D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Opted In!

I think to say he was traded “only” to accommodate signing Lebron is a bit of revisionist history.

at the time, no way could he stay. That’s 1 legitimate reason. Not getting along with Rudy is a legit 2nd reason potentially. I’m just saying time reveals all, and all truth will be revealed. He’s up for a new contract. Literally anything can happen, but I do think he wants to be here. And then agents get involved looking for max dollars for their client.

 

D'Angelo is an excellent player," Johnson said, per ESPN.com's Baxter Holmes. "He has the talent to be an All-Star. We want to thank him for what he did for us. But what I needed was a leader. I needed somebody also that can make the other players better and also [somebody] that players want to play with."

 

He has noticeably matured, and I think all fans like what they see and are hoping for the best.

 

Magic also thought trading a very young starting caliber Center in Zubac, for Pennie’s on the dollar, was a great idea.
His talent evaluation skills just plain suuuuuck.

 

yeah, but i mean...everyone knew that russell wasn't just being dumped. it was the only way to create max cap space that year, iirc--use him to dump mozgov.

 

just like most other all-time great athletes. they pretty much never make good coaches or execs

west is the most obvious exception to this as he might be a better exec than he was a player

 

It all worked out in the end. We got Lebron with the cap space, traded for AD, and got a chip. Meanwhile, DLO matured as a player and as a person. The timeline did not align back then. It does now.

 

D Lo may be like LO, not a great 1st or 2nd option but could be a great 3rd option. If the Lakers make the playoffs have a nice run, then the question would be if would the Lakers sign him to a max contract for years. Lebron may not have juice left in the tank, and the Lakers may ask DLo to play a more important role.

 

We won't offer him a max contract. That's not his market value. He's coming off a $29M x 4 year contract but GSW slightly over-payed back then because they wanted to retain him as a trade chip. I'd say around $24-28M is fair value for DLO.

 

Ozzie Newsome was also/is a great exec: surprised he didn't get more credit but probably has something to do with him being more loyal to Modell than Cleveland.
He's hated in these parts but no question AInge has been very good as well. But I suppose he wasn't all-time great although he was a freak multi-sport talent
Bird was good as well.

Magic and MJ: uggh.

 

I don't know what it takes, but if he keeps this up and possibly even gets better (considering he did this with less than a week on the team), we should absolutely do what it takes to keep him as the 3rd guy behind Bron and AD.

 

Yeah but their intention was to also trade Wiggins and his play made them reconsider.

 

In Magic’s defense Muscala is sometimes an unbelievable 3 point shooter. Unfortunately that “sometimes” is only when he plays against us.

 

Moose is in Boston now.

 

Never knew he did this

 

it was a good hair day

 

Apparently DLO was frustrated with Gobert's bad hands, in particular his inability to catch a bounce pass.

Conley makes a lot of sense for them because of that gross overpay for Gobert. They're beyond pot committed and have to do everything they can to make that work. Conley has chemistry with him and that pair had some success together.

They also desperately needed a vet voice in the locker room. Conley fills that role. DLO doesn't and we don't need him to.

 

Kwame Effect

 

yeah, it's likely to be at the upper end of that. i pegged brunson's deal as a good comp. having him on a deal like that would be good going forward. it would leave us with a lot of space to play with once lebron (and possibly AD) is off the books, and as salaries explode, 25-30 million is the price for third option/semi-star types, so he'll be on a good market value contract in case we need to trade.