D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

Selling your soul for capspace to sign LeDouche and yet to be landed superstar better be worth it, Magic.

 

it would be...

 

50/40/90 is what hurts right now, hopefully he can keep it up, they went from 9-18? To 26-23, pretty remarkable.

 

yeah, if any a-list star (basically durant, klay thompson, kawhi, or kyrie) signs here this summer, maglinka win and i'm an idiot ranting on the internet. short of that, should have just cleared one max slot like most sensible teams.

 

This post coming with 1 dope month from DLo. This isn't real life haha.

Sold our souls? Nah, we sold on a player thats had off court issues, had injury plagued seasons and hasn't really accomplished anything yet, for a guy that has had a microscope on him since 18 and hasn't (publicly) slipped, hasn't had season debilitating injuries and is a 3x champion.

1 month of (n)ice and y'all losing your minds. Kudos to the kid tho, but our souls are just fine without him.

Btw, here's the real perception of All-star comparing the star heavy west to the star Dipoleted east.




Notice any similarities on where both Zo and DLo rank...but we sold our zouls.

Y'all stay wild.

 

Wade through the results tho...

If fan voting is an outlier, Zo among his peers was picked 14th among 30 potential guards in the West (2 guards per 15 teams). DLo was 10th.

Even the sycophantic media showed no love: picked Zo 6th among western guards, while DLo was picked 8th overall.

But hey, even if Dlo makes all-star in a lawless Wall-less Dieepo-less east, it wouldn't be Dragic, uh tragic...dude is helping a LeVert-less Nets team to some success. There's no Love lost...but here's the Zing, uh thing...I ain't mad if he's an allstar....just mad that I have no soul for thinking dude was an easy sacrifice for Bron.

 

Only worth it for BRon+.

 

Trav, I brought up All-star not to undermine your guy....he's obviously killing it right now and with the Dinwiddie injury, he's now completely in charge of that Nets team.

I only brought up Allstar cause public perception is a MFer. Compared to the West, outside of Ky, the East is devoid of star guards. So you'd expect with all the recent hype BK is getting, that the Allstar returns would display DLo obliterating the likes of Ball. Instead they're comparable and that's excluding the fan vote. Players are just as likely to pick Ball as they are DLo and it's entirely wild that the media is hyping up the BK resurgence, yet voted DLo in last as an Allstar among his peers.

So as much as DLo has been killing it of late, a rouge pessimistic Laker crowd has looked at the DLo trade to open up cap for Bron as a misstep...and that's just a crazy perception to have no matter how much you admire DLo's recent outburst.

 

Our books would read as such heading into the 2018 free agency summer without any trades/waives/RFA renouncements

Deng 18
Moz 16
JC 12.5
Jules 12.4
Zo 7.5
DLo 7
BI 5.8
Nance 2.3
28th pick (Kuz or Hart) 1.6
Zu 1.5
incomplete roster charge of 2 = 1.8

= 86.4m (with the salary cap set @ 101.9m, our cap space = 15.5m)

30%max = 30.6m, 35%max (like Bron) = 35.7m

So we'd need to clear roughly 20m+ to gain enough cap space to max out Bron.

Stretching MozDeng would have opened up close to 20m, but that still leaves 14m per in dead cap over the next 5 seasons (vs 5m over 3yrs that we're currently in with the Deng buyout). Also that would clear 2 more roster spots, so our incomplete roster charge would reflect another 1.8m in lost cap space. So again, not enough cap space for Bron.

Now I agree with you that DLo could have been left out in the dump and instead Zo or BI could have been involved. Also the JC/Nance trade wasn't really necessary if Jules was going to walk regardless and/or a 2nd max guy wasn't necessary to lock in Bron (which is why you understand my deep ire for Mintz/Paula).

I criticize Magic for giving up on TB too soon, not making more of a push to lock up BLo and not holding Jules captive as a restricted free agent...but we needed the cap space for Bron and you can't ignore that DLo was a distressed asset. He was immature while he was here and his stats while he was here did not attribute to us being competitive.

As far as Magic being wrong on DLo being a good leader...even with the impressive 6 week run he's on, its still TBD. And the same can be said for Zo, since both those dudes have really just "led" their respective teams to being largely irrelevant.

 

soooo....you actually kind of agree with me. got it.

bottom line is that lebron was possible without the dlo trade.

but in reality (and again), i wanted dlo moved for an allstar, just like i want all of our current guys moved for an allstar. i'm consistent. i hate cap space. even after it netted lebron (who's worrying me at this point, quite frankly).

 

We can't be certain that Lebron would have signed if we had less flexibility.

 

But DLo was moved for an allstar....BLo, remember?

Seriously tho, like tada said, you just don't know if Bron would have came to LA by himself when he didn't do that in taking his talents to Miami and the Land re-up. In fact, dude was moonlighting with Zo for nearly the entire year, so maybe that #2 pick wasn't an option to use in dumping Moz.

And no, Im not saying it was possible to bring in Bron without trading DLo...a salary dump was absolutely necessary. What I'm saying is that DLo could have been the asset subbed out from the Moz package.

But there was the whole Nick Young thing, followed by liking an anti-Zo tweet...so that was the working impression Magic had to deal with, before making a decision. And considering BI's 2way potential, there is no way I choose to include BI instead of DLo in a Moz dump.

I still do this trade over and over again, since we're still in position for a max player next summer and packaging our leftover kiddies in a potential AD trade.

Had we stretched MozDeng and had nearly 15% of or cap taken up with dead money, then you can forget any of those 2019 possibilities.