All the league has been injured. They are all run into the ground? It just shows your bias when after a devastating news come up that send our hopes to the trash, your immediate reaction is to come to Rob's thread state that he's trade deadline moves mean nothing because of a player's injury. Tells a lot wouldn't you agree?
To have this roster at season's beginning may have delay AD's and Lebron's injuries , completely prevent it ? Don't think so One is injury prone , the other has a mileage on his body longer than Pippen's arms It what it is
Rob has done a great job of scrambling around his two best players, staying hurt all the time IMO. He's acquired enough contracts to replace one of them, if it comes to that. AD was 1st Team All NBA in New Orleans, that's why we traded for him. He has to step his game up, he has the talent . I guess we'll see what running the offense through AD looks like for a month or so.
But this roster was IMPOSSIBLE in the beginning of the season. Utah didn't want Russ. They didn't want to pay his salary in full. Price for Russ 1 FRP just to dump him plus they wanted additional picks for Conley, Beasley and Vando. Utah and Wolves literally made the biggest trade of the offseason and Conley didn't went to Wolves. The need to trade for Conley came during the season due to Gobert's fiasco and DLo being unfit with Rudy. We can't rewrite history after the fact. We had terrible deals rumoured in the summer and got a near perfect trade for Russ by the deadline. We had to wait. We waited and got the best outcome possible for the future of the franchise. Now, we got terribly unlucky and it sucks. But we did the trades we had to do when we could do them. We move forward
I get curious and peak from time to time if I see such a thing, but I think it's been a long time since it's happened. Not too much worth getting worked up about these days.
yeah, that's ignoring that, as pika said, we couldn't have possibly made a trade anywhere near as good as this one any time before we made it. impossible. lebron and AD are going to miss a minimum of 20 games per year. just plan on it. it's why you try to build a supporting cast that can weather that level of storm. i do think it will be good to see how the new acquisitions help us face this kind of adversity--though it's not a super fair test, as they haven't had any training camp, etc.
OK, let's try this another way that might clarify my post... I love the moves Rob did at the deadline. They were great. Not one single complaint with what we got (only wish we would've dumped LW). They not only give us depth, proper slotting, youth, and addressed every need we had at the deadline; they set us up next year if we want. Rob even mentioned "pre-(free) agency" when discussing the moves. But players don't play for next season and their bodies don't understand that either, they play for now. We did not have the proper balance or NBA talent level when we entered the season. Ham did not adjust his ask from AD to reflect the roster. For a player who misses games every year, asking them to be a top 5 player offensively and a top 2 player defensively while having zero help from teammates is not great. AD was that before the injury, but it was easy to see before our eyes, that was not sustainable. Not for AD, not for anyone. I don't even think Antetokounmpo could do what AD was doing, he has help defensively and a lot of it. Then when AD went out, Bron had to do unworldly things to keep us afloat. You can't expect a 38 year old Bron to be able to hold up from that. He's a one of one, but that's just too much. Sure, you can blame coaching, but when dealing with a rookie HC, I'm going to expect the front office to set them up for success. ... and Rob did, just way too late. I think holding on to Russ till the deadline was the right play. But we could've upgraded elsewhere earlier. Some combo of Bev, JTA, LW, Nunn, Gabriel, and 2nds could've been moved earlier. Sure the cost would've been higher, but depending on how severe the injury, that might have been a small price to pay. If it keeps him out the rest of the season, if he misses any time next year or God forbid if he's done...I would've given up two unprotected firsts to prevent that.
not sure i agree with the bolded, which was the main issue. i don't give up two distant future unprotected firsts for one year of 39 year old lebron, who hasn't been healthy in years.
I will be in favor of whatever it takes to postpone the Baby Lakers 2.0. I can't take another near decade of the grow and dump of Randle, BI, DLO (the early years), Ball and so on. Bron is still *that* guy You don't need him to play the full season, but you also can't ask him to be the best player in the league at this age for nearly 40 minutes a game. Hopefully it's just 2-3 weeks and he's back out there, no long term damage. But if it's more than that, then this potentially affects next season too. Again, this will be an easier convo when we know more but that doesn't make me any less uneasy about the game of roulette we tried to play this year and are now paying for it.
Agh..yes. Now that was an aggressive attacking post. Patron and Jameson are a wicked combination, when contemplating bad news.
if he's seriously injured, it justifies the strategy even more. i don't get how AD is roasted repeatedly for not playing but lebron isn't. lebron's old. so? we're not paying him like he's old. we're paying him like that poll is accurate.
I think we need to see what Lebron's injury and timeline for recovery is before judging the FO decision to sit tight until the deadline. It seemed like a bad gamble to me all season but then the deals we made were really outstanding for now and for versatility and youth going forward in the future. I'm hoping we can miraculously pull this one out: that AD and the new crew can play good enough ball to at least get to the playin, and Lebron can rejoin us some time in the remaining season/post season.
The lack of signing a backup center has cost the Lakers at least a shot at 2 games now: Houston and Chicago. Just doesn't make sense that they just don't get some sort of big body out there with Bamba out. As good as Wenyen in his role the dude is skinny PF who can't shoot and it becomes an obvious mismatch against some teams