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

Yes, let's see.

Hope it works

 

Rob and a bunch of different, younger and more athletic players plus “The Return of Nunn” …. our “glue” guy should share in that too. IF.

 

I really think Lonzo will be out of the league by the time his current contract ends. He’s been missing significant time for the past 3 years, and most of his summers have been on rehab instead of working on his game to get better. Because of this, he’s not reaching the potential he was projected for when he was first drafted and is basically what he will be for the rest of his career.

Now add the consistently injured issues, if that trend continues 2-3 years from now… he may be either a vet minimum player who plays backup minutes or even completely out of the league.

 

lots of reasonable extensions being signed. all the more reason not to be a big player in FA next summer, imo.

 

Good for Nance. Sucks about Adams, I want to get him to LA at some point.

That's what I hate about anyone projecting how strong a FA class could be an entire year from now. It's never as good as or better than it looks today. Tons of extensions get signed between now and then and the remaining dance partners often don't end up being all that appealing... especially when you don't even have a max to offer

 

I really feel bad for the kid. I was happy to see him significantly improve his jumper. Hopefully, this will be the last of his injury woes.

 

True, the Bogdanovic trade probably says a lot about Vucevic’s value. Maybe it is unlikely he can fetch a first rounder on his own as a rental.

But DeRozan even at age 33 (which IMO isn’t that old for a player with a lot of finesse and mid-range skill; I don’t see him as being super reliant on his athleticism) was a legitimate MVP contender for much of last year until the Bulls started falling off due to injury. And he’s not expiring, so anyone who trades for him would get 2 full years of him.

I could potentially see our situation being too risky to gamble the picks on given his age, how far away we are from contention, etc but I would imagine there are other contenders out there that would gladly trade 2 firsts for him. I really can’t wrap my head around an argument that his value is only a single first.

Which is why in totality, I think DeRozan and Vucevic for our 2 FRP’s is still great value. The risk of Vucevic walking as an expiring is offset by the benefit of acquiring two really good players for this year and still at least having DeRozan for next year.

I don’t think the FO’s response to trade offers this summer should lead us to believe that they’d only trade the two picks for a younger star. This DeRozan idea is just a hypothetical and I don’t recall any actual packages we turned down that would have brought back a player of his caliber. DeRozan and Vucevic would be a significantly better package than Hield/Turner or the Jazz role players IMO. I think DeRozan + Vucevic would be much closer to the value of a Kyrie package (which we apparently were ready to offer both firsts for) then the Indy/Utah deals.

But emphasis on this being a hypothetical. I don’t think DeRozan’s comments reminding us of how close he was being a Laker is a precursor to a trade. I don’t think Chicago is in a position where it makes sense to blow things up. So probably not worth discussing much more. If had to bet I think we keep Russ and our picks past the deadline.

 

derozan reminds me a LOT of jerry stackhouse, for better and worse. i can easily wrap my head around teams not wanting to give up much for him, because it's happened already when he was younger.

i also just disagree with the general assessment of his value. he balled out and chicago was meh, just like toronto and SA before them. you can argue--but what if he's the third wheel, but imo, like russ, that isn't possible. he HAS to be the top dog on offense or he needs to move to a sixth man role, at which point, he becomes overpaid by a ton.

but i agree that chicago also says no to our side of the offer because they're not in full give up mode, which is what you need in a russ trade partner. more likely that chicago moves each in deals that bring back younger talent on longer deals, imo--even if that talent is a technical downgrade.

funny thing is i was on board with a derozan trade prior to his FA. i suggested on here that we should move kuz+trez or kcp for him at the previous deadline so that we could have him and operate over the cap. as soon as that passed, i was out on derozan, and i still think it's fine we didn't get him. i agree with others that the russ situation, as bad as it is, might not be any worse than the derozan situation would have been.

 

A DeRozen/Vucevic deal would be worth the 2 picks. It’s a better package than the Indy Hield/Turner package. DeRozen is older than Hield but he’s still the better player. Vucevic and Turner are both expiring contracts but Vucevic is also the better player.

In the most probable scenerio, the Lakers would probably use their cap space next summer on a Vucevic level player anyway (not quite max player but would accept $20-30 million/season). The benefit here is we would have Vucevic’s bird rights so we can also think of it as we are getting DeRozen to add depth as well.

This lineup would be really solid, our lineup will be more balanced and it addressed the clog at point guard and we definitely would be top 5ish in the West:

Beverly/Schroder/Nunn
DeRozen/Reaves/Walker
Lebron/Brown/
AD/JTA/Gabriel
Vucevic/Jones/Bryant

 

agree the talent coming back is better than anything we've seen save for maybe kryie, but i'm pretty dug in on not moving picks unless it's for a younger star-caliber player or a clear vet allstar who puts us up in contention right now.

i don't think this hypothetical deal does it.

 

Derozan would experience similar problems to Russ as a mid range operator struggling with spacing. He also wouldn’t have the usage that he would need to have the results people are accustomed to.

I definitely don’t think it’s worth burning the picks. Doesn’t make us clearly better than any of the top teams.

 

Yeah. I think this is a good trade. With the going rate of superstars being several draft picks and young talent, I’m not sure what hypothetical deal is going to be clearly better than this.

A deal like this would be a improvement over what we have now and give us a more balanced roster. I think a healthy LeBron and AD could make noise with this group as it relieves some of the fit issues we have. Still need a knock down shooter but yeah. I’d be good with this.

 

If he was smart he'd practice shooting light stuff to help him on his game

 

^^^

 

The desire to preserve cap space for next year likely hurt us with free agents who naturally didn’t want to sign one year deals (Bruce Brown, Otto Porter Jr, etc etc for the “give names” crowd) and I also think it’s limiting our trade options.

I get not wanting to be weighed down forever by bad contracts and wanting a clean cap when LeBrons deal ends but a deal that gets us back in the top five in the west is not something I think we should just dismiss.

 

still don't think it's about a clean cap--it's about not having contracts you can't move. if otto porter does the typical vet regression, you won't be able to move him without adding 2nd rounders or something. multi-year mles are usually contracts teams regret.

if we got brown, all i'd hear all day is that he's small and can't shoot, btw.

 

Those guys have warts but unfortunately anyone in that price range would. It’s why I don’t hate the Walker signing as much as others but there are guys I had above him when playing “social media GM”

my main thing there though is that it’s tough to operate if we’re just refusing to take on any salary beyond this year. Particularly with trades as I don’t see the appeal for teams. if they can’t move a salary then I do understand them wanting both picks unprotected. Not sure what other real benefit a trade presents to them if they aren’t moving a contract.

 

right, but i don't think we're refusing--i think that was the unspoken message from rob when he basically said those picks are gone. i view it as part of a package. they want to swing big on in-season trades, and if that fails, then they want the clean cap.

i think it was hard to sell teams on cap space a year from now, but will be easier when their season is already functionally over in december and FA is just months away and everyone hates your current star because your team sucks.

i think everyone's using one utah deal (gobert) as the measuring stick, but i think the other utah deal (mitchell) is the one rob & co were watching intently. that's a good young player that went for just outside what we can currently afford.