WMC 24-25: Seasonal Highs And Lows!

I think Lebron should retire after this season. Unless someone would be willing to take on his last season contract.

I'm done watching the low IQ basketball show. He's one of the major culprits. 20 years in the league, he's done enough for himself. Time to move on.

 

i'm not as far over as you on this, but i definitely feel like he hasn't been about winning games since the last ring, and i think that's what it is now.

curious to see how AD responds to that. maybe he's good with his one ring, or maybe he doesn't like working his a** off so that lebron's swan song doesn't look as nasty as kobe's.

 

Man going with Bevs and not Bogdanovic hurts.

He would have slid perfectly into that starting SF spot: good size and that shooting. Just weird that they constructed this roster expecting that Indiana trade to happen or something really close to it.

 

it would be nice if we had him but most here seems to ignore that utah was trying to rob Rob!

 

our 2 starting guard are atrocious, does Ham not like winning?

 

His lineups are strange.
Even when he has a taller, more capable player on D in Troy Brown, or Austin, he often chooses to deploy BevMo as a small forward. It makes zero sense.

 

WTF? Lakers as a family business are running into an issue of the bad emperor problem - this team really needs to be run like a professional organization and they just don't want to for whatever reason. Sticking with people who they are familiar with and some heuristics from Simba's dad from the sky err Jerry Buss (be good to your star players) and let it fly.

 

What's bizarre is that their best win of the season came when Brown started and then he was taken out?

 

I get it.

But this is how they operate; also, for as much as I love Cranjis, he was also very wrong about Lonnie.

The Lakers and Klutch took a chance on him with no "pro scouts", and he's having a great year.

I'm not trying to deflect. They should have everything covered, but I'm also not going to go ballistic.

 

I'm a huge Lebron guy obviously but I don't think anyone thinks you should leave your pro scouting to Klutch and I think Klutch between KCP/Lonnie have been pretty good to the Lakers!

So why worry: look at the non Klutch guys: Nunn, Beverly, Russ, Jones, Schroeder just hasn't worked out.

 

Nunn was All-NBA first team rookie. He looked promising. At the time when we signed him, I thought it was a good signing. I didn't anticipate him falling out of the rotation 3 years later or so.

Beverly is cooked. Bad trade. Again, didn't mind the trade. And if we could use his salary as ballast for a player of need, I don't think it was a bad move. That's still in progress.

Jones, I wanted back. Schroder for the minimum sounded good the way he played overseas.

Russ was the obvious bad target. Again though, Rob had Hield as a potential target (deal was all but done), which I think was the right move. After Klutch intervened and they all collaborated, they went in a different direction.

Heck, even targeting Rozier to bring back on a potential 3-team deal I believe was the right target.

I'm not a fan of all of Rob's decisions, and I have criticized him, but when you have a salary full of 3 max stars, the minimum players are going to be hit and miss. Pro scouts or not, IMO.

 

Sure: anything is justifiable and I'm actually supportive of waiting to make a trade as Westbrook's deal becomes more appetizing to teams who aren't doing as well as they would hope and the better the Lakers due the less leverage others team have.

But look at the broad picture - no emphasis on prioritizing length on defense and shooting. In general one rule of thumb is this what Toronto would do has become a de facto gold standard. And it's a mistake to think of this as a "Rob problem" as we don't know conditions he is working under - this is run as a family business which clearly triggered things like letting Caruso go (disaster), letting Shroeder walk instead of a S&T.

 

nunn's klutch, right?

i think jones is fine as a 3rd string center, tbh.

and i think schroder's fine as a backup pg.

russ and bevs were pure reputation gets.

 

I thought Jesse Buss ran our scouting department?

 

no means to get it. it's not like we picked the small guys over talented larger guys. the talented large guys are expensive and generally not for sale.

toronto's 13-14 and in 9th place.

 

We are in 13th place with three future HOFers.
Our last Championship team dominated because they were taller and faster than the competition at nearly every position(sans Rondo, but he showed up BIGtime in the playoffs).

 

For prospects. Teams typically have scouts for draftees, upcoming opponents, and professor scouting

 

we're in 13th place with one all nba player, one fading superstar, and a bench player paid 47 million dollars per year. any team with a 47 million dollar bench player is going to be pretty bad, period. we whine and whine about so much when the russ trade is pretty much the answer to everything that's wrong.

 

I've posted more than once my assumption that Jesse Buss and the scouting department, whoever that entails, would be looking at and breaking down players in the league that we might be interested in. WTF would you need additional people to do this? NBA Pass and watch all the games and far less players to cover. Anyway, whoever is the brightest of the bright in that clearly bright department one would think would be involved? I wonder where Cranjis is getting this as he seems certain with his all caps stating it. Bring in more for the college grind then, teach em good and let the best in our organization figure this out too since they know how to pick basketball players for the NBA.

 

i'm guessing cranjis is saying that other teams have designated personnel for that purpose only, and we do not. i'd believe it. it doesn't mean we don't scout, but it might mean that we don't devote the same amount of resources to it. or it might mean that we do it just like everyone else but don't nominally have an office for it.

i'd be curious to learn what our process is. as others have said, it wouldn't be the first time cranjis went unfairly overly negative on the team.