Somehow I just don't picture our Resident Man of Academia doing this: Soooiee! On topic: judging by the Hibbert pics... Boys, I thinks we lassoed ourselves a big 'un. A mountain in sneakers...
teams with cap space get the Room Exception. Worth roughly 2.8M this season I believe. doesn't have the handles or passing ability, but defensively he looked as good as anyone in a relatively small sample size.
You know man, you're one of my favorites but come on... you know coming in that we have an incomplete roster, the FO will be at a disadvantage on wooing Aldridge, who wanted to play for his home state and with a contender. The craziness of expectations came after the FO went and tried to change LMA's preference. I don't remember you or anyone here having LMA as their primary target acquisition before the FO gave it the old schoolboy try these past few days. It's okay if you won't give the FO credit when they did everything to get Aldridge including getting a second meeting when other teams could not even have one. When the next FA period comes, with hopefully a full roster (meaning our young guys and Hibbert pan out) the FO armed with this fact and the overpowering mystique of the franchise, I have no doubts that Durant or if anyone else can refuse our advances. And yeah, I told you so...
So our plan is always to go for FAs, probably strike out, and take dump off players in return? That's also incompetent. If it wasn't for some luck/strong drafting this rebuild would take even longer. My point stands even with Hibbert aboard. This FO needs change.
Of course they do. Their presentations were brought publicly to light on how inadequate they are in some areas. The FO needs change and Hibbert doesn't change that.
Not many people mentioned LMA earlier because not many people expected him to leave. It's kind of like how not many people are mentioning Marc Gasol. Many people want him, but there's no point in mentioning him when there's no chance in getting him. When Matthews went down, the Blazers fell apart. After that, they traded away Batum. The probability of Aldridge leaving kept increasing. Reports then said that the Lakers were one of the teams LMA was interested in. Remember that LMA did not even bother meeting with the Knicks because that team sucked. This tells us that Aldridge at least saw something on the Lakers. He had an open mind. When the possibility became real, people were excited, but the FO didn't deliver so it's natural to be disappointed. It's not just Aldridge. The FO met with and failed to convince every single free agent. We'll see how things progress, but as is, we're still not a good team. We really need our picks to pan out.
I think the, " I told you so" crowd is a little off in their interpretations of what, "The sky is falling" crowd is whining about Perception - We are mad because we lost out on LMA, DJ, Monroe Reality (Speaking for myself here) - I'm not mad because we didn't get those guys. I've had multiple posts saying you have to have talent to get talent and since we have no building blocks to hang our hat on yet, the situation was pretty apparent. The problem that I have and still have even after the awesome Hibbert move, is that we didn't do our homework on these guys. We had an entire year to do our homework on these guys knowing they were going to be FA. What their personalities were, how they want to play, who they like to play with, etc. And when time came to really nail these meetings, we fell flat on our face. We used the same presentation we used for Melo and for Dwight. Problem is LMA isn't Melo or Dwight he wasn't about the off court glam and fame, he wanted to talk basketball and we were showing pie charts of his earning potential over 5 years. The FO was meh with the pitch with Dwight, I don't hold that against them because Dwight is a douche and he wanted out before he got here. Melo we actually nailed the meeting and went from 5th to 2nd on his list, that's impressive. But then we went an gave the same thing to a guy with a completely different personality. That's pure ignorance and lack of preparation and that is what everyone is ticked off about. We bombed a meeting that we had ample time to knock out of the park. When it came time to talk about LMA main points, we were left looking down at our shoes, while the 17 poindexters in the room were talking about LMA's next sitcom. Moving on to DJ, reports are conflicting, but consistent in that we were tired from flying all over the US. This is one of the main FA, perk the eff up for 2 hours and show him you want him here. Also, we go all out with 50 dudes in the room for LMA and send what 2 to see DJ and Monroe? If I'm those two, I'm a little ticked and put off I'm not getting the special treatment. What this all boils down for to me is preparation, delivery and personnel going into these meetings. Dallas/Hou/SA/PHX all had everything lined up before they went in, answered all questions, kept the number of people involved low and were well prepared. And it showed. PHX went from not in the conversation to number 2 because they sold the s*** out of the same opportunities that we failed to do. That's what everyone is mad about. The personnel for us fluctuates for each player, we don't have a closer (Pop, Cuban, Riley) and it shows. It's like when you had to give a presentation in high school or college, you knew who prepared for it, knew what questions were coming and then on the other side, you knew who the people were that went half a** and did for the C and move on. By all accounts we are the latter and that is not acceptable. We are the Lakers for eff sake. Too much pride, too much history to be called out and embarrassed for not bringing it with these meetings. That's what ticks me off, that's what ticks everyone. Realistically we don't have a team to get a star right now, but damnit with all the resources we have, we shouldn't be the clown in the room either. They messed up big time this year and next year, when every competitive team has that cap space, we better damn well come prepared to talk to KD and have done our homework or we are going to be embarrassed again. I get it, it's hard to get a star FA to jump ship, but as fans of the team we shouldn't expect anything less than perfection going into those meetings and we aren't getting that right now. The [reparation and effort isn't there and that's what everyone is ticked about.
Not the failure I'm talking about. I'm talking about having a presentation that was publicly mocked which lead to wide ridicule and embarrassed the franchise. It was never about getting the top tier FAs. It was about the way they were exposed as inadequate in areas of their presentation and player awareness. Changes need to be made. I am 100% in favor of the Hibbert move. Everything leading up to it was a travesty to the franchise which now looks like fools across the country and world. Hibbert at the start of FA before all of their problems came to light? Great. Afterwards? Consolation prize and there needs to be changes to their philosophy moving forward. Aldridge and his entourage completely embarrassed us.
They were brought to light by beat writers that have no idea what they're talking about. Hibbert is better than RoLo, Koustos or Biyombo. The results speak for themselves. This front office is the best in the biz.
No its not. You're in denial if you believe this FO didn't make mistakes this summer. I hate to be blunt but it's the truth. I'm not comparing their moves to the maybes. I'm talking about their process. If this is their plan to add FAs, it won't be effective until our rookies/sophomores have begun to show their full potential. Is that next summer? I don't think so. I'm the resident optimist and I'm telling you: thus FO needs change. They need to embrace analytics more readily. They need someone else to sell in meetings. They need to have a better grasp of what players want and need.
Hibbert Is an awesome Move We need To spend some dough. He's an expiring contract and can be traded to sixers when we want to get our pick back
Ok I don't know what you people want anymore. Who cares what these talking heads say today. What is important is that we have a team that could compete unlike these past two seasons.
They didn't mess up at all. When you have customers looking for a Porsche or a Ferrari, it doesn't matter how good a salesman you are, you aren't selling the customer a damn Prius. All you could pitch is better mileage or maybe better ride comfort. But you can't pitch performance. That's the case with LMA, DJ and Monroe. They clearly had a bias towards which team they preferred. We could have prepared for years it wouldn't have changed the outcome.
