Bump. Rob I’m not letting you hide on page 2. You let Bron and AD talk you into this mess. You need to fix it. This roster ain’t it.
In fairness to Rob we haven’t been even remotely close to having the squad he assembled for 2021-22 available to play, between the myriad of injuries and covid protocols. Plus as per his usual MO there was one roster spot left open for the usual waiver deadline contingencies, which had to be temporarily filled by Bradley because of the non availability of so many players.
You can't account for covid, but you can account for old players not being available for every game. You CAN prepare a team to have ample players at each position to help fill in... you know, at least a couple guys over 6 foot f***ing 4 who can guard the perimeter. How this team was built, everyone had to play the best ball of their careers OR everything had to click and bounce our way. There was no room for error and I think that's shoddy roster construction.
Lakers were blowing 20 point leads to the Thunder before the outbreak. Lakers have sucked all year. Even their wins have been weak being that they have had the easiest schedule in the NBA. Lakers are a medicore team. They are 34 games in now, no more prep time to get right. This is who they are.
Lebron wanted Russ but he also wanted to keep Caruso. I’m also not sure he told the front office to bring in a bunch of guys under 6’4”. Rob and the rest of the front office definitely have to shoulder a good bit of blame here.
once the russ decision was made (largely by lebron and AD, imo), management needed to have a better plan than "sign all the sgs", which was reminiscent of the first lebron season of "sign all the ballhandlers". pretty much every single one of us liked ariza and thought we needed another one. pretty much every single one of us wanted to keep caruso even if it meant no nunn (irony!). i think i was one of the few that was not at all sure about dj, though. how the FO couldn't see that we needed a center who could get away from the basket on offense is beyond me. one dwight/dj type, one guy who was either a shooting c or an athlete (like claxton for bkn). anyway, there's still a chance to dump dj and baze, sign stanley johnson and hope a center shakes loose in buyout season (NOT DRUMMOND). but yeah, it will be too late, imo.
The one small glimmer of hope we have is that most of the West is also pretty lackluster with crappy records. Avoid the play in game, manage a couple of roster moves and a first round match up against Utah or Memphis isn’t so bad if everyone is healthy. that’s a lot given how the season has played out but I have to believe our luck will change at some point or there really is no point in continuing to watch
Apparently, according to Kyle Goon, Rob joined the team on the plane to their road trip. Guess so he can fire Vogel after the Magic loss or whenever else he wants to during the guaranteed s*** show ahead on this Grammy trip. I wonder if Rambis snuck in with the luggage.
Robs gonna try and tell some profound story on the flight and they’ll all be singing kumbaya before they land
The prodigal son RW left LA, spent his inheritance, went whoring, came back to his hometown to be embraced by his father, and all was forgiven. or Lazarus RW died, and needs to be raised from the dead. Noah Noah had to take two of each animal on the Ark, both male and female. We already have two Robins. (One has a hurt p****, so we know who the female is) RW is a lion, but instead of Simba, Scar tied him up and took his place. or ....
Of the story of the scape goat The chief priest (Head Coach), prays over all the people(Team) and their sins, and he lays his hand on the head of the goat before releasing it into the wilderness, thereby sending the sins of the many (Team) onto the one. therefore: Scapegoat
Cain and Abel God: you must make a sacrifice(For the team) that I will tell you. Abel: Offers the sacrifice God (Coach) wants (Abel is all other Laker players) Cain: Offers what he thinks to be an adequate sacrifice, but has it rejected by God. (Coach) this makes Cain mad, so he asks Abel to follow him into the field where he carves a triple double into his dome Cain is then destined to wander the earth championshipless for all eternity
Feels strange to me how many are coming to Frank’s defense and suggesting he is being set up as a scapegoat by the executive decision makers… yet many of the same people are making Rob out to be the scapegoat. I think Rob has done a great job. It’s apples and oranges, but I think Rob is better at his job than Frank is at his. I know that sounds crazy considering the position we’re in, but hear me out. Yes we have roster construction issues, but I can’t put all that blame on Rob. It really feels like a lot of that is coming from above him, from Jeanie, Rambii, Harris, etc. If we operate under that assumption that it was ownership who wanted to pull the trigger on the Russ trade, and ownership who didn’t want to pony up for Caruso … well then all the follow up moves were just about as good as you can ask for. Once we got to the point where we only had mini-MLE and veteran’s minimum to offer, what other realistic options did we have? Yes you can say that on paper we needed more 3&D guys … but who was actually available that fit that bill and met our price range? And please dear God nobody say James Ennis… In almost every scenario, I think Rob has done a good job at navigating the cap despite limited options, while balancing the demands/restrictions from ownership. Most of us were pretty happy with the rosters we put together heading into each of the past 3 seasons. Hindsight is 20/20. If you want to argue that he should have had the balls to deny ownership and Klutch … that’s just not a realistic expectation given the persona’s involved and power dynamics entrenched into our organization. Which again, is not Rob’s fault. Only person in the world who would have had the gravitas to step in and have the final say over all the other personalities in the FO would have been Kobe. And man that would have been the dream scenario. Kobe as POBO, Rob as GM.
If that were the case and Vogel was scheming enough, he could bribe the pilot to fake a flying emergency where the only fix to avoid disaster is to jettison the luggage.
