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

If he finished his career in LA and won a ring, it would change everything for him.

 

First thing that popped in my head after reading that quote. Lol

 

bkn did a good job digging out of the hole created by that horrific boston trade and were slowly trending in the right direction when they decided to completely abandon the "spurs-northeast" approach and go with the lakers approach getting irving and durant. it has not worked. the lakers approach barely works for the lakers.

anyway, not sure what kd's talking about. lebron and AD would have killed for joe harris, patty mills, and seth curry instead of vet mins the past couple years. you got a superstar running mate. two of them last year! when you're a star and make 50 million a year, you have to carry weight.

 

Nets had an amazing rebuild. They were set to build a consistent contender team. I'm super glad that the 3-star model have been huge failures, it's good for the league.
Unfortunately, I don't see the Lakers going through other route in the upcoming years, especially with the current ownership.

 

Pincus talks through some realistic potential trade partners in a KD trade






If only the Lakers had Brook, he'd be great for spacing. Oh wait....oops.

 

yeah, seems we're all in on a bad strategy. as i intimated above, it has worked for us (and basically nobody else except maybe miami and the one year of boston), but i'm not optimistic that it's the path. two stars and a strong cast or one super duper star and a tailor-made roster are the ways to go, imo.

 

Yep. It's even more weird because depth has became a thing considering the amount of injuries and load management.
Also the overall quality of players have increased which means that you need to have good lineups out there at all times. Plus, with the amount of scoring going on, often happens for teams to go in a big run and get into double digits lead in a couple of minutes, strengthening the need for more depth in the roster.

Yet, the narrative is still to change. And in our market, I think we will continue to beach for star heavy rosters as a marketing strategy

 

some thoughts:

he mentions toronto but doesn't mention siakam as a natural centerpiece for both salary and talent purposes.

he mentions NO wanting to keep this year's swap with us out of the deal. it would be funny if bkn used that as a key concession to get something else they wanted, then traded us irving for russ and killed the value of that pick lol.

funny that boston put brown way out on the table this summer, but a strong start would have them reconsidering that. it's a long season. if you thought it was a no-brainer then, what's changed?

the idea of us eating simmons for durant is a funny one, too. i could actually see it except we'd be taking on 14 million in the deal. we let caruso walk over half that amount

still mad about that and the zubac trade. just boneheaded stuff that we all called as it happened.

 

Here's a couple interesting notes on the Beal font

1) I forgot he had a NTC, so he can pick his destination if he's willing to play the villain role in DC. Their front office does seem like they want to do right by their star players though.
2) First mention that he's pro playing for a Cali team. That's a step in the right direction towards outright saying get me to LA.

 

feel like we can trump a clippers offer, as washington won't want vet role players with years on their deals, and we have more picks to offer.

warriors could beat us if they're interested, but it would require moving green, thompson, or wiggins in addition to much of their youth. not sure they do that, much like in the durant scenario listed above. sac doesn't even count.

if beal truly wants out, i think we can get him with russ and the two 1sts (maybe a 26 swap on top of them). it would have to be handled much better than the paul george situation, though. at least we have a recent history of working with washington, too.

devil's advocate: he's almost 30, missed half of last yaer, and his numbers have been down across the board for two years. his peak seemed to be about 3-4 years ago. could have the makings of washington robbing us twice in westbrook deals.

but i'd prefer it over 2 1sts for turner and hield.

 

Why Beal, abeer?

He's not a shooter, needs the ball in his hands and as you said he's on the downward trend on his career. He's also in a massive contract and would continue to block us from getting the necessary depth.

A post-Lebron Beal-AD pairing is not awful but with his contract, being prone to injuries and looking like he's not a winning player that can lead a franchise to glory, I don't see it

I'm against that move for both the present and the future

 

i think he is a shooter in that teams have to pay a lot of attention to him. he's also an underrated playmaker and competitor, imo. you'd be banking on him returning to form a bit after a down year-plus.

that said, yes, it's a big gamble. but he's by far the best talent we could nab and a good fit with our other two stars. basically, it's a little like getting kyrie without any of the baggage. if you were in for kyrie, you should be more in for beal, imo.

could blow up, though, yes. still better than turner/hield, which isn't a ceiling raiser to me. future firsts are for current ceiling raisers. we can get serviceable guys without giving up picks.

 

It improves the team’s sputtering offense by a lot but does not address the need for a wing defender or a serviceable big. That's worrisome, unless Rob could find a 3rd team in this hypothetical to loop in where we dump Nunn, Bev, and a couple 2nd rounders for at least one of those needs.

Now find a way to get me Beal and Turner, that's really extends our competitive window if they want to keep AD around post the Bron era.

That's a real pipe unless we utilize every pick swap Silver will allow and even then...

 

Yeah, I like Beal and his fit with the team. I think he'd make an immediate difference. I'd also expect a bump in his play being surrounded by AD and LeBron even if some of his stats went down. I think if we can make a corresponding move to bring in a wing and Thomas Bryant can contribute we are in pretty good shape with a trade like that.

 

Beal and Turner would be great IMO.

 

i feel like a serviceable big can be had for bevs/nunn at some point. i don't think the wing defender people want is coming under any circumstance, tbh. they're valuable--not many sellers out there.

assuming sacramento crashes at some point, bev/nunn for barnes works. we'd have to give them a couple 2nds, probably.

schroder
beal
barnes
lebron
AD

with walker, bryant, brown, and reaves off the bench is a big improvement, and barnes being big helps offset AD being slightly undersized at center to some degree. we'd be super thin at pg after moving russ, bevs, and nunn, though. reaves and walker aren't really pgs, so an injury to schroder could be doom again like it hurt in 2021.

i don't know. like i've said, no easy fixes with where we are.

edit: btw, we could move jones/bev for barnes, and then move nunn for mcgee (who really isn't working in dallas), which could add some flexibility to the above. taking on some salary, though.

 

I thought about Barnes too. Just wondering what the feeling is there toward us after backing out of the Hield deal.

We'd be thin at the point but LeBron could run the offense at times and we might be able to land another back up or call up Pippen jr or something.

That line up could compete with any team in a 7 game series IMO.

 

i see no path to that.

yeah, it sucks. russ trade keeps on giving.

 

Ending up with Beal would be a good recovery for the front office.

I'm still good with finding solid role players though.

 

i think i could be happy with lots of things. and it sounds weird, but how we look for the next couple weeks will actually factor pretty heavily for me. maybe it shouldn't, but it does. i feel like we had pretty decent excuses for the early record, and those will be removed very soon.