yeah, i tend to not blame rob as much for caruso. i think he could have stood up to klutch on THT and chosen caruso, though--and to me, that's in the gm's purview. he got into bed with klutch, and he's on the hook for the good (lebron, late kcp) and the bad (early kcp, THT over caruso) there. but still--the choice between THT and caruso was b******* and forced by ownership. that rob hasn't said that publicly is why his job is safe, imo. if he ever does get fired, those details would be the first to come out, i think--and they'd be bad for the franchise.
You know again …. just f*** this guy with his anti Pelinka obsession. And whoever in the organization, (IF) there really is, pulling the Rob move with the alleged backstabbing … for “not” good cause.
Nah, I agree with him, he and Harrison said on the show yesterday that Rob never takes credit or blame for anything, and that’s true. He always talks about it being a collaborative effort or whatever. He never faces any accountability, and now he’s going to have to dodge questions about Ham AND Hurley during the JJ presser. He also said that what he hears a lot talking to other team’s front office people is that Rob comes across like a used car salesman, always trying to sell you something, always trying to appear that he wins the deal in every deal, or he won’t make it. He conceded as GM you should try to win every deal, buuut not at the expense of not making solid deals even if you have to overpay a bit (overpay being like throwing in an extra 2nd rounder when we have a lot). I would also say that Irwin is equally critical of all of the front office, Jeanie for being cheap, Kurt for not being qualified for his role, Linda for having no business making basketball decisions, etc., I really don’t get why some people don’t like him so much, I don’t like guys that are the opposite, Laker a** kissers like Trudell when he’s on LFR.
yeah, if there's any snake-like backstabbing going on in the organization, it's whoever anthony's friends with, imo. as for the used car salesman stuff, read up on kevin pritchard and daryl morey.
I don’t like Pritchard or Morey either… One thing being true doesn’t make another thing not true. I just don’t think Rob should be doing this job “alone”, this is the Lakers, we should have a full qualified staff, not just Rob negotiating deals with Kurt pushing his influence in the background, or from the shadows if you prefer. I don’t see why that opinion = Rob hate. Dr Buss hired qualified people to run things, we should employ as many qualified people as needed to make us the best org possible, to have good relationships around the league, to help with deals. Clearly what we’ve got right now makes people look at us and charge a Lakers/Rob Pelinka ‘I hated you as an agent’ tax. Jerry West was liked and respected around the league, and obviously there aren’t just Jerry Wests lying around to be hired out there, but I’m pretty sure we could add someone very well liked and respected around the league to the staff to work next to Rob, but we don’t, because I’m pretty sure everyone at the top likes being right where they are as far as power goes *cough*Rambis*cough*. Hell we could even just promote one or both of the good Buss brothers to the GM role so they can continue to grow and either succeed or fail and then we’ll know what they’ve got, but again, we don’t for whatever reason.
agree that rob should have someone else that isn't kurt or jeanie or whatever. and my point about morey and pritchard is that they've been considered at the very top of the game (erroneously, imo) at points in their career, and each is a bona fide snake. i just don't think the "snake-like" insult that keeps getting repeated is particularly damning even if it were "true". i don't think our tax is a rob tax (maybe in like, two circumstances). it's a laker tax. and i don't think the laker tax was in full effect until after shaq and kobe, when the franchise had finally separated itself fully from the pack, so west didn't really have to deal with it. hell, it wasn't until the pau gasol deal that i can really recall there being this sentiment that you can't deal with the lakers in a way that would help them. a lot of managing is about developing relationships, too, and i think to do that, you have to help others sometimes. usually, this means that you're a seller (or a buyer of useless things for other purposes like eating salary). we are basically never in this mode, and that makes it hard to develop relationships, imo. the only contract i remember eating is jeremy lin (for morey!), and the only star we ever sold was shaq (upon his vehement insistence). it's hard to build up good will with other managers when you never have anything to offer them. this is why i think it would be good to bring in an assistant gm who's been in those kinds of roles. we won't because our whole system is built on nepotism. this, once again, is not a thing that firing rob solves. our problem is at the top, always.
I like to know if we have a capologist. I'm sure we do, right? We were $6.7 million over the tax. Is there anything we could have done last offseason to negate that and reset the tax for us? Just curious.
rob clearly understands the cap, and that media buffoonery rightfully basically ended shelbourne. I outlined during the deadline how we could get under, but I hoped we wouldn’t because of what it implied (we wanted to save money more than compete). I was glad when we didn’t dump a vet min or downsize from prince just to save money.
I think Rob understands the cap and agree that Ramona's reporting on that was absolutely ridiculous. What the front office needs is some real dealmakers with good relationships around the league. We could bring in as many guys (or gals) with those skills that we wanted, but it won't happen.
I definitely think that was part of it. She was taking a lot of shots at the front office and i think that was the one that finally did it.
yeah, i've repeated that the mavs finally started making progress when they brought in dennis lindsey. we need to do something like that. nico harrison is still in charge, as would rob be here, but just a veteran with relationships. didn't hurt that it was just dead wrong. this is what happens when your sources have a strong bias. a lot of the "opposing gms think..." stuff is just total garbage. yes, let's listen to the people competing with these people to hear the real truth of the matter.
Right. If we did something similar to the Mavs it would help out the organization a lot. Reports are that we are finally ready to beef up the infrastructure of the organization. Following through with that alone would make this a good offseason. Ramona just should know better. She should be happy it was sports and not other areas as crap like that is a good way to get sued.
We aren’t a championship team as-is, so if true that’s a shame, and IMO kind of a lame excuse. I don’t really think Rui should be part of this “core” after his defense cost us as much as it did this playoffs.
I don’t know, this reads to me like Pelinka stating the obvious. I’d bet they have and will continue to explore trades, but is a deal available that significantly improves this team? I have my doubts. Do we make a marginal upgrade to be a 6 seed and hit the apron? Not sure that’s worth it.
That’s fair, I guess I just don’t love preemptive excuses. JJ said in his presser he came here to win a championship, well, sorry, but we aren’t good enough with this core, and if everyone opts into their deals we are at like 14 players, so it’s the same roster. I assume they’ll make changes of course, we almost always do, I just don’t like being sold the idea that we’re being limited by new rules, if that’s the case you just have to get more creative I guess. What we heard at the deadline was we weren’t making moves because in the summer we’d have 3 picks to play with and we could get more, now it’s we’ll see, the new CBA is making it difficult, so which is it? I dunno, it’s the offseason, not a lot to talk about, that’s just my take, I don’t love excuses being made this early on, we’re either trying to a championship or we aren’t, and JJ seemed to think we are. I guess hearing that was a bit deflating.
Weezy we usually agree but I have a different take on it. I think this is the Lakers finally realizing that they can't operate like they did in the past. Because quite frankly, I hated the idea of trying to trade 3 fricking picks plus rui/reaves/dlo/vando or some package of those guys for a guy like Trae Young. If that was our angle this summer, i was going to be livid. The 3 stars thing just doesn't work anymore - you gotta have 6-8 guys that are all interchangeable with 2 star players heading up the snake. 3 superstars doesn't work - it's just not a thing. We won having this exact set up as well...6-8 guys that can all play and 2 superstars. If anything I thought it was Rob finally being self aware that we can't just dump a bunch of guys and get a guy like Trae Young and expect to win it all. This team underachieved last year thanks to playing the wrong lineups pretty much for 80% of the season...the moment we swithced it back to what got us to the WCF last year, we started winning. Shocking! We needed to have that lineup on DAY ONE. And I believe we WILL have that lineup on Day 1 barring us being stupid and letting DLO walk to another team. I really would love to see continuity from this team...and I really don't think we're far behind the Mavs...
I completely agree that you need depth to win now, and hell no I don’t want Trae Young. I don’t agree that we are good enough as is to win it all, LeBron is old as hell, AD was injury free last year, it’s not likely to happen again if he has to carry our whole defense again, and with players like DLo, Austin, old man LeBron, and Rui starting, he does. I get what you’re saying, and I hope you’re right that we have a new philosophy as a franchise, but we need more 2-way guys, and trades are pretty much the only way to do that with our cap situation and how many guys we have under contract. Again, I guess I just don’t like how Rob is always playing it safe to the media, hedging his bets with responsibility of deals or non-deals if that makes sense. If I’m him I just don’t bring up the CBA, I just say we’ll do what we can to have the best roster possible, I don’t make excuses before free agency has already started about how I’m being held back, the CBA works the same for everyone, so it’s a given, I just do my job and take the credit or the blame for whatever happens. It just irks me, but hopefully it’s just a sort of smokescreen to not appear desperate.
Ok I agree with you there - I don't like the built in excuses with CBA and all of that. Other teams are making deals still...and I think there will be deals available that make sense for us that doesn't involve jettisoning anybody super core (LeBron/AD/Rui/Reaves)...I think the casualties will likely be one or two of the following players, + 1-2 picks: Vincent, JHS, DLO (sign & trade), Vando, 2024 1st round pick, 2029 1st round pick, 2030 1st round pick. Just between Vincent/JHS/Vando, that's actually $26M in outgoing contracts. Can definitely get some nice players for that amount. Throw in DLO, we're looking at $46M in contracts going out. A darkhorse trade that I think could surface is Lakers trading Vincent/JHS/Vando/S&T DLO (@$20M per year) for PG13.
I don’t mind Rob’s excuse. I completely understand that the Laker Tax is real and our only assets any other team would want are Austin and the picks. Nobody is giving us back any quality players for our garbage ones. Only thing I didn’t like were the F-bombs by JJ. Dude didn’t know that he was on TV and Rob usually throws in parables in these trees of settings? Read the room, dude.
