Anthony Davis Discussion: Only Player On Both All NBA + All Def

the lack of lift on the finishes is definitely foot-related, imo. he looked super frustrated out there, basically the whole game.

i think he gave up when he chased down grimes on a breakaway, but nobody else on the team crossed halfcourt and grimes just dumped it to a trailer for an easy layup. that was sort of shocking to watch, and i'm sure AD was like "welp...i shall also quit now."

 

AD and Bron are both who they are since the start of the 2021-2022 season regardless of the different reasons ( age , injuries , the disregard of the regular season , the overconfidence) .

Some Lakers fans should accept this fact and stop believing Anthony Irwin and his BS .

 

yeah, the problem is that lebron and AD are both paid supermax. they make 40% more than SGA and morant. those teams can have those great supporting casts because they're getting their superstar production at a much lower rate. AD and lebron each make more than twice brunson's salary. so yeah, the knicks can have better players 3-5 (brunson also took a paycut on his extension, btw--something lebron has never truly offered or done for us, imo).

the only way were going to manage ourselves out of lebron aging was to trade lebron for a younger star before he started declining. same with AD. wasn't going to happen in either case, so here we are. but it's most certainly NOT about the freaking "margins" and what we do with vet mins. it's about not having the ability to add three more 20-30 million dollar players behind our two stars.

boston was only able to build their team because while they made these trades, tatum and brown were still on their first extensions. their payroll next year is 225 million without horford returning. if horford finally ages and holiday continues aging, they'll be dead in the water with no real path to recovery, too. still good, but not a contender.


btw, as a side note, to me the difference in the first max vs. the super max is going to be interesting to follow over the next few years. if you look at the top of the standings, it's heavily populated with teams who have max players on much smaller max salaries. i think the super max was a decent idea in theory that has kind of failed in practice. people are happy when it's the lakers getting burned by it, but when okc has to break up another potential dynasty, silver may wonder if it's the best thing.

 

Timpf put it well in one of his videos a few weeks ago. The teams at the top of the standings attack the regular season. They get addicted to winning and try to make a point just about every night. Even when they lose a game or play flat one night, the next time out you see a big effort. Before he showed up here, LeBron hadn't attacked a regular season like that since the 2013 Heat that won 27 in a row. Even those Cleveland teams with Kyrie and Love that made the Finals were kind of underwhelming in the regular season. AD also just isn't wired like that. He's not really out to prove his place in the league every night.

But in 2020, both guys got swept up in the energy and effort the rest of the roster played with. Bradley, Caruso and KCP hounding ballhandlers. McGee and Howard played fresh and physical in limited minutes. Even Kuz played harder and did more dirty work stuff that year than any other time in his career. Vogel was coaching his a** off. Even with the rash of injuries in 2021, that team still competed well every night even with guys out. But since we completely remade the supporting cast in the summer of 2022, this has been a lazy team outside of the post-2023 deadline run to the WCF.

Games like last night happen to good teams over the course of the course of an 82 game season. The Kobe/Pau teams kept losing to garbage Charlotte teams for no reason at all. I don't want to overreact to one game. But we have basically a two season sample size now since we got rid of Russ, and this team just isn't serious enough.

 

A big part of the problem is that LeBron is in complete control of the Franchise now.
He can choose to play for five more seasons and Jeanie will just go along with whatever her cash cow desires- no matter how poorly the team actually performs.
Five, or even two more seasons of being a seven to tenth seed is not what most fans want. You have to rip the bandaide off sometime and make hard choices. Otherwise, you are continuing the mediocrity Year after year after year.
I hope Rob doesn’t trade any of the firsts now. I think he knows the AD/LeBron Championship window has closed as well.

 

There are two moves that would make it possible to compete for a championship right now

Spoiler: but...

but both of those are impossible to make

 

Agreed 100% . Lebron could decide to play with Bryce and until the 2028 Olympics and Jeanie would go along Bron wishes as you said .

It"s the Lakers " you see how well we treat our superstars here" argument to recruit the next big name .

It worked from Kobe to Lebron