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

And has bad hands and is not a lob threat.
Vando is a regular season minutes eater IF he can stay healthy. You need some of those but he's not going to move the needle on whether this team can contend for a title Playoffs will require massive improvement

 

How bout we keep Austin and develop our own Adou Thiero?

 

Did you somehow miss how he impacted the games against Minnesota without scoring a point? If our "shooters" did their job, we could won that series. Sometimes I wonder if you are actually watching these games.

To be frank, we haven't done much of anything in the playoffs without Vando in the starting lineup. (Check the record) We've only won 2 playoff games in 3 series without Vando starting..Yet people still think Rui should be starting for some reason.

 

Yeah I was going to say 3 seasons ago when we first got Vando and he was “healthy” we took out Memphis and the Warriors with Vando playing well. It’s not unreasonable to think with the 4 months of work put in this summer that he “might” be able to get to offensively neutral with something other than shooting 3s …. if just can’t do it with them?

 

I'm not worried about his offense . He'll be more than covered by Luka, Lebron, Austin and Ayton .

Rui’s superior offense, hasn't amounted to wins. Now Rui’s my boy too, but I think we need to employ a different strategy.

 

lol - if anything I overwatch Vando because I think he's a very good defensive player who if he could just on the f***ing court would be an all NBA defense guys. But he'll never make the team because he's so terrible on offense. Everyone like to s*** on coaches: hell I've shat on both Ham and JJ but I think those guys have tried extremely hard to get him into the lineup. I've actually tracked how they use him on offense and they've tried everything from corner 3, dunker spot, roll man, GS draymond sets and nothing works.

At the end - every coach and team he's been on ends up reducing him minutes moving him to the center and away from his ideal role as a wing stopper because he's worse then average

He'll have games like Boston where he hit some open 3's and suddenly the Lakers have prime Scottie Pippen but the playoffs and the sum total of the data and you get this s*** show:








So basically a guy who gets extremely good looks everywhere on the court and can't do anything with it. Anyways I'm done responding to you regarding Vando if you're going go to the "watch games" b*******.

 

Those stats don't mean s***. What were they during the conference finals run? Again instead of telling me about offense, you can't tell me you don't see the defensive impact. What are Rui’s numbers? Did they equate to wins? The wins matter more than stats.

 

We won the Warriors series largely because we benched Vando and gave most of his minutes to Dennis, Rui and Lonnie. And that's the best version of Vando we've seen.

 

Nah. That's some BS. Vando is a 20 min a game player dude. That's his role, he started everything game against GS. He played more minutes in the first 3 and we were 2-1. You can't blame Ham for playing Dennis and Lonnie more later. Tinkerbell was starting to crack, and Walker won us a game. He used the players available to him correctly.

 

This is the talk of someone who doesn't watch the games and is going off boxscores

 

I watch every single game we play, at least twice brother. I disagree with your obsession with Vando's offense, because I'm actually watching the game. You can find Slick on the game thread here, on just about every night we play. Obviously we are seeing different things. Pull up sometimes

 

Lol
Lakers Waive Jarron Cumberland
In his place, the Lakers signed Tevian Jones.

Cumberland was signed to a non-guaranteed Exhibit 10 contract. He's expected to join the South Bay Laker of the G League this season.

Jones was also signed to a non-guaranteed Exhibit 10 deal. The 6-foot-7 forward spent last season with the Grand Rapids Gold of the G League. In 48 games, Jones averaged 14.7 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game. He's also expected to join South Bay for the G League season.

 

Vando is still only 26. He's still got time to be a respectable shooter. But I'm willing to bet that if he doesn't do so by this season, he's probably looking at a $5 million per year contract going forward. It's more of a testament to Vanderbilt. Respectable 3/D players can fetch $15-20 million in today's game because they're high demand low USG players. No one wants to pay for someone who just plays defense because you're severely limited on offense and have to design your plays knowing that one of your player(s) is going to be completely useless.

No hook shot, no floater, no FT shooting, no mid-range, and a weak finisher below the rim unless he makes a cut to the basket for a wide open shot.

I'm neutral on him... If he's able to be a respectable shooter, stays healthy, and plays his defense, I don't mind seeing him long-term as he's within the same age as Luka.

But if he doesn't improve his three point shooting this season, it's best the Lakers move on from him and try to develop their own 3/D guy. Enough time is being wasted on Vanderbilt. Just like how we knew D'Lo would never improve or change for the Lakers, at some point, you gotta move on. Develop those who you can and get rid of those who aren't.

 

I would very much like this, but I am preparing myself if the Laker Brass decides to eventually ship Austin out for a “better fitting piece.”

 

I agree with this take 100%. As much as I love what Vando brings defensively, you can’t really play him in a playoff series because he can’t even make layups. I’m not expecting huge shooting improvements from him this season, so my expectations for significant growth are pretty low.

 

Completely agree. One of the first things that jumped out at me was his defense. You and Slick have both nailed it coming down this page. We are in for a treat.

 

Dang Slick, you and LT must be drinking Alaska Amber. Magic and Rambis, Luka and Vando...lol.

 

Except they do mean something. They confirm what all of our eyes say, Vando gets amazing looks, and can’t do anything with them.

So then teams help off of him and our offense is 4 on 5 with a double team following the ball.

Just having such a narrow viewpoint isn’t helpful in any kid of discussion. It’s just first order thinking, we didn’t get any wins and therefore x is no good or y doesn’t matter. It’s why we analyse stuff and that’s how we improve.

Last year we got beaten by a bigger team that had more physicality. In game 1 they punked us. In game 3, we were tied at the beginning of Q4 and ran out of steam with Lebron and Luka as our closers (this shouldn’t happen). Game 4 we were up 11 to start the 4th. Luka, Lebron and Reaves combined for 3/15 in the 4th and we lost by a single possession. We were tied going into the 4th in game 5 too. Vando played in all 5 games roughly 13-14 mins and he didn’t do jack.

We could go back the year before and it’s the same story. We couldn’t win close games because we ran out of juice at the end. I’m hoping a healthy Luka, adding Smart, Ayton and LaRavia means we have a legit 7 man rotation and if we can get one more of our guys to make up an 8 man rotation we should avoid that.

 

Vando didn't do jack? See this is the s*** I'm talking about. He impacted the game in his few minutes with his ball pressure. What games were you watching? He couldn't stay on the floor, because outside of Luka, our scorers went MIA for long stretches, he's not a scorer or shooter, so Redick stuck with his shooters, hoping they would shake out of their funk. They didn't and we lost.

The kid plays 20Min, that's his role, wreck havoc on the perimeter defensively. We have Luka and Lebron, two guys that demand double teams. Austin and Ayton are more than capable of doing damage 1on1. There is no way in hell, a team is going to beat us, just because they sagged off of Jarred Vanderbilt in his 20 mins. That's the narrow a** viewpoint! I don't care if he didn't take a shot period.

Vanderbilt wasn't healthy in the last two seasons, so the last year and year before stuff are irrelevant.

We'll just have to disagree on this particular subject. You cats will learn this season.

 

No Kawhi knows all about it. Knows all about that stuff. He just doesn’t give a f***. He lets uncle Dennis get all the money.

to me why does he need that extra 28 million??? That’s an uncle Dennis pay day.