Seems impressive. Some young talent getting experience and lots of first round draft picks to get young talent or make blockbusters? Smart! After watching the Lakers try to avoid a complete rebuild with Kobe, seems like not working. Hard to mix lots of young with very old. And competing. I like that the Lakers are tKing care of their guy, but it def slows the rebuild. C Bags have something like 8 first round picks I think, but don't know where to verify. Makes me wonder what lakers could get if we dismantled the roster
Way too early to call their strategy a success. Besides, they didn't have much of a choice with Rondo clearly not wanting to stay. I would bet they stay irrelevant for a longer time than us
Definitely a good plan for a city that struggles to attract free agents. Boston just isn't a fun city in comparison to places like LA, Dallas, Miami, etc. They've got the same kind of history we do, but aren't the same city attraction. Since that's true, they need to accumulate picks. Fortunately I think they'll end up similar to the Sixers if they actually keep most of those picks. What the DO have is a crap ton of 1sts to trade on draft day for a disgruntled star somewhere (Deron Williams?).
one thing they have nailed down: how to tank. personally, I don't think stockpiling mid-1sts is really impressive on its own. it's understanding that you're not going to be keeping any of your good players and getting value for them in trade that makes sense. I agree that we'll see if it's much better long-term than la's plan, which seems to be swing for the fences in FA until you connect. both are long roads.
The big difference to me is that BOS traded their championship talent for younger assets/draft picks. We respected Gasol to let him play through his contract. I think we handled our situation with more class. Not to mention, we have a much trickier situation since we have an all-time great still playing at a high level to deal with.
i agree. the lakers are banking on that class making a difference in some way in the long term. the C Bags are banking on a fistful of mid-to-late first rounders making that difference. I know most thing the latter is the way to go, but I'm not positive. we'll see how it all plays out. right now, losing pau as an asset is really what tanked the lakers franchise. granted, it took stern's intervention to make that happen, but you don't see teams recover quickly from losing allstar caliber players for nothing. the lakers have lost two in in under a year (three if you count kobe's decline).
They are the C bags but their management has been much smarter than ours. They have accumulated a ridiculous amount of picks over the next few years...I mean we couldn't even get a first round pick for Pau...surely all those stupid teams that were trying to rip us off with second round picks for Pau are probably KICKING themselves now (I'm looking right at you, Phoenix)... C Bags know how to rebuild...but let's see if they know how to build a championship squad again...they got VERY lucky with the KG/Allen/Pierce trio...but again, those deails wouldn't have happened without having top draft picks...so it remains to be seen how it'll turn out for them. They have a few nice young players...Smart hasn't played well, but he's a nice piece..James Young hasn't played for them yet...Sullinger is probably their nicest young piece...and Avery Bradley....I mean they have pieces but it's going to take a while for them to be good...but they're in better shape to rebuild than we are because they're flush with draft picks...like 10 of them. Unreal.
Eh, someone posted it up before, but it's a very small percentage of draft picks, let alone lottery picks, that actually turn into star talent. Who has been more consistent over the past 30 years? Yes, it's a new era and CBA, but the Lakers never needed to "build through the draft" outside of Kobe/Magic/Worthy. Sure all HoF talents, but a lot of the Lakers success also came through making the right moves at the right time, free agency, whatever, we know how to get it done. It's not coincidence that we have some financial flexibility the next two years with two pretty strong free agent classes, and one year being the new TV deal year with the cap expected to rise. Unless you have the talent scouts of San Antonio, drafting your team back into contention takes a lot longer and is not a surefire shot. Just because they piled up draft picks doesn't mean they're smarter than us.
Well the draft picks can be traded for players during the draft. It's about assets, that's what is smart about it. The thing that separates us: the Lakers want to be able to say "see look we don't trade guys all willy-nilly like Boston does!". It shows loyalty to the players... Will that be enough to sign them? Not some of them, but to some of them it'll be a big deal. Lower level guys that want to be here (Nick Young for example) will like that, but big names won't bite on something like that.
I'm not saying that stockpiling draft picks wasn't, just that it doesn't mean that it makes Boston "smarter" than us because they more of them. If teams want to throw their stock into unproven draft picks, then by all means. I personally don't think it's the best way to "rebuild". We had been successful for a consistent basis, and it also required us to trade away our useless late round draft picks to make deals work. In that sense, I think the draft picks are valuable as assets for a successful team rather than a rebuilding team. Zbo was one who came out to say that he liked what the Lakers organization did for Kobe and Pau. It shows respect.
Yeah I remember that. He's one of the few who have said that publicly. I wonder what the general sentiment is with the Lakers FO. I know there's plenty of guys who would love to play in/for LA, but not if we're terrible. There's few guys who want to be here THAT badly... We'll have to wait and see.
Did I read that right? The C Bags will have 6 first round picks this Summer? And two more early second round picks???
I think it's the opposite actually. We treat our star players well. Role players come and go, that's just a fact. Star players sign and are expected to stay. With the knowledge that we treat our stars with the utmost respect makes them wants to come here more than Boston who will trade them away for future assets. And what role player doesn't want to be a Laker anyways?
What about Nick Young? Or Xavier Henry? Or (kind of a cross between both worlds) Steve Nash? Steve Blake was treated well here by management. I think some guys just didn't fit here (remember Jason Kapono?), but for the most part we treat all our players pretty well. The one glaring mistake obviously being the Gasol/Odom fiasco, but that was about 95% Stern's fault.
