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

i picked beasley because they probably want to keep him less. i'd take vanderbilt, too.

 

I mostly agree with you as a general philosophy that we’ve been too gung-ho on only seeking the home run deals … but in this case I kinda get it.

At least in the sense of when it comes to a trade with both FRPs. I haven’t paid too much attention to some of the latest reporting, but my sense is that other teams are still holding us over a barrel and demanding both picks.

And I’ve come to terms that for a trade sending out both FRPs… yeah it better be “the big one”. And I don’t think any of the rumored packages out there from Indiana, Utah, Charlotte, San Antonio, etc meet that criteria.

Now if I’m mistaken and ANY of those packages are currently on the table in exchange for a reasonable amount of draft compensation, it would be malpractice to not pull the trigger in the delusional hope of a superstar package suddenly emerging.

 

to me, these are just intentional leaks from our side to the fans: don't expect a turner/hield for two 1sts type deal. ain't happenin'. you want multiple future unprotected firsts, show me your allstar (we know this isn't happening, either). now that that's out of the way, let's talk about us taking on some of the guys you want to move and you not getting said picks. or we can talk in january when we'll be asking for your picks to do the same deal, because our season will then be over so why do you any salary favors when we can just steal whomever your favorite UFA is on your roster. i think this was part of why we moved THT for bevs, tbh. to tell pritchard to jump up his own a**. if we want turner, we'll just sign him, and you'll get nothing.

 

i mean, we haven't even tried russ off the bench yet. and we haven't played a single bad team yet, either. i need to see more.

and i think rob was quite clear that those picks are on the table, and a lot of this stuff is misdirection. we're not moving them for hield/turner, but i really don't think that moving one of them for that or some other deal of similar caliber is just a non-starter. that would be in direct contradiction to words that came directly from rob's mouth, imo.

 

Brooklyn are 1 - 4

wonder what are the odds of them deciding to go ahead with blowing the team up and revisit the Kyrie trade.

 

I think LA would hate Kyrie almost immediately. The endless quotes from his pressers would be nauseating.

 

I think they're waiting for their shooters to get on the floor and for Ben to not be afraid of his own shadow. One of those will happen.

 

When the Lakers 1st got AD, I was expecting him to be a 27-28 pts and 12-13 rebounds a game type player. AD is in his prime, he should be carrying the Lakers, but he doesn't control the ball like Lobrawn and Brick. AD should be more dominant in this small ball era, you would like to see him post up more, develop more moves around the basket like Pau and not shoot so many bricks from 3 point land, his threes look like a WestBrick 3, breaking the back board type of shots.

 

honestly it often seems like he's afraid of physical contact maybe due to injury history.

he also doesn't seem like the brightest guy at maneuvering his body compared to someone like Jokic who is far less athletic but almost never misses games.

 

jokic doesn't jump, nor does he leave the paint on defense for the most part. he doesn't get hurt because he moves less.

and notice nobody puts a smaller guy on AD. because he kills them. if he has space in the paint, he'll go there. he almost never does here.

like us, they're smart and not going to panic 5 games into the season. and kyrie's played pretty well for them. he kept them in the game last night all by himself while durant sat and even was working on defense. like us, the nets haven't played a bad team yet. when the schedule has evened out and they've seen a couple of their guys back, my guess is they won't be desperate.

now, if the deadline comes, and they're in 8th place and kyrie's grumbling, i could see it. i just doubt that's how it goes. i'd be less surprised if they just recovered to be a top-5 team in east and kyrie signs an extension during the season.

 

What about a smaller trade: Nunn and Bev for Gordon from Houston?

Straight swap. No picks. Gordon isn't great defensively but offers way more shooting, can play some ball handler on pick in roll situations, etc.

 

AD has been playing great. A little annoyed to be honest hearing some of the narratives. Saw some people calling him lazy for struggling to get up and down the court in Denver, when clearly the back was affecting him. Seeing videos trying to show how much explosiveness he’s lost compared to his early years… but honestly he looks pretty much the same to me (at least in bursts, not when his back tightens up). He’s managed to remain very productive despite the back, and I’m hopeful the back won’t be a long term thing.

With that said… I am becoming increasingly intrigued by the idea of trading AD and/or Lebron and blowing it up. It’s nothing against AD, just a reality check of where we’re at and what assets we have to improve. If this team isn’t a contender and we don’t have the assets to realistically become a contender, what is this all for? Are we really okay with being a play-in team for another few years and delaying a re-build just so we can squeeze as many ticket sales and record breaking events from an aging Lebron?

Blowing it up to replenish our assets and embark on a long-term deliberate rebuild would at least set our expectations and give us something to look forward to. It would actually give me a lot more hope and faith in Pelinka if he had the balls to do it.

If we’re going to make a reactionary move to the small sample size of these first few games, just wanted to point out that Gordon is shooting 30% so far this year. Obviously that’s better than what our team currently has, but it’s still pretty concerning especially when you account for the inevitable drop in shooting once he’d become a Laker.

Honestly I’m not a fan of selling low on Nunn right now. He has a good stroke, he’s getting to good spots (and can consistently get to good spots on a regular basis). Of all the players on our team that are struggling, he’s the guy who I’d most be able to chalk up to a temporary cold streak, needing time to develop rhythm with a new team after a year off, etc. It just doesn’t make sense to me why he’s been struggling as much as he has, and I do think he’ll bounce back and be a productive player for us soon.

 

agree with most of hj's points above.

re: gordon--on paper, i like him better than nunn/bev, so i'd consider. not sure what houston gains there, though, and no way i send anything more than a late 2nd rounder.

and hj's point stands more generally: we're quick to react to our own struggles but ignore those of other teams/players. gordon is old, small, historically fragile, and shooting poorly this year. if he was a laker right now, there would be 58 trade proposals sending him out.

 

i think lebron's extension is affecting my AD thoughts. we can't build around AD with lebron making 50 million next year. how long are we pushing that out? how empty will the chest be when it's time to try to do that.

i was really hoping lebron would put winning over his contract at this point, but he didn't, so it creates a weird universe of choices for everyone.

 

yeah, it's only happening if lebron asks out. i think that's unlikely, but becomes more and more likely with each loss, tbh.

 

Yeah, I went to basketball reference, too.

Bev is shooting 18 percent and Nunn has given us squat since he's suited up. Funny enough, 30 percent would be close to percent shooter the way we're shooting.

Think of any player that makes $22 million a year. That's about what Nunn/Bev would bring back.