2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

I think another huge factor with Ayton is LeBron. You have to commit to Ayton at 15 feet. But now you have to worry about LeBron as the roller coming from the edge and you can’t guard that. Lebron finishing at the rim no way. That’s why I said this acquisition was so huge because it opens everything up.

 

DFS is interesting - I certainly thought he was fine and his coach certainly trusted him.
RAPM thought he was good, ESPN net points thnks he was really bad intersestingly
Let see what the season shows - the Lakers addition from an age perspective have a much better chance of hitting

 

I can't trust anything with an "ESPN" before its name.

How can I take something seriously when it claims Karl Anthony Towns is the 4th best player in the league and that Zubac is better than Luka?

 

this stat has zubac appropriately way worse than luka, and it also tells the same story i told before we traded for DFS (like the year before when bkn was demanding three 1sts for him)--he's been in decline for a couple years.

again, houston's only asking him to be a good vet role model and show up in the playoffs or spot duty in the regular season. he can do that. we needed more.

 

The dog days of summer, where not much is happening. Most likely we’re just standing pat with this team till the deadline when we may pull a trade.

Last years problem in the playoffs is we had 40ish million in salary that wasn’t contributing in Gabe, Shake, Knecht, Kleber and Vando. The hope is we can either redeem some of these guys or trade them in a consolidation trade for another piece that can impact the game.

 

The Deandre Ayton signing is huge because of his rebounding. He rebounds the ball at a very high clip. Hes extremely good offensively which helps a lot. I like seeing on that tape his ability to routinely hit that 15 foot jump shot all of us in here were talking about.

that’s why getting this guy off of a buyout was huge. He does so much.

in particular Hayes was not offering that teams like Bet hit a 15 foot jumper. And Hayes was a terrible rebounder.

Looking at that tape. I just substitute Klay for Luka and teams aren’t going to have anything to guard. Ayton could average 50 because with Lebron roaming on the other side you have to stay on him. Just look at basketball with Angles Ayton can do anything he wants because Luka and LeBron will get all that defense on them.

as for the LeBron video Jokic. LeBron is just showing his power move. To the Lakers.this is who you want. This is your plan. Don’t just ship me out. Because if you treat me right I can do another Anthony Davis with him and have him force his way to the Lakers.

and it’s a joke to think the Clippers had a better off season then the Lakers. The Lakers got Deandre Ayton and Marcus Smart through buyouts while keeping all their depth and all of their players.

 

jokic isn't coming here. he cares more about his horses than basketball and is probably someone who would prefer to play in a smaller market instead of having to deal with the "glitz and glam" of LA

i'm guessing the meeting had to do with this

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...dvising-5b-effort-start-new-basketball-league

 

You do realize we have the best Racetracks out here in L.A. Southern California


Santa Anita Racetrack

Del Mar Racetrack

Los Alamitos Racetrack

so if you were making an argument about the glitz and glam. L.A. would be the best market for what he likes.

there’s no basketball team in Kentucky at Churchill Downs.

 

Clearly LeBron and he’s offering a handy

 

Phil Handy's coming back?

 

All 30 NBA teams' biggest roster mistakes since 2020

14. Los Angeles Lakers
Biggest mistake: Losing 3-and-D players from their championship team (2020 and 2021)

The Lakers won the 2020 championship with a simple formula: LeBron James and Anthony Davis plus 3-and-D role players equals success. But they forgot the old maxim "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and exchanged 3-and-D wings for ball handlers in their quest to win again.

Shortly after winning the title, they traded Danny Green and a late first-round pick (which became Jaden McDaniels) for Dennis Schroder. A year later, they lowballed Alex Caruso in free agency, leading him to sign with the Chicago Bulls. And the coup de grâce came with an ill-fated blockbuster trade, as they traded Kyle Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope for post-prime Russell Westbrook.

Each of those moves was worse than the last, with Westbrook in particular failing to fit into the Lakers' James-centric ecosystem. They missed the playoffs in Westbrook's first season with the team and traded him -- along with a future first-round pick -- midway through the second season. But the overall effects of the front office's misguided change in approach are clear: The Lakers won four playoff series in 2020, but they've won just two total playoff series in the five seasons since.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/45790173/all-30-nba-teams-roster-mistakes-2020

 

all James fault and Anti-Klutch

Haters will say it's false

 

yeah, i don't think that jokic is coming, nor do i think we're planning on it.

however, i'd never read about this "rival league" before, and it sounds pretty stupid.

 

Jaden Mcdaniels stings. That was a dumb trade. At the time we thought we got a steal in Shroeder and we were willing to offer him 80 million. The plan was to have Shroeder take over for Rondo and keep it rolling. People were saying back then that Shroeder was somewhat good at defense. If Shroeder played like Germany Shroeder we’d have 3 championships now.

We gave Kuzma and Kentevius Caldwell Pope and Caruso a shot that Phoenix series with Ayton and Booker did us in.

They left one part out Anthony Davis got hurt and hurt his groin before he got hurt we dominated game 2 and were well on our way. Phoenix got lucky there.

Westbrook trade was Lebron we had Kuzma for Buddy Hield ready to go. Caruso was Klutch keeping THT over Caruso how did that work? But Jeanie Buss being cheap and trying to squeeze money out of him. Not actually valuing him and truly knowing our team. And what he meant to us. I guess seeking that Covid relief fund loan showed us what she wanted.

 

That men’s health cover someone should post it. Luka looks like a completely different person. Men’s journal. This guy will be running point guard for us. I was like damn he looks like John Stockton I know he’s way taller I’m just saying he looks in shape.

not comparing them. But him having the Magic role letting him conduct and having LeBron have the worthy role finishing on the break cutting can really help this team. Ayton in the Kareem role rebounding playing defense scoring when the shot is there midrange and finding the guys from the post. We’ll really start to see what a championship team could look like.

 

we don't know that we would have drafted him had we kept the pick.

that said--anyone notice that a lot of the types of players you need on a luka-led team are often found outside the lottery?

names that come up here often: herb jones (2nd round), mcdaniels (last pick in first round), djj (undrafted), anunoby (23rd pick), etc.

i'm hoping thiero ends up being one of these, but this is definitely the route.

for whatever reason, the nba doesn't prize these athletic wings as much as they should. i guess for every success, there are three failures, and i also understand that lotto teams are incentivized to find guys who can put points on the board for a few reasons.

but when you have your offensive engines in place, the draft definitely has these kinds of support players every year, down where picks can be traded for/bought.

 

Perfect read, agree 100%

 

That’s what made our draft so good. And what put everything in place.

we were allowed to trade up for Thiero because he fit that role.

that’s one reason I liked the Luka trade so much. We got that pure scorer. Ready to be our guy when Lebron retired.

The Magic the Kobe the LeBron the Luka.

so after that we just started filling it in. Ayton satisfied a need. And bought it together with that pick and role.

Smart came here to give us the perimeter defense. We were just able to do what we needed to do.

 

UMMM ..... how did you miss THESE in Luka's own thread 2 pages back on 113? Zoom into these suckers ..... the article had them in high resolution for us to gaze in wonderment.