2024-25 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Yeah Lakers were one of the worst teams in terms of game lost to injury just AD/Lebron healthy. I doubt that happens again with the Olympic action arrgh. Lakers need to lobby to get those two limited minutes during the Olympics (break glass as needed type of guys)

 

I think he would've taken much more of a cut for Klay than anyone else. You don't personally make that phone call unless you're really ready to help facilitate it.

It doesn't make for a great phone call between Rob, Bron and Rich. But it doesn't change anything other than the public perception that Rob got worked masterfully by Bron and found an unexpected way to leverage some public power. I'd rather my exec who was a former agent be able to play that better. Bron wasn't leaving, would've still taken the same payday he took today if he wasn't really going to take less for Jonas, and maybe he even respects a worthy chess opponent.

OK. How about it this way: a token starting spot with the Lakers can still land you only two shifts and 16 minutes a game. You see the crowd up front. You know Bron and AD are playing 32 minutes on a slow night. We still have two 3rd string centers and two other players who play minutes at PF. Where's the guaranteed path to starting consistently for real minutes? If I'm his agent, you gotta show me first.

I think Bron knows the 82 matter, especially in a Team USA year. He and AD need help getting through that slog. They both will miss games. And Jonas is still a big body to throw at Joker. Even if he's the kind of player who can get played off, he offers size that our current other options on the roster can only dream about.

 

absolutely. that was clear to me. poor derozan getting jerked around again. live look at him before every meeting next year:

i'm not sure what exactly you're proposing here. like rob should have paid to get off dlo's contract and create an exception and secured an agreement from valanciunas and then asked lebron to take the difference? publicly?

anyway, i don't think it's a chess game. it's not a game. lebron's won. the name of the game is "lebron wins". do you know what would happen if rob tried to smear lebron's paycut vow--or even just explained exactly what it was (a half-hearted pledge to meet you halfway)? trade demand, contract standoff all summer, crap like that. rob never even threw lebron under the bus for the russ trade despite everyone knowing what happened there (because lebron told us lol!). never once has rob been like, look: lebron and AD f***ed us all a couple years ago, our cheap owner made me pick between caruso and a klutch client, and i'm just trying to dig us out from those messes.

this is all the truth. speaking the truth would mean rob is out of a job. so, no, i don't think he should have tried to play media games with lebron and klutch. at all.

so, again, what's the specific suggestion? that we needed to move hayes and wood before making an offer to valanciunas? what if he said no?

i believe lebron would have taken some degree of a paycut to sign valanciunas. rich paul wasn't flat out lying. but he was definitely not giving the full story. to get valanciunas, we were going to have to offload a bunch of cash, early in FA, and commit to valanciunas before klay had made his choice.

we didn't miss out on valanciunas. there wasn't a real chance there. there might have been had he been prioritized, but lebron's first call was to klay thompson.

 

DeMar DeRozan could leave in free agency or via a sign-and-trade agreement, and Lonzo Ball – who hasn’t played in an NBA game since January 14, 2022 – is considered a trade chip in the final year of his contract.

Furthermore, if DeRozan leaves, there’s quietly a growing belief around the league that Chicago could look to move center Nikola Vucevic and lean further into a youth movement and roster retooling
Do it,Pat and Vucevic will be a Laker

 

right--it helps that dallas had to clear that space because they wanted their mle anyway, and thj sucked and was not at all part of their plans. so there was no loss if the thompson situation didn't arise. they needed to just be off thj.

one of our problems is that dlo isn't part of our plans...but he doesn't suck. just blind taste-test his numbers vs. klay's last year and look at how bad we looked when he wasn't available.

and again, i think rob is definitely that creative--this is where the irwin takes annoy me--i think he may have just made the same choice you did--he couldn't count a trade exception for dlo being more useful than dlo. the mavs could count on that with respect to thj. and again, didn't hurt that they had an inside guy.

 

not much in the way of updates, and while we've been waiting for the big move, several bigs at reasonable prices are no longer on the market. Kind of a bummer, but this is life with the Kang in many ways.

 

Yeah, that's definitely a good point. We were healthy and couldn't capitalize. I blame the coach. Health is always a condition we can't control. We can control the HC and we tried to do that. Let's see if it works but we targeted the variable that we could.

True, which highlighted 2 of our flaws: DLo's and Rui defense.
Good defense always improves the offense so it's a double trouble.
We lost the ability to counter attack it

 

Does anyone know if agents get commissions bases on players' gross or net income? Apparently players are being advised on the tax implications of playing in high-tax states like California. This seems to be the trend around the league. If this keeps up, it sort of makes us like a small market team that no one wants to play for. Sort of hurts the NBA's goal of parity, but taxes are out of the NBA's control. So, it is logical for the Lakers to value their picks so highly, because they are more important than ever, and it may be the only way we could build a good team. Lakers also probably look at Boston as a model of team building, with them winning a championship with Tatum and Brown, who Boston drafted and developed.

 

maybe he and Hurley can go on tour together to properly milk it.

To be such a great agent, he really is clueless with the media and PR. He really lucked out to land Kobe and for Kobe to vouch for him.

If you're saying it was an insincere paycut offer or a half truth (I said all along it was a great win-win by Bron), then counter leak using friendly agent speak (what he SHOULD be good at) that we're doing everything we can with the new information to better the roster but there are uncertainties with how much we'll be able to clear and the necessary sequence of events to land player x.

You can do it without calling Bron a liar and saying he's pushing you in front of the bus. Instead all you've said this summer is that your job is hard and the CBA makes it hard for you to do your job. But before you finished saying that, you had to pause because your phone went off and it was Woj announcing another team making a trade. Oops.

So it's a win-win for us.

I think when you have 15 players on your roster you need to make moves before anyone takes you seriously as a FA destination. Whoever it's for, trades should be completed by now. Either go get Grant or similar and dump a couple guys that way OR if you can't do that, flush someone + cash/ protected 2nd on Detroit or similar. If he says no, who cares. Upgrade is needed regardless. Biyombo > either of them.

 

https://www.tampabay.com/sports/hoc...the-money-matters-for-steven-stamkos/2262766/
It's NHL but same s*** was discussed

 

With teams without income taxes winning 4 of the 5 latest cups (Vegas, Tampa & Florida) maybe that advantage is starting to pay of? Add to that the fact that Nashville is spending like crazy this summer and Dallas is a steady contender (both teams without income taxes), the trend is even clearer.

 

yeah, just disagree here. it would be literal seconds before the fans and media parsed that statement for what it was and hours before some cryptic lebron tweet or rich paul soundbite pushing it back on rob "nobody has brought anything concrete to us..."

further, if you're committed to our bit, you can't be asking lebron to take paycuts. he can offer them, but you can't negotiate one, ask him to help, have him say no, then tell people he said no. that ruins the whole relationship. and no, you can't even do it in coded language. i mean, we've all figured out what happened without rob having to say it, anyway. unless you really believe lebron just wrote a 20 million dollar check with the names klay, demar, and jonas on the back of it.

to be clear, i don't think lebron said no to anything--i think rob knew what not to ask, and that's why he has a job.

yeah, i threw that lob, but you have to expect rob to act in self-interest. btw, the good news about rob acting in self-interest is that he wants to keep this job, post-lebron. it could be worse. he could fully be a klutch asset and just hollow out the franchise and then walk when lebron does. this is what lebron wants. not happening. i'm glad.

i think we were up against the second apron when FA started and knew we weren't planning on entering that market in a serious way. it was S&Ts or plain old trades, and the S&T option was a late-developing one, imo--when it became clear klay was leaving. i think the plan all along was trades. also, note that dinwiddie hasn't signed yet. i wouldn't be surprised if we told a few of our favorite vet min candidates that we might end up clearing space for them later. for now, we might actually need a salary slot to use in trade instead of an empty one for a vet min.

 

There's some guy playing for Bahamas at Olympics qualifiers VG Edgecombe he looks like best version of Nash and Chris Paul before injuries and he can dunk too.
I have heard about Cooper Flagg never watched him, but this guy looks ready to play

 

Rob's blowing a lot of smoke in this article
Coach speak and double talk
It's what's expected this time of year

 

Pockets Pelinka

 

@ShamsCharania


After retiring from a 12-year NBA career, four-time All-Star Kemba Walker is rejoining the Charlotte Hornets on new coach Charles Lee's coaching staff as a player enhancement coach.