I do agree with you guys about the PF position, but I also think Bron will play most of his minutes there. It needs to be Bron/AD and three guards around them most of the time.
Despite his troubles last season, Markieff would have been nice for that extra PF/C type. But yes, thats the last piece I’d like to add as well. Not fond of the idea of bringing Dudley back again but I’d get it if we do. And probably leave an open spot for the buy out market
I think the guard rotation is good and a chance to be great if Monk and THT continue their progress from last year. Lots of upside there despite losing AC. Center should be solid between Gasol/Dwight/AD Forwards scare the s*** out of me: AD/Lebron will be great but right now I see a guy who can barely score efficiently and has been a terrible defender (melo) along with another guy whose best years are behind him in Ariza. Ellington is the one to look out for but he's bounced around so much you have to wonder if teams can't play because of defense issues and the like. Would love to add some more depth (milsap, oubre, even a guy like Justice Winslow to give him a shot)
Yeah, I'm counting with DNPs too. But it's hard to choose who's out. You already pick one, may very well happen, specially to save him for later in the season. But he is our best wing defender right now... If I was a coach I would prefer that kind of management. Would start the season and see who's out and bank on them, specially shooters. Let's say leave out Ellington and Ariza. Then one or 2 months after, I would swap them for Bazemore and Melo. Even our big 3, I would be fine giving them a week off and an extra week to return to form. Just giving everyone a shot and resting legs for a full month with some of the guys. Make them spend more time in the video room, learning and crafting their game. I think we would benefit of that and give longer stretches to THT or use Mckinnie. At the end of the season, they all had their shot and you know with who to count. It's much easier to showcase your abilities in 30min during a month than 10min all season.
To give perspective regarding future additions: Our salary sits at approx 162 mil that includes Deng but not including empty roster sosts, if any. THT's salary was estimated (divided 32mil by 3 years) Our current tax penalty bracket is +$4.25 for every dollar spent and adding Buddy Hield would push us up another 4 brackets. His final cost to the team would be: $149.41 million (that is using staggered tiers on the penalty tax) Just adding Jared Dudley with no other changes would cost 13.44 million and 18.84 million if Hield was also traded for.
I still maintain I twice, on different days, with different tweet stories /subjects, saw us winding up at around 200M in tax once the roster is filled out. It was going to be 35M for AC and 70M for him and THT at simililar ballpark salaries.
I saw something similar but it was our total salary of 160 million plus 40 million of luxury tax. Maybe that’s what you saw? no way anyone pays $150m for Buddy Hield
i get all the reactions to the luxury tax implications of various acquisitions, but i just can't get on board with rooting for the owners' wallets. i enjoy the on-court product, and i don't care what it costs, or if our team spends less to get similar results than other teams. i can't imagine caring about this. if we play brooklyn in the finals and they beat us because joe harris goes nuts and our minimum guys didn't deliver, i won't take solace in the fact that technically, joe harris cost them 137 million dollars (even though this is factually incorrect on several levels--at best the amount is spread evenly across the roster as percentage of each player's salary and can't be tagged to one player). this doesn't mean i want buddy hield, but it does mean that i definitely reserve the right to rue our flexibility and lack of quality after the top 3 when we let 20-30 million dollars worth of player value walk out the door just because we kicked a** on the minimum market.
I understand this mentality and it’s fair. I don’t totally agree with it though. The economics of sport has to work otherwise the on court product eventually falls apart. If we drastically blow up the luxury tax for one year and make a large loss, it’ll mean that we won’t be able to pay as much luxury tax in the future years after that. It’s taking success from the future and bringing it into the present. A lot of soccer teams are dealing with this at the moment. A good example is Barcelona, they had incredible success and didn’t balance their books, and now with the best player in the world they can’t fill out the team around him. Other examples are the Italian teams, who suffered a tough decade after dominating the 90s and early 2000s.
I don't imagine that the owners of the Lakers will get poorer. LA will always be profitable, specially when we have a big 3. This is a non-topic. You work with the cap and try to assemble the best team to win. It will always payoff in a market like ours. I understand that point for Utah or San Antonio. LA? Please... Even the Warriors have crazy salaries and we make more money than them
interesting perspective. can't or won't, though? i'm not familiar with soccer's bargaining agreement, but really nothing prevents a team from blowing through the tax in the nba. so, as the warriors are proving, you can just keep doing it as long as you're willing to pay. taking away the full MLE ended up being the "don't throw me in that briar patch" move for the nba (how many teams just sat on those, regardless of tax status?). as long as you don't do anything that hardcaps you, you can basically operate with complete impunity. also, the lakers have nearly fully clean books in two years. it's also weird to me that we offered schroder a long-term deal at big money that would have exceeded what we're paying now without making other additions. what changed in the interim to make us more cost-conscious?
It’s funny to think, but the lakers owners are actually some of the poorest in the league with a lot of their net worth coming from the value of the Lakers. But if the lakers aren’t profitable - ie: running a huge luxury tax - then they can’t top them up to cover that. We’re a large market team with small market owners. And if it was a non topic, they’d just trade for a bad contract pseudo star with Schroder in a S&T. Ballmer would because $200m in luxury tax is nothing to him. Schroder would want the money, the other team would want to get out from under a bad contract and we’d want to field the best team. But we cant afford it.
i'm not even certain it works for the small market teams, tbh. the ownership groups are incredibly rich, almost in the "too big too fail" sense. they can always count on selling at a huge profit relative to purchase price at worst. and i'm pretty sure they get to borrow against the franchise value to create more venture capital in other areas. i always thought the "we're losing money!" stuff was just disingenuous garbage. if this were true, people would have a hard time selling franchises, and they most certainly do not. because operating at a profit is just a side bonus from owning these teams.
When it comes to Barca, they can’t. From my limited understanding, they have a billion dollars in debt and have run out of operational cash flow from poor economics. They’ll blame covid for killing them, but their rival Real Madrid made 30m profit last season and has little to no debt. I’m not arguing that we can’t. I’m arguing that we shouldn’t because eventually it catches up to you and you can’t. I just think the economics is important, paying tens of millions to hundreds of millions in luxury tax will eventually catch up to you in the product you’re fielding. Right now we are a top 2 constructed roster and I don’t see the necessity to take anymore economic risk. The major thing that changed is we took Russ on thats almost twice the cost of Schroder’s contract offer. So we can assume the moves we would of made with Schroder instead of Russ are different. Anyway, just a different point of view!
Are we already in the much higher “repeater tax” bracket …. we paid some tax last year? If not then next year will be a real b****. And if we are already it gets even nastier I think? So there’s that as well.
yeah, tbh, i simply don't prefer the 3 max star route anyway. i thought we (and the clippers) were smarter than the nets in that we wisely/luckily invested in two bona fide max guys (ok, PG is a stretch there), and had depth that allowed us to be nimble in trades going forward. that's gone now, and we depend on vet mins and buyouts and stuff. and we can do that effectively, but we're incredibly exposed. something bad happens, and there's zero pivoting.
