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

He is indeed

 

Is that why he went to Portland ? To stick it to us ?

 

horry averaged 7/5/1 throughout his career. sure he was an incredibly clutch player and won 7 titles, but a HOF'er he is not

 

Phil talked about this. Lakers couldn't afford Pippen at the time.

 

Ballz .... lucky for your franchise you can market those fabulous toilets. Couldn't happen to a nicer deep pocketed billionaire competitor owner in the Lakers' market.

 

man, they're going to open that arena with a bones hyland/zubac pick and roll attack!

 

at this point, the clips best bet is to just keep kawhi out until the last month of the season and ramp him up from there prior to the playoffs. he clearly has some sort of degenerative knee issue

hilarious how clippers fans were adamant that it was lebron/nike who kept him from playing for team usa

 

so the season is starting "in the toilet"?

 

We had the press conference today with Rob and JJ. Highlights:
- Optimism that Vando and Koloko Will start training camp (means they will not)
- Vando had surgery to both feet after the end of the season, according to Pelinka (I think he blatantly lied here, on the timeline lol)
- Rui, Gabe and JHS fully ready for training camp
- JJ talked about crashing the glass again from the corner. He mentioned it talking about Rui too, which is nice
- JJ thinks Max can develop to be a key piece on defense and confirmed he will be consistently in the rotation (not a surprise but he said it, which is good as it signals he's not behind Reddish lol)
- JJ wants to expand Reaves' game, mostly off the ball if I understood correctly

Not a lot to take from the press as usual nowadays, a lot of political correctness answers and not opening it too much. I think with JJ communication abilities and the fact that he knows how media works, he will be very evasive in his answers and approach to media in general. I can't blame him.

We have Media Day tomorrow, start the training camp next Tuesday and play the first game on Friday, October 4th.

 

Sounds like no F-bombs today as well from JJ? Bodes well he’s a quick learner …. Jeanie probably asked him after media day “WTF” was THAT??

 

Had to take me a Rob. That's what is now called an extended summer vacation, where you disappear and don't do your job. With how the off-season was trended and finished, how well Bron and AD did carrying Team USA, I needed to unplug and reset for the upcoming season. Since Rob punched in today for the first time in months, I figured it was time for my return as well.

From what I've heard on various pods, Phil is the best in the business at individual work. I'm sure Bron isn't thrilled he's not here to work him him and work with Bronny. BUT JJ wanted player development people who would integrate that work into the team concept and larger vision. That's not Handy's thing. Plus I'm sure Rob was looking for a reason to plug the leaks. Handy isn't afraid to speak.

I like the players on our team, all of them...in a vacuum. I don't like them as a serious basketball team. I felt like this was the clearest need driven off-seasons we've had in some time and we did jack s*** to even attempt to address either issue. Half our roster is populated with non-NBA caliber players. We're one injury away from it all going to complete s***. But that's the only way Rob knows how to build teams -- everything has to break perfectly and there's no margin for error.

This one was wild and caught everyone by surprise. Imagine a world where GM'ing a college team and dealing with kids and NILs is less stessful than your current job of not being able to go see a movie, not able to sleep without one eye open, to never be able to put your phone down because you have to stay connected 24/7. I'm very curious to see what's next for ESPN and what's next for Shams. Does he step into that role? If so, who becomes his Shams? Amazon and NBC are reportedly willing to pay Shams the FA a lot of cash. Does it become a group project instead of a two man game? Who does Rob talk to now that his only mouthpiece is out of the game?

Bullet dodged. What was hilarious about this was Frank took another shot at Team USA the same day for how they handled the Kawhi situation before this dropped. The frame work of it is, postive swelling. That's a thing? How into the woods of the Kawhi injury cycle are we to where any swelling around the knee is a good thing?

He'll give us another total 20 games where he looks like one of the 3 best players in basketball and then 60 where he can't play, can barely play or is handled with kid gloves.

 

i don't get the rob vitriol, jsm. almost nobody did anything of consequence this summer. the market was frozen. there was a whole piece about it in the ringer recently (essentially, the media was bored because nothing was happening, so they wrote about that). we've been over stuff to death, but i just can't think of a single move where i thought we should have been in on it and had the assets (that made sense to part with) to be in on it.

i just wanted a big body vet min center to play a few minutes and felt like we could have paid a second to drop reddish and maybe gotten one. that said, which big body vet min center would have been worth it? mason plumlee was my choice, but the clippers let him walk to a rival at the vet min, so...that can't be a great sign, right? i just think there was nothing there--and not just for us. who really improved dramatically via trade/FA this summer? the kings and mavs made lateral moves, imo. i guess philly maybe? assuming paul george isn't trending towards useless?

i think the next cba might actually consider scaling back the home team advantage in FA after all these years of strengthening it, tbh. these mega extensions just kill player movement, which had become something fans followed almost as closely as the games themselves.

 

I want to know what happened with Valanciunas and we probably won't because the leaks have been plugged. Hell, he'll probably be a Laker by Christmas but I wanted a complete roster going into camp with a rookie coach and new system to set everyone up for success as best as possible.

I want to know the cost for Kessler, Robert Williams 3, and Day'Ron Sharpe. All of those are gettable guys and would've addressed the need to varying degrees.

Before the summer even started, it was abundantly clear we needed a center and better two way player at the wing. The latter is extremely expensive, teams ask too much for those guys based on supply vs demand. So that I'm more willing to forgive the. Going into the season with WORSE center depth is inexcusable. We knew what we needed, JJ specifically said we needed one during a sit down with ESPN before the ink dried on his contract, AD asked for one AGAIN this summer. Rob's answer is Cocomelon on a two way who hasn't played because of blood clots and is still awaiting clearance from the league.

Rob had no business handing out POs to minimum players like he's the cool house giving out full candy bars to trick or treaters. That's why we're here. He locked us into a meh roster and wasn't willing to give up any draft assets to dump an end of the bench/ barely NBA level player. Plumlee would've helped, Theis, Wiseman isn't very good but I'll take him over a two way. Sign me up for Biyombo or a 36 year old McGee or RoLo if we had an open roster spot.

I disagree about no one getting better. Just in the West cause the East doesn't really matter to us. Murray to the Pelicans makes them better. Ja healthy and with their draft, the Grizz got better. I think Dallas got better, Klay, Marshall, and Dinwiddie are improvements. OKC became the best team in the West with their two moves. SA is better with an actual point guard and they got Barnes too. They're done f***ing around with a homeless man's Dennis Rodman as their PG. Meanwhile Rob is sitting there saying my job is really hard. That's a Ham level of excuse and he should be ashamed to dare say that in front of any microphone. No one wants to hear that and if you're not up to task, get out.

I agree the CBA has some bigger deals not happening, but that's not an excuse to sit out the off season. In a regular summer both BI and Kuz would be elsewhere and PG would still be a clipper. This CBA...I have no idea why the players agreed to it, unless they didn't read it... just like Rob didn't.

 

ESPN going cheap


With as popular as his pod was, that's surprising.

I'm sure Amazon or NBC will make a play given they are now invested in the NBA.

 

yeah, we've been over that. i'm just not buying that we declined to sign him to that deal due to the extra year or whatever. i feel like we were chasing klay, and that was prioritized, so jonas secured the bag knowing he probably won't be in washington all year.

i'm certain we spoke to ainge, and i'm guessing the cost was too high. i'm actually not interested in williams, for several reasons. i was interested in sharpe, but again, that would have required a trade. and again, we did talk to the nets, almost certainly. i trust that we didn't turn down some no-brainer in any of these cases.

hell no on mcgee or rolo at this point. and i wouldn't be surprised if jaxson hayes was better than anyone else on this list this year (he was probably better than all but plumlee last year). had hayes been a FA this summer, and we signed him over theis or wiseman, i'm not sure folks would have been that upset.

i said via trade or FA, so Ja's health or the hypothetical that Edey is a star wouldn't factor into anything.

i'm not as sure about NO improving as you are. they now employ basically no size except zion, essentially trading their two big front court players (valanciunas and nance) for murray. i question whether zion at center for a full season is wise or likely to be successful.

i'm also not sure that dallas moving away from defense and towards more shooting around doncic is the right play. i thought they found their formula last year at the deadline and then pivoted away from it with the klay deal. i guess he's better than tim hardaway and josh green were for them, but just one more player who's a problem defensively on the perimeter for 30mpg is an issue. we know this very well.

i forgot SA. paul and barnes are the right additions for them to jump to playoff contention, assuming cp plays. they also had all the cap space and draft picks in the world to work with, and if our summer had been trading for paul and barnes, this place would be in revolt.

some teams also got worse (e.g., clips), and at least we didn't do that (e.g., russ trade).

how did rob not read it? the player options? they've always existed with the exact same risk. and they're being overblown tremendously, imo.

the giant extensions are slowing things down at the top, and the second apron is making some of the second-tier moves (BI, kuz, randle , jerami grant types) harder because those used to be salary dumps for draft picks to free spending teams, but the rules don't allow that anymore.

these things are probably good for parity (which was the goal) but bad for roster flexibility. hence you've got like 9 teams in the western conference basically on equal footing despite frantic attempts to get above the fray.

 

Maddest we’ve seen JSM …. since the Gump era?