Brandon Ingram Discussion: He Is Who We Thought He Could Be

No one wanted Russell for a reason (some of it public knowledge, others we don't really know right now, but in time may come out):

After "liking" a fan's comment made in May about how the Lakers would be "stupid" to draft Zo, in June after his pre-draft Lakers workout, Zo had this to fire back at DLo:

Its about building the right culture here for a very impressionable young team. I'm really surprised why people believe those 2 would have worked in the backcourt. Forget the mental makeup disparity between the two...in terms of physicality, that backcourt would get eaten up alive on the defensive end.

IMHO, I would take stopgaps of a backcourt of KCP and Zo with a great positive lockerroom presence in BLo over laying down a possible toxic foundation of Zo-DLo that would fester for years to come and roadblock the progression of Zo as a Laker cornerstone in the process.

Now lets say we stood pat and didn't do the trade: Moz/DLo are a $23M cap hit. So LA's 2018 FA shopping budget would be about $25M since we would be sitting at about $77M in team salary (2018 projected cap = $101M). Not max level money to hand a free agent. We could have added to the team in other ways, but just not with a max type player and these days they seem to want to come to teams in pairs anyways (granted stretching Deng leads to roughly a $67M team salary and $35M to spend...however what star wants to come alone?)

Also, BK had brought Kuz in for a workout so sitting at 27, they could have picked him over our 28th pick. Kuz has also said that the teams he thought were most likely to pick him on draft day was LA and SA. SA was sitting at 29 and I wouldn't put it past RC to go get his player if he knew we were also interested. Also take into consideration that we had a proposed package of Clarkson/Jules/27/28 heading to Indy for PG, so SA would have stood pat at 29 and got their guy that way. Kuz was not a lock to drop into our laps at 28, IMHO.

Anyways, I'm happy we chose BI to keep and groom. Lets continue to motivate and have him improve...where he either becomes our next great Laker or a valuable trade asset to get our next great Laker.

 

I already said stretching Deng wound have opened up the max slot necessary. 27th to 28th would have been an easy move, probably only needed a Nance level player at most, if the FO was truly that high on Kuz. Why assume SA can make moves and we can't? As for the first point, I frankly don't want any players here that would ostracize Dlo because he exposed a cheater. Grow up. It's your job as a GM and coach to get all those distractions out of their heads, especially with a young team.

 

lol. wade was already an nba finals mvp, perennial first team all nba player. this simply isn't a sensible comparison. lebron joined two all nba players in the middle of their respective primes on a team that was already making the playoffs each year.

paul george has to leave westbrook and a successful team to join lebron and....lonzo ball? kyle kuzma? non-laker fans are laughing at this idea, and rightfully so.

it's really interesting how all the smoke about russell conveniently surfaced AFTER he was dumped. let's see if he has the same supposed problems in bkn, or if maybe we just screwed up player development.

so, in both instances, we're relying on two novices' evaluation of data not available to us, and just trusting that they're right.

and i'd rather be in a dwight situation than ours. it took a perfect s*** storm for us to lose howard in FA (which turned out fine, oddly). just like it will for okc to lose george or NO to lose cousins. could happen, but the odds are against it.

right. and people believe this because our very own front office essentially said this right after the trade. if we keep lopez (unless it's at a HUGE discount), it means the plan already failed.

anyway, hopefully the lesson about untouchables has been learned. we don't have any, nor do any 20-something win teams.

 

@scnottaken No DLo trade and stretching Deng opens up a $35M max spot in 2018. Look up and down our roster, would a max guy come to join a roster that does not have a fellow star on it? The trend is that they come in pairs. With no star currently on the team, room for 1 max guy won't get it done. You're probably thinking, trade for 1 then and use the max slot to get another: 2 star players yay! You're still stuck with Moz's 16M, a 7.4M stretched Deng place holder and now we don't have much, if any, of the of the youth to make up the rest of our team cause you just traded the lot of them for that 2nd star. Under our current situation, we can open up 2 max slots AND retain BI/Zo/rest of the rookies to build around or, use some of that young talent to get a 3rd star (which wouldn't have been an option had we stood pat and stretched Deng next summer).

@abeer3 You're insinuating George has to leave a successful OKC team, to come to our team which is no good, ignoring that both teams are sitting on the same record and struggling right now. It is not a definite OKC will get it together and there's plenty of examples out there that superteams struggle in year 1 as opposed to instantly finding chemistry. Unlike other superteams, this OKC team is on a 1 season clock. They either make it work or they disband. No other superteams really ever had this type of stressor, except the Lakers Kobe-Shaq-GP-Malone team (which had a Kobe rape case stressor to boot) and also the Kobe-Pau-Dwight-Nash team that had Dwight on the 1 year deal. In both cases, both disbanded even with the former team making ti to the Finals.

But instead of making assumptions, lets look at what we do know. PG is rumored to want to come to LA AFTER we dump our previous FO for Magic. Isn't that equally as interesting as all the dirt coming out about DLo after we oust him? Also George wanted to come to a team that lost historically over the last several years and also had cap restricting MozDeng still on the books. So why did he still want to go to LA and didn't even have OKC on his radar (even though according to you, they're so much better than us)? I mean why go to a losing ball club knowing that there are contracts on that roster that will make it extremely hard for you to find necessary help to compete in the wild west? Makes you wonder that there is something more to this story that will allow George to pair up with a star of his picking out here in LA. Pair that with tampering charges that were thrown our way and some of it actually stuck, resulting in a fine. That tells me at the very least that our novice FO is working on something. Meanwhile our previous regime would say lets clear cap for this plan and that plan and then not secure FA meetings and just throw it all away at randoms when the clock turned 9:01 pm on June 30th, 2106.

 

No, I was fine with just PG coming here, as hellbent as he was (apparently). If we don't force Pritchard's hand, they likely keep him until the deadline if not try to keep him there. We forced their hand, and dealt him to a team he's not likely to leave. I was also fine with Deng stretched and Moz on the team for those few years that the team grew together. By the time they're ready to compete, GSW is over, and LeBron won't have a stranglehold on the league's east teams.

 

Sorry dude, but you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Our FA has even begun backtracking slightly on their claims of luring FAs this summer because it's not looking great.

As an organisation we really don't have a great plan, our player development has been abysmal so our rookies aren't looking great right now, we haven't signed any good mid-range free agents that are impact players to get us into the playoffs or that become trade assets, and we are just banking on a once in a blue moon super team forming where star players come from all different teams to sign as FA's in a single destination - that has only happened once in Miami. The precedence isn't great, and we aren't even a playoff team to be considered a likely destination.

 

Sorry. Not buying Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka being as clueless as to warrant stating they really have no plan or backup plans.

 

@svtzr IMHO I believe the new FO initially had alot of bravado in speaking of the plan cause they got positive feedback from the players' agents. However after the tampering charges, we were less brazen about it and that is why it appears like we're backtracking. Why make the same mistake (see DLo-Nick Young social media hiccup followed by "liking" disparaging comments towards a future teammate in Zo)? That would be stupid, so they are being way more coy and low key about it. At least that is how I am looking at it.

LaBron went to the lowly Cavs, so the precedence is there. We just have to show promising talent on this roster and I honestly believe we have it already, regardless of team record.

I totally understand why fans are down on any type of plan. But why should we penalize the new regime for the errors and wasted opportunities of the previous regime? Our poor player development was under the previous regime's watch. So why should we so easily give up on our more recent additions when the previous basketball ops have been removed from the equation? Some of the fanbase is extremely critical of the FO....but these dudes just got here. That's what I don't understand.

Ideally if you are coming in new, you want a clean and untarnished workspace. When you got bad contracts on that work table, you want to eliminate them so you can start anew. Unfortunately the only way to do that is via attaching some of our better assets. What I liked about the DLo/Moz dump is that we opened up more options next summer, all while creating a new locker room culture (ie Swag left as well). This FO started by bringing in 4 rookies (which all look promising) and gaining cap space to really put forth their own imprint on this team. I don't think we can solely judge them on correcting errors of the previous regime, since on paper, we are losing quality assets to do so. Instead of looking at what we lost, what did we gain? 2 trades and some luck led to 4 draft picks when we didn't have any. All the guys we brought in are good character guys and project to make the locker room more positive and less toxic. We gained the option to bring in 2 max players next summer as opposed to just one had we stood pat. We also have the option to deal away some of our youth for a 3rd max player if things don't work out in the short term. We have options that we didn't have before Mag/Rob got here.

In a preview of what's to come next summer, we knew KCP/Rich Paul wanted a lucrative deal and when he hit the market, he became the premiere free agent at that time. It took one meeting with Mag/Rob to have him commit to us on a less desirable 1 year deal. Rich Paul later came out and stated that KCP had more lucrative deals on the table, but Mag/Rob won him over. Our previous regime couldn't close on FAs and in some cases couldn't even get their foot through the door. I'm betting Mag/Rob will have a better shot at getting it right next summer.

Btw: this is directed to the board as a whole..this mentality that we should wait out GS is honestly weak. We had the Mamba here for god sakes...lets go with the MambaMentality and go get it now!

 

backup plan is maxing out kcp/lopez lol

 

I know this belongs in the Paul George thread, but since y'all are talking about it here.

Regarding the liklihood of PG signing here after OKC's successful offseason, take this with an enormous grain of salt. I'm not sure why I never posted this because it happened many weeks ago.

Petros and Money were giddy in their bashing of the Lakers once Melo came to OKC, all but assuring PG would have no choice but to stay, leaving the Lakers holding the proverbial bag. They were so excited to ask their buddy Don Mclean about his inside knowldge of the situation and what it meant for the Lakers. His response...something along the lines of; "I've been told OKC would have to make it to the finals for Paul George to even consider staying in OKC."

Is his info reliable? Who the heck knows.
If it is, does that mean PG chooses the Lakers even if he leaves OKC? Who the heck knows.

 

He handled the situation perfectly and said all the right things. Now he's not constantly asked about it.

Smart guy. Probably coached by Magic.

 

nice 4th qtr! bricklayer

 

After the awful opener I feel Brandon is really coming along. Career high in Phoenix. Struggled a little bit against New Orleans, but responded tonight with another great game and carried us down the stretch just to get us to overtime.

It’s just about building consistency.