After watching some highlights of him, he honestly moves around like a shorter Ron Artest. Fingers crossed he defends just like Ronnie.
We have 1.5m in cash left. Not sure why we didn't try to use it. Maybe we didn't want to sacrifice any further future 2nd rounders. So moving forward we don't have our 2nd for 2020 (THT trade) add 2021 (Svi trade).
I think it's because we didn't have any picks, so we didn't workout very many guys in that range. We knew little about them, not enough to make an informed decision about them. I think it was a mistake, there's at least a few guys who I know would've helped us (I didn't need to bring them in for a workout to know that). And we're probably hoping a couple of our undrafted pickups pan out, who required us giving up nothing.
plus you can always buy 2nd rounders in the next draft where you have none and a presumably higher pick than the one traded to Orlando if things go the way it should as a top team
But if we was planning for max space and planning to get the AD deal done knowing that making it official on July 6th was a possibility...then wouldn't we plan for 2nd rounders knowing that that's the route we would need to take along with vet mins and the room exception. Now had we gone into scouting knowing we would keep our 2nd year players in Moe & Bonga and a potential athletic freak in JJ, then I understand focusing on potentially undrafted talent. But now knowing Moe, Bonga and possibly JJ need to be included, we needed to uh, what's the word, scramble to get 2nd rounders to help round out the roster with those loses. I mean we've known we didn't have a 2019 pick and that we would want to etch out a max slot and that we were in play for AD for nearly a year now. But you need to round out the roster for this year. Bron, AD, Kawhi, Kuz and possibly JJ for the upcoming season. We got THT... but still need 8-10 more roster spots to fill.
I would assume they tried to use it and couldn't. No point in holding on to the money when it resets in a few days. For whatever reason, 2nds were wildly expensive this year.
There's 30 teams (while not every team had a 2nd round selection), an agent has to maximize his client's opportunities and value. He's not going to be able to get in front of every team and ones who don't have a pick are easiest to cross off.
I’m still seeing a Laker tax, despite people saying it doesn’t exist. For example, “Golden State has acquired Atlanta’s No. 41 pick in tonight’s NBA Draft. The cost: $1.3M and a 2024 second-round pick.”. 5 picks higher than us and a 2nd rounder in 2024 vs 2.2 mil and a 2nd next year. We often seem to have to pay more than other teams.
I so desperately want to change his "first" last name to something with an N.. so we can call him TNT.. cmon!
Can't argue any of that, but we did buy our way into the 2nd round last year (Bonga) and the year before we traded down from the 28th to get into the 2nd round again (TB). So we have a history with Rob of getting into the 2nd round. Add to that this report: And if everything was going to plan, then we should have had already talked to agents of potential drafts picks stating that many roster spots could possibly be open so there's a good chance you're getting a contract with us. Plus part of the process is to bring in these dudes cause even if you don't draft them, you create a file on em to trade for or bring in free agency later down line.
