What would it take for the FO to admit they're not getting the big names? Because the worst is happening right now. They promised us something this summer and they're failing.
Front office needs to embrace the fact that this a real rebuild. Still trying to push the whole "we don't rebuild we reload" theme and it's just not working.
Lakers FO is caught in a tough spot: Top FA's are interested enough to take meetings, but don't necessarily like our unproven talent enough to sign on the dotted line when push comes to shove. If you're Mitch & Co. you can't not take the meetings, because you know setting foot in that room gives you a shot, but at the same time, we can only play to our strengths, and right now that isn't the roster (until we see how our young guys develop). I was frankly shocked when LMA even bumped us into contention for him pre-free agency. Didn't see much of a fit at all unless he absolutely loved SoCal and was super high on our young guys. San Antonio & Portland make waaaaaay more sense for him from a basketball standpoint. But we get the meeting and we try to dazzle him with the tangible things we can prove. On the court? It's all about how great we believe our guys will be, but there's no hard data to point to in the ever-so-hyped "analytics" department. Anyway, we take our shots at the big guys because we have to. Let our young guys show they're the real deal, and Free Agents will be signing here. Period.
Howard Beck ✔ @HowardBeck Monroe met with 4 teams: Bucks, Knicks, Lakers, Blazers. All offered the max, I'm told. Chose Bucks because they're the most playoff ready.
soooo are there any decent big men in next year's draft? oh wait, we probably won't even have a 1st round pick wow this has been a @#$%&*! disaster. time to go all in on harris or lopez. unfortunately it looks like that's where we're at laker fans. big name FA's would rather play in milwaukee than in LA
No idea They're crapping the bed and i really hope that there's someone that will step up and say we f***ed up this is whats wrong and this is how we'll fix it But if there's yes men all around then idk what to think Im looking forward to summer league hoping our rookies will impress us because if things dont change its gonna be another long season
Love how every report basically discredits the previous one Didnt someone else report we didnt offer the max but according to this guy we did Dont know what to believe
Medina is an LA writer who said we didn't offer the max. I don't know what he'd get from lying. This guy is a national guy who would love to make LA and NY look bad.
Reporters know that saying something bad about the Lakers equals clicks. That's pretty much what Kobe's tweet was referring to.
Yes. I forget the source, but I know I read somewhere we didn't offer him the full max. I'm actually finding this more funny than anything; Lopez will probably sign somewhere else. I can't fault the Front Office completely. This is what happens when you tank. However, there are still some quality players out there. You have to go after right now. DJ is not coming, LA said no, and Monroe is going to Milwaukee. We need to move on...
Pretty sure it was Bresnahan at the Times who said we didn't make a max contract offer, but your point is still very valid.
Curious about what you guys think...if the FO could have foreseen that we would whiff this bad in FA on big men, you think they take Okafor over over Russell? Especially since the guard market hasn't dried up as quickly?
Field a competitive team and the FA's will come. At this point the Lakers are a big question mark. Give a year to Russell / Clarkson / Randle and hope they're damn good enough to show these FA's we're headed in the right direction. I mean "brand" be damned, even he turned down the "mighty" Knicks and Phil's legendary status.
CHILL OUT, GUYS! For free agents, we had nothing to offer whatsoever. I'm a Laker fan, and if I was Aldridge at his age, I wouldn't come here. I'd be 33 before the team was ready to honestly compete. We sealed our fate two summers ago when we resigned Kobe to that ludicrous contract, then further sealed it with Byron Scott as our coach last summer. WithOUT those two albatrosses, we can sign two guys to max deals and share a vision of modern basketball. That would be an actual sales pitch. Our sales pitch amounted to, "Come to LA for extra circular activities. As far as basketball, we have a completely washed up sg who still inexplicably controls the team on the court and hoists up 30 shots a game, a coach who is stuck in the 80s, and young players are all still young enough to be in college." Why would a 30 yr old come to that? We had no chance. The media made us believe we might have a chance and we all fell for it. There is nothing "wrong with us." The new CBA has just leveled the playing field to where the city and team are completely secondary to the players on that team. We have some very promising young talent. We have to build through the draft like every other team in the NBA does. Even Shaq didn't come here with nothing on the roster. The team we had then was a young Ceballos, Jones and Van Exel who had already proven to be all-star caliber talents. They won 50 games the previous season. That's far more than we are offering now. We could have probably gotten Monroe if we rolled in with a max offer and told him you will be the center piece of our offensive attack and join the lineage of awesome centers in Lakers' past. But we didn't even make an offer to the guy. And ya know what? That's OK. He's a horrible fit for this team. We have good-great scouts and talent evaluators. But our salesmen trying to sell encyclopedias door to door.
Russell was the best player in the draft in my opinion. I was never sold on KAT or Okafor. Russell's game looks so much like Steph's to me
No, I don't think they would have drafted Okafor still. Reports said that the big men FA had nothing to do with their decision to draft Russell.
