2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

i actually wonder if schroder's value drops like it does if he's here. remember, he was 6th man of the year just prior, and while he wasn't great here, he wasn't bad. he really fell off a cliff after he left, which could be due to some situational variables.

i mean, he's obviously not worth 20 per, but i'm not sure it would have been that obvious.

and washington wasn't looking to clear cap. i really think they were looking to get out from westbrook, despite the narrative.

i think we either avert the russ trade or, as ox indicated, he becomes part of the westbrook trade, probably letting us keep kcp.

anyway, he'll replace latrell sprewell on the "betting on oneself" hall of shame.

 

I agree his value wouldn’t be as low here. He had good success with Bron and AD so at worse his rep would be the starting PG of a very good team. Plus we’d have much more depth.

 

i was on record at the time that he declined the deal that we should trade him. just felt like it wasn't going to go well after that. and it went about as poorly as it could for all parties, worse than i imagined in both cases.

 

LOL. This was hilarious.

I love the Lakers and it was around midnight and the thought about Russell Westbrook still wearing purple and gold sent shivers down my spine. So I figured I’d log on and see what everyone’s chatting about. I love the chatter. Any talk about the Lakers is great in my books but yeesh, we’ve been talking about the same stuff for months - I know I certainly have on Real GM. I can sum up the Westbrook trade talks like this:

1) Westbrook ain’t going nowhere until KD and/or Mitchell is traded or training camp gets near.

2) Lakers are most likely going to have to give up 2 1st rounders

3) Rob and Jeanie have both said this roster will be different and they’re not done, which means they have deals on the table if training camp gets close and they need to go those routes.

The talk will pick up soon because I believe Mitchell will be moved within the next couple weeks. That situation reminds me of AD/Lakers a couple years ago. There’s really only 1 suitor who has what Utah wants.

Once that happens, we’ll have Knicks/Utah options available. Do they like those options more than x2 picks for Turner/Hield?

Then - if Durant gets traded, Kyrie will be available. It’ll then come down to a) Lakers giving up x2 picks and b) Getting Kyrie for 2 picks - do they value that more than giving up one 1st rounder and getting a combination of Utah or Knicks dudes.

If training camp kicks off and Westbrook is a Laker, I’ll be absolutely stunned. If training camp kicks off and Westbrook AND THT are both on the roster.. I don’t know. Shoot me.

 

Raptors. I don’t know how the Raptors deal isn’t done unless Ujiri is just sitting it out until something gets close and he’ll pounce at the last minute. Or Brooklyn has told them they’re not doing any Toronto deal unless Barnes is on the table.

Siakam, Anunoby, Achiuwa, Flynn, picks for Durant and contract filler is the deal. Raps still would have Fred/Trent/Barnes/KD/ plus a deep roster.

 

I agree, I think a combination of factors caused Schröder’s value to drop to the point it is now, but his overall level of play with us was not the main factor.

He was a good starting PG for us for the most part. But then he had a very bad playoff series (coming off Covid for what it’s worth), got skewered in the media even by prominent figures like Magic, and then the musical chairs of free agency left him in the lurch. At that point once a well paid player has to accept the minimum, their value tanks permanently even if they play their way back up (see Drummond, or what will likely happen to Russ).

So if he had signed that extension with us, I think his trade value may have been hurt in the immediate aftermath of the Suns series. But if he came back the next year and played at the same level he did for us the prior regular season, he’d be seen as a decent starting PG who was still only 28 years old averaging 15 points and 6 assists with solid defense (on a team where due to Lebron’s presence he still was more of the secondary ball handler). So I don’t think he’d be unreadable. Even on that extended contract, I could see other teams in certain situations take a flyer on him as a stopgap starting PG or sixth man.

For example at last year’s trade deadline, I think a package around Schröder (on an extension) would have been easier to trade for actual value than the experience we had trying to trade Russ.

 

I wonder if he regrets demanding that starting spot? Not only did that prove to be a red flag to future employers, it limited his value any ability to showcase himself in a contract year. I think had he embraced that backup role, he and Trezz would've torn up the league against other second units. Sure their play overlapped plenty, but their two man game wasn't the focus and if Bron or (to a lesser extent) AD were on the court with them, they were still naturally the focal point offensively.

Dead horse, but I really wish we didn't promise any starting spots that year. DS, Marc, Drumm, and it sounds like we promised Trezz X number of minutes. Those poor decisions really tied Vogel's hands and set the locker room up to fail. Think we would've had greater success had we not gone that route.

 

Kyrie isn’t going to be there and who knows if Simmons has his head cleared now and can contribute on the offensive end? Now, if the Nets refuse to take the ONLY offer for Kyrie, and he returns, AND Simmons is no longer afraid to shoot, then yeah, they are a playoff team.

 

This is exactly why I want Boston to do it- they would be trading away their current long period of competing for a Chip for a very short one.

 

I'm not sure their window is that long, at least with the current group. There's been a fair amount of talk that Brown might leave in 2024 and this KD rumor probably doesn't help. Horford was massive for them in the playoffs but he's 36 and basically got to rest in OKC for a full season. Robert Williams is a great young player but has trouble staying on the court. Smart is 28 but has played a lot of physical minutes for that team, not sure how he ages. They turned things around last year because they became a big, physical, dominant defensive team. It's really hard to maintain that kind of identity year in and year out when you're making deep playoff runs. Gone are the days when you could just pencil in the Spurs as a top 5 defensive team every year Duncan was on the roster, defense is much more schematically complicated and physically taxing now.

That said, they're probably the best bet to get the #1 seed in the East next season. But I'm skeptical that this C Bags core with this specific identity has that long of a shelf life.

 

My condolences to some of you

 

horford's performance was just critical. and it sort of came out of nowhere. i don't think grant or robert williams can really have the same kind of impact. horford sort of did both of their respective jobs for boston.

i think people read too much into a small sample of simmons (like one playoff series). he was a two-way allstar-caliber player for four years. i expect him to be that guy when things start back up. and if kyrie isn't there, then i think he's probably here unless bkn chooses to use him like an expiring contract. in which case, they're looking at russ-esque returns.

 

I guess Kyrie is coming?

 

I’ve spent the past 2 months desperately interpreting various pieces of news as a sign that a Kyrie trade was imminent, and I’m at my breaking point lol.

So naw, I don’t think this is necessarily a sign of an incoming trade. Seems like a 1+1 was always going to make sense for Lebron, regardless of whether or not we shipped out the picks to get him more immediate help.

Although… I was going to say if he was holding the extension as leverage for pushing the Lakers FO to do a trade, why wouldn’t he wait until a trade was actually completed? But now that I think about it, if he was confident that Rob was about to pull something off, it WOULD make sense to make the extension public first.

Otherwise if the sequence was trade first and THEN extension, the optics would be that Lebron forced the trade and it would propagate the LeGM narrative that he doesn’t like

 

Even better news!

 

this means russ is gone, imo. maybe soon.

 

Don't make me blush

 

Same ole holding pattern. It's going to be Kyrie or nothing IMO.. It's possible that we make a minor deal with Talen and Kendrick but Russ isn't getting traded to Utah or anywhere without Kyrie landing in LA.