2024-25 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

it's interesting that phil was known as one of the league's best player development guys, jj (and the FO) is supposedly leaning into player development, and we decided to fire phil. as slick suggests, there's more to the story here.

either phil was slipping on the job, or something else he was doing was outweighing the positives.

 

You know me too well

 

Inquiring minds want to know!

 

i think maybe part of the point is that we won't know precisely because of the message sent here (as slick suggested above).

no way the lakers want to comment on it publicly, so only leaks can tell the story, but if the story is that it's a priority to get rid of distracting leaks...

 

I think JJ probably asked to start on a clean slate. He probably wanted more influence in the player development program and having such a high profile guy with much more years in the team could become detrimental to what he wants to do.

I still think it wasn't a good decision and you should rely on experienced dudes, but maybe he felt it wouldn't work well with such a high profile, especially with the background talk of Phil possibly fill Ham's vacancy (and maybe himself growing expectation of it or at least a lead assistant coach).
It's all speculation, so who knows...

 

DeMar DeRozan on why he picked the Kings over Lakers

Because I want to Win ! Ouch !!!! What in the world is going on ? Kings are better than us !

 

Well Demar did say, that Sacramento showed " real interest ", we probably floated less money, with a come play at home pitch.

On another note..Tinkerbell seems to be priority number 1, on the getting moved list. Not shocking news, but I expect the noise to get loud on the subject once training camp kicks off.


https://sports.yahoo.com/lakers-rep... lacks speed and,a core player moving forward.

 

That report is solely based on the opinion of Bontemps, who have 0 connections to the Lakers.
His opinion makes total sense, but just to correct that it doesn't "seem DLo will be the first to go". It's just an opinion from a guy.

Just wanted to clarify for those who might not open the link

 

Who is Bontemps? The Hawks not wanting him, had already been pretty widely circulated. Wanting to move him, doesn't make it easy to find a taker though.

 

Also, we just went through a whole season of the players not-so-subtley bashing their coach post-game while anonymous "reports" came out that the locker room would like Handy as an interim coach. If I'm JJ I don't want the players' favorite assistant from the previous regime there, especially if he plans to take on a bigger role in development than our previous HCs.

 

A reporter of ESPN. He's part of Hoop Collective, a type of podcast with McMahon and Brian Windhorst. Actually Bontemps follows more the East teams, McMahon follows the West, especially Dallas and Phoenix. He has a beef with Cuban actually

I'm sure the whole league knows we would trade DLo if we find the right player to enhance the team. No news there

Yeah that makes sense too

 

It’s not a rumor, it’s legit . AD Is requesting for another big man

 

yeah, that's not based on inside info, but rather that we've attempted to trade him like, 7 times.

both we and the media are too harsh on dlo, who--as the article points out--has been a huge reason we improved post-russ.

 

1st in with …. Waits for “Russ is still better than DLO”



#IfTheShoeFits

 

Welcome to L.A. (Lakers Anonymous)

Hi, I'm Sirron, and I'm.....

 

Yeah. Not sure what happened there

 

Wasn’t LeBron also hot on Klay or was that the FO? Seemed like Jonas got snapped up while that was going on?

 

this.

and we've been over it a bit, but i still have serious doubts that lebron was going to take a 25 million dollar paycut so that we could sign valanciunas. he was willing to take a big cut for thompson--i believe that. but it still required dlo being traded. i don't think he was taking a 50% paycut for valanciunas or derozan.

notice lebron and AD haven't fussed about us not signing valanciunas via media leaks. to me, this says lebron wasn't willing to take a huge cut for him. he'd DEFINITELY be whining about it had he offered to take that kind of cut and rob couldn't close the deal. like, if you think we wouldn't have heard an internal complaint about by now, i have a bridge to sell you.

i really think we know washington signed him to trade him midseason, and we'll talk then. if we haven't either a) found better options or b) found ourselves in a position where it doesn't matter.

i fully believe that jonas is having a good season, and we're having an ok season but want to upgrade, max's near match of a salary will be on its way to wizville, for example.

 

Our 2 stars are bottom 10 in the NBA in mid-range.
Will be interesting to follow as JJ is a big analytics fan and understand if we try to cut those shots.
Although from a strategic point of view, AD and Bron are most prolific in the paint, problem is other teams know it too. So they close the paint more when defending, leaving these mid range more open. Also, they need to take some of these shots to make defenders question themselves the next play.

It's a tricky situation and finding the right balance won't be easy, but it's something to follow for sure.