LeBron James Discussion: Not Returning To The Lakers

what a chore to put up with him all year until then yikes

 

... and here we go, this is what Lebron has done over the past 10 years. He puts teams on his clock and say, do exactly as I want or I walk.

Cleveland has been the most obvious for bowing to the King under these circumstances but I would not as the Lakers. From a probability standpoint, anything less than a championship and Lebron will end up walking anyway. Don’t extend the mortgage you already took out on the future to appeal to him for a extra 2 years.

Plus it’s a bit of a d*** move to constantly do this. We traded everything for AD to appease Lebron and Klutch. Your telling me a year from now Lebron will actually consider leaving and joining any of the 29 other teams willing to draft Bronnie?

I wonder how AD would feel about Lebron bouncing like that

 

i'm telling you, his leverage is gone. the russ trade killed it. everybody knows it was his doing, despite the clumsy attempts to deflect and rob's complicity in said attempts. he tried to flex at the deadline and got shut down. i honestly think he's either at or past the point where he's no longer a true max player, so him just walking in FA isn't the death sentence it would have been a couple years ago. if anything, giving him a two-year extension would be the really dangerous thing for us.

funny thing is i'm a charter member of the "eff them picks" club, long before snead. it's why i was glad to send them all for AD. but lebron's asking to send them for john wall and eric gordon or something. and that's just stupid. they're not value-less. they're just not as valuable as most people think. you really think okc is going to ascend the mountain on picks again? picks have a huge fail rate (even high picks) and a long maturity date in most cases. but they're still currency.

so yes, spray them all over the place for a prime superstar. all the picks. but unloading two of them to dump a contract? nah. that's overboard.

 

Did they even talk about defense in the exit interviews LOL

 

yeah, they fired frank.

 

Defensive rating awful

 

I really hope he does leave. He only plays half the floor anyway.

 

Good lord. Lebron James is all of a sudden trash around here. SMH..fickle bunch I suppose. My how things have changed in 18 months. I guess he should have stayed in Cleveland, so that we could have continued on with that great " Young core" of Ingram, Kuz and Lonzo then. Wow.

 

lebron from 4 years ago was still the best player in the game. it's not a sensible comparison. he now isn't but still makes 50 million per year. are we better off without him? no. but i'd rather he walk than sign up for 2 more years to the tune of 100+ million.

 

Sorry but I keep seeing this take and I just don’t get it.

THAT’S why we traded for AD? To appease Lebron and Klutch?

Not because it made sense to trade for someone who was considered a top 5 talent in his prime and elevate ourselves into championship contenders?

The relationship with Lebron and Klutch has its share of issues, and I understand the argument of wanting to end it sooner rather than later. But I can not agree with the revisionist take that they coerced us into sacrificing assets for AD or that doing so was a bad move.

It’s the exact opposite. If Lebron walks away next year, the fact that we still got a championship and AD out of it proves that getting into bed with Klutch was still worth it. We don’t get AD if Klutch wasn’t in his ear and pulling strings to try to increase our leverage.

I also don’t get why that Les Snead quote from months ago is being brought back up as some kind of insinuation that Lebron is actively pushing us to mortgage our future.

Lebron is still very good. So is AD. If a trade package for Westbrook emerges that would actually give us a good return and put us back into contention, but the other team is demanding we throw in our picks, it might still make sense to do it. It has nothing to do with sacrificing our future on behalf of Lebron. It’s taking a calculated risk to capitalize on our small window of contention.

Trading the picks to dump Westbrook for Wall? Obviously not a good move. That hurts us long term without helping us win now. But if Charlotte was willing to do Hayward and Rozier for Westbrook and 27 and 29, I probably do that in a heartbeat (although I’d fight for some protections on the picks).

 

i agree almost 100% here. i'll stipulate that those protections better be serious in your example (i'm in favor of hayward/rozier, but that could blow up on us, too, and for longer). like, lotto-protected and if not it's a second rounder in that year (to prevent having picks controlled forever).

but i think the klutch fussing is that they clearly thought we should have thrown houston a 1st for john wall, which you agree is dumb. again, there's real estate between "picks are the best" and "picks are completely useless".

 

Eff Lebron

Send him to Utah or some other Siberia of the NBA.

 

As far as I know, Klutch WAS fussing at the trade deadline. I haven’t seen anything to suggest they’re still actively upset about the lack of trading for Wall, or that they’re still actively pushing for that trade.

I have to give the benefit of the doubt that the initial pressure for the Wall trade was due to desperation at a point when the season was still potentially salvageable. They expressed a desire, Rob decided not to go through with it. No harm, no foul.

Now that we’re in the off-season and presumably more lucrative trade packages will emerge since Russ is now an expiring contract, I can’t imagine that they’ll still be pushing hard specifically for that Wall trade. If I’m wrong and they continue to push for us to give up picks to make THAT deal, then yeah, good riddance to em.

 

That's not why we traded everything for AD.

 

they traded for AD to give lebron another star. doubt it had anything to do with klutch, it was just the logical thing to do. lebron wasn't going to get very far playing with BI and lonzo

 

Klutch was indeed upset, as well as Lebron, but he and and AD were still both in fantasy land and thought they were going to be able to play the rest of the year.

Clearly they were wrong.

Again.

 

He does know that Pop and Spo are still coaching, right? I have a longer list than that of coaches better than Lue, but I feel those two are not debatable for anyone.

 

Pop is overrated

 

I think Spo is overrated