entire rookie mentality when it comes to making moves. We can’t sign Zu long term so let’s call up the Clippers and offer him up for free, helping out an in-building rival even if in a small way? That’s horrible, they were reportedly laughing at us for it, it’s an indefensible trade. Zu could have walked this summer, Beasley could have waived, Muscala has played a little over 100 mins as a Laker. The Zu trade isn’t what had people “up in arms”, it’s that the Zu trade is the perfect example, the final straw if you will, in providing sufficient evidence that our FO might be in a little over their heads. They certainly on the same page as the coach either, because players they keep calling up from the G-League, besides our regulars, aren’t getting any playing time. The team is a mess right now, it’s hard to argue otherwise, none of our FA signings aside from McGee worked out, we traded for Bullock and then never even used him properly, half the team is out injured (and yes I am placing blame on our medical staff), Magic and Rob have a lot of cleaning up to do this summer. I don’t expect to hear any “we made a mistake here, we were wrong with our approach” either, I expect to hear “we were good and got injured, we did a good job assembling this roster”, which also scares me big time, because no they did not, and the injury excuse only goes so far and is mostly BS. They couldn’t even admit when they traded for Bullock that they were making up for not adding shooting in free agency, Rob spun some nonsense about it being a move to make up for losing shooting due to injury, LOL. The lack of accountability and self-awareness is very concerning to me, I doubt many people have stood up to Magic in his life and told him when he’s making a bad move, also concerning, and Rob, well I’m not sure what he does besides tell stories. We better hope like hell for Kawhi or Kyrie that’s all I know, otherwise I see us right back there begging NO to give us Davis for Zo, BI, Kuz, Hart, and our pick in June, and if it happens, filling the roster with junk around LeBron and AD again.
Do I think the Zu trade deserves as much flurry as has been the case? I think Vash is right in saying NO. With that said...that would be for the Zu trade in a vacuum. But we don't see the Zu trade in a vacuum. Its the last straw that broke the camel's back. it boiled over. People were unhappy with a lot of miss-management. Gifting Randle for free, waiving Thomas Bryant, most FA signings, lack of shooting, admonisching Luke after like 8 games in public, being leaky all over the place, the way they handled the trade deadline, the way they IGNORED obvious holes, absolutely zero self-criticism and so forth. its not the Zu trade per se...the Lakers are abysmal and it isn't because of ONE reason...the front office has to be held accountable for this mess as its been the result of many miss-steps. As I have now said many times...some mistakes are not excusable. You can't excuse nonsensical moves and decisions with being rookie mistakes. Some mistakes do not deserve a second chance. There isn't a huge difference between dumb and smart front offices. Well dumb FOs don't have horns and they don't dress like clowns either. Dumb FOs recognize a mistake after they do them while intelligent FOs recognize them before they do them. Thats the difference between dumb and smart in a nutshell.
Yeah. If the Zu trade was the only move they made that was a "WTF?" type move, no one would be saying much at this point. It's like if some dude cheats on his wife, but she takes him back. Then he runs off to Vegas with his buddies without telling her, but she stays with him. Then he forgets their anniversary, but she's carries on. Finally, he doesn't take the trash out after she asks him, and she goes off on him and files for divorce. Did she file for divorce because he didn't take out the trash when she asked him to? No. That would be stupid and irrational. But it was that last little thing that pushed her over the edge; an edge that in the case of Lakers fans, many had already tumbled down from. Vas - I don't think anyone is looking at the Zu trade as the reason they don't have any faith in the front office, just like most people don't have a small headache and assume it's a brain tumor. But if there is numbness down one side of your body, seizures, and disorientation, that small headache becomes another symptom of a growing mountain of evidence.
