Official 2016 Free Agency Thread

Do it Mitch. All of them ..... wait no... screw LeBron. Get 3 good players instead for his money to go with Durant and Whiteside with Westbrook in next year. And fire Boron the a-hole.

 

Fans are so delusional when they post trade ideas lol. Just saw someone post this on a raptors forum:

"derozan sign and trade+ tross for lakers top pick this year + julius randle clarkson and some other mixture of young players"

Beyond laughable

 

Why would we even do that? The Lakers can sign DD outright this summer as an FA.

 

Yea. He wants pick+randle+clarkson AND other young players LOL

 

^yep. for the record, I was on the Thomas signing from day one (was super annoyed they chose to absorb lin instead of signing Thomas outright at a lower salary).

lakers need to learn that swinging for the fences and hitting .200 is not preferable to doubles at .330.

or something like that.

 

I was interested in Stephenson, too. and he'd already be off the books after this year, right? that was pretty low risk, relatively low price at the time, as was Thomas. you hit on half of those, you should come out pretty well, imo.

still, yes, the general theory is sensible. the problem is that taken to its logical extreme, you basically just pay maxes to superstars and recycle everything else. this was morey's original premise, before he finally realized that chemistry and continuity might mean something. and that's AFTER he sort of lucked in to two max players. the lakers currently have zero such players.

so, you draft them or sign them into space. the latter occurs almost never; the former occurs maybe once every couple of years (a franchise-level talent is drafted) and depends heavily on luck.

anyway, thanks chris paul trade veto--the lakers are now have-nots with no easy path back to contention. I think management is probably ultimately right to be patient, but fans don't have to enjoy that.

long story short, early signs indicate that the lakers will be approaching this summer similarly to the last two: they're going to pitch Durant and maybe horford and derozan. but don't expect max offers for batum and parsons and that tier of player, which is probably what it will take to get them. and don't expect them to get ahead of the curve like Portland did with ed davis and aminu, as it's antithetical to the general approach.

 

I think you're underestimating just how much money is out there to be spent. there will be some staggeringly stupid deals handed out. people were talking about mike conley as a max guy. that's a 25+ million per deal there.

 

I still don't understand why most people believe whiteside's a lock to leave. Miami's a FA destination; it ain't Milwaukee. and pat Riley's a cheatin' son of a gun.

 

Mainly because of tension between him and the team. Things have cooled down some, but I live in Florida and have a few solid sports sources down there. The issues were legit especially back in December/January. Not sure what will happen now but the view that Whiteside is a guy who goes after his own stats no matter what is still there.

I was told that Riley was definitely going to go after Durant making Whiteside available for someone to swoop in and grab. That was a month or so ago, but I would still expect Riley to go after him.

 

Come on down. (Just leave your playoff choking in Tor, k thanks)

 

If Whiteside's "crime" in Miami is padding stats, then I'm not too concerned. There are HOF bigs *cough* Moses Malone *cough* who did the same thing.