WMC 24-25: Seasonal Highs And Lows!

I thought we should have rested AD and LeBron for this one

 

They both were great for the most part too. Supporting cast not coming through

Stupid Westbrook trade haunts this era

 

We did well trading Brick, the problem is not retaining players for continuity

 

Dug out of the ditch but the ditch was big. Stupid Nets when they got an actual good Harden made Lebron/AD short circuit.

I mean look at the talent lost: Kuzma, Caruso (second to bricks big contract), KCP. Schroeder not given a second chance since they got Brick and signed Nunn.
Considering Reaves was already coming on board: this team should have a consistent core of DS/Caruso/Reaves/Kuzma plus AD/Lebron and you move some pieces around that. Just a trash trade not from the players moves but the decision made due to cost and the type of players brought in.

I mean someone would have to be doing a lot of cocaine to be saying they'd flip just Kuzma, Caruso, KCP for Dlo/Vando/Beasley (throw in Rui as well)

 

Yeah plus the 2 wasted 1st rounders, the Brick trade was a generational blunder. Good thing we fired Vogel, to punish him for that trade.

 

Lebron doesn't like roster continuity , gets bored real quick and only thinks about himself and his career .. so he brought Westbrook , a dominant ballhandler to make sure he was going to beat Kareem's record .

We lost KCP and Caruso in the process .. 2 of the best role players in the league

 

Anyway pox on LeBron, he sacrificed 1 1/2 years of contention for Brick lol

 

I want to say we need one more shooter but every shooter forgets to shoot once they come here, so IDK.

 

Its just bizarre at this point. Guys instantly can't shoot once they put on the Laker jersey. Can't think of another example of this lol

 

Hey take the pox off dummy …. let’s get to Vegas.

 

It was the Harden deal to the Nets: I think people forget how scary that team looked.
Durant, Irving, Harden and a bunch of good roleplayers Joe Harris pre-injury, Bruce Brown, Nic Claxton. They had all the pieces of a true super team: 3 stars, defense, shooting

 

still no reason to panic. both irving and durant have had major injury issues for years, even at that point. it's not just hindsight (i'm sure i said it at the time) that you were unlikely to meet them in the finals if you got there. you should never build your team to beat a single opponent. same reason i don't see a need to build the team to play jokic. decent chance somebody else knocks denver out or murray can't go in the playoffs.

 

not saying it was the right move or the one I would have advocated: I think you and I felt like the lone Kuzma supporters at times lol.
more of an explanation. The other thing I think both AD/Lebron wanted was someone to take the burden off the regular season as ironically they both feared injuries after the post-bubble reasons. Brick for all his faults is typically an iron man

I'm no mind reader but I suspect that these were the two bigs thing going in their heads: the injuries and the threat of the Nets trade loomed large.

 

i think they believe russ could still carry a team when one of them was out, yes.

but they--and our management team--vastly underrated the gulf between the average vet min player and the average guy making kcp/kuz money. just huge.

 

I still hated the trade even if Russ played at his Houston level and don't think it worked if he played at that level. But when you combine it with his drop off in ability: man just awful

 

Meh...some revisionist history still floating around here I see. If you go back to the 5 seasons before we signed Lebron, and add that to the entire time, he's been here.

The Lakers haven't won consistently, without Lebron and AD playing together period. If anything, we should have kept Dwight and Javale, instead of signing Gasol and Harrell IMO. We might have be able to sit AD out, for the beginning of that season. He might have gotten injured anyway later, who knows?

The next season we were over the cap, and Dennis had declined his offer. All the PG available that summer, would have taken a sign and trade to acquire, which we couldn't do, because we were over the cap.

So trading for Buddy Hield was going to do what for us exactly? Hield, KCP and Avery Bradley, weren't going to make us any better either. We would have just been complaining about them.

Every season is different in the NBA, there hasn't been a team, to make it to consecutive Western Conference finals since Golden State with KD. Teams make moves, the landscape changes, you can't even be in the discussion, without your best players being available regardless. Hopefully, the Lakers will buck the trend this season, and at least get back to the WCF(If we got lucky on the injury front)...we'll see.

 

These posts about injuries simply can't take away that Westbrook at 40 million a year put up statically seasons that were replacement level NBA player value. That is a huge drop off and at the cap hit handcuffed the Lakers.

 

Handcuffed how? I just pointed out that we haven't won much at all, without James and Davis playing together, in over 10 seasons period. That's just what it is, the rest is just some deflection , away from that undeniable fact.

Westbrook avg 18/7/7 and missed 1 game, that's not a replacement player bro. We rebounded nicely, after we got Lebron and AD back on the court together for a run. The main thing remains the main thing to me. We can win with multiple surrounding casts, if our best two players are healthy IMO. If not, it's a wrap under any configuration.

I definitely don't think that we could have gotten D'Angelo, Jarred and Malik, for KCP, Kuz and Harrell either.

 

the nets would have won it all in 2021 if kyrie hadn't gotten injured in the bucks series. they were on their way to winning that series easily