2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

Yup. I wanted the Lakers to draft Exum, Smart or LaVine. I liked Vonleh more than Randle because of his potential to play the 5, his 7-4 wing span, and his potential to be a floor spacing big. Also, better defense than Randle. Randle was more of the safe pick though.

 

Yup. T-Rex arms with the way he runs...

Also.. Vonleh had some huge mitts.

 

AD and LeBron should stfu and just play and not have a say in player acquisitions after last season

 

cries in vetmins.

 

I remember at the time some were saying he (Randle) should go top 3, which is about right more like 3-4. Obviously, in hindsight, Jokic and Embid should have gone #1 and #2 over Wiggins and I would personally have selected Randle over Wiggins @ #3 then Wiggs, Marcus Smart, then you got guys like Bogdanovic, Joe Harris, Dante Exum should have gone high as he did except in hindsight as he was the bust of draft.

 

Thats right, he kind of slided down and I guess the Lakers basically saw it as an opportunity to grab a player at #7 that was supposed to go in the top 5.

 

i was happy that randle fell to us and was looking forward to either him, smart, or gordon falling to us.

i felt like all three would have long nba careers, and that looks to be accurate several years later.

thank god we were 7th and not later, as it got wild after that and most of the guys slated in the 8+ spots ended up being...not great.

there were some folks on this forum pretty jazzed about lavine, but i wrote it off a ucla-homerism at the time. they were right about him, though!

 

Man, Jokic @41 is crazy. Was there ever a MVP that was picked lower in the draft? I can't imagine it.

 

Right. Our team was just terrible last year and most of our signings were bad.

 

Don’t cry. Remember, we’re going to have cap space.

 

the big man draft market is crazy volatile. jokic getting picked at 41 leads to a guy like pappagiannis getting picked way too high, which will lead to the next jokic type being picked in the late 1st again or even second round again.

i think gms have taken the "big guys are dead" thing to heart, as you rarely see them drafted that high anymore, and you often have bigs outperform their draft position as a result. for whatever reason, a todd mccullough failure is a bigger deal to people than a jerome robinson failure.

it's also funny because almost all good teams play at least one traditional center type a good amount of minutes.

 

i remember a lot of us wanted exum and the rumors were that he wanted to play for the lakers

dodged that bullet

 

Lol. Miss those days.

 

Lol Dante Exum used to be a Rob Pelinka client. Maybe we can sign him for the minimum now.

 

He was a 5/2/2 guy career here and now is barely on some team in Serbia ...Dante can't have our minimum

 

it's sort of amazing how ineffective he was as an nba player. i mean, i could see glimpses of why people were interested in him. it just shows how small the difference can be between an nba player and a complete bust. and again highlights what a crapshoot the draft process generally is.

 

nice [Todd MacCulloch] reference... very Robert "Tractor" Traylor-esque... initially I was going to name drop Bryant "Big Country" Reeves, but he at least had some semblance of a career before injuries/weight issues pretty much ended him.

 

it's the big slow white guys that are just impossible to live down, which is why jokic went #41, imo. you miss on one of those in the lottery, your career's over. everyone forgives you for drafting undersized athletic wings with little discernible basketball skill, though. it's like the literal size of the mistake matters.

 

last part was interesting to me. suggests that bkn was the jaylen brown leak.

 

I think their plan is to leak the details of each package to act as an agent of chaos, create disgruntled stars on the other team, and strengthen their position in trade negotiations.