LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

yeah, this was a better way of making my point. he's obviously associated with the team and seen as a mouthpiece for lebron; he needs to just not comment on the lakers unless it's positive. would he be happy if say, rob came out in june about a klutch client that played for us having deficiencies that we were hoping to upgrade upon?

i just have massive rich paul/lebron front office pressure fatigue. spare me the next westbrook/derozan campaign, dip*****.

 

LOL. I agree w/Rich on this team actually; don't trust the regular season wins, but they are important for positioning for PO's & building chemistry. Also, who the hell we benching Austin for? ROFL. If anything, the elephant in the room is LBJ is likely gone this year (Irleand thinks so, too), and we can rebuild the team once his old a** is off the books arouond Luka.

 

it's ok for us to say these things; not ok for rich paul. just like it wasn't ok for lebron to say that stuff in the summer.

i don't know that lebron's gone after this year. his max contract is gone. how he handles that emotionally is up to him and rich.

we have about 50 games to evaluate him and see if he can contribute to a top-level contender.

luka and austin may just need more help. maybe bill duffy will make that clear via passive aggressive press releases, as is the ancient custom.

 

The bolded is too f****** funny...lmao.

Yeah, I'm just reading the tea leaves. Paul and LBJ have been a complete sh**s*** since the summer, and I just get a feeling he's done here in LA.

 

All of us who are paying attention have known since the summer that this team needs to add better defensive pieces.
We don’t need LeBron’s lackey to state the obvious for us.
And people STILL wonder why many Laker Faithful will be happy when the LeBron Narcissism Tour in LA comes to an end.

 

yeah, you'd hope the narcissism tour could end without lebron actually leaving, like it did with tim duncan and dirk nowitzki, for example. but i guess i understand that lebron didn't play his whole career in one place.

it's going to be pretty fascinating this summer, imo. what offer will we make him? is he maybe considering just retiring without fanfare? is he considering taking a vet min back in cleveland to try and get them one more ring (my money might be here, actually)?

 

zero chance he retires without a farewell tour

i would've thought he'd announce this was his final season already, but i guess he actually wants to play beyond this season? hopefully he does retire in cleveland, because no way should they be paying a 41 year old that much money

 

i think his options will be something like 20-25 per here or vet mins wherever he chooses. contenders mostly won't even have mle money, so we have a ton of leverage if he's interested in that at all, and we don't have to go near his current number to blow other offers away. what you'd hope as a laker fan is that he'd do what dirk did in dallas and say--go field the best roster you can, and i'll take whatever money is left over. just not his MO, but it's what you'd do if you just wanted to compete at the highest level.

i said cleveland because i think they're close enough to the top that just adding a 41yo lebron could put them over, and it's a perfect story. he gets to give us the finger, go back home, play a hero for taking the pay cut, etc.

oh, and i'll say i'm not as sure as others that he wouldn't retire without the tour. i almost got the feeling from the philly game that he treated it like the last time he might play there. and maybe the fact that my own sciatica is acting up this week...but man...at some point, it gets really tough to keep going out there.

 

Now this is a new low? Are you blaming LBJ for your sciatica acting up now this week?

LOL. I'm kidding.

 

It's better if he does a tour - doesn't feel right for example that they scheduled second end of a B2B in Boston of all places. A few spots like Cleveland, Boston, GS should be marguee games where the schedule will make sure he plays in those matchups

 

what i meant was it might not matter what the plans are. the body just stops cooperating.

 

I thought Cleveland could be an option but they are really struggling in a bad East this year. They've only won 5 games against winning teams this year. Don't know how they fell off like that and who knows, it's early and the East, might not take much to course correct this season.

That option might be off the table.

 

You're not kidding. That was some low-level stuff...lol.

 

yeah, weird how the playoffs just sort of continued for them this year, lol.

i think they need to dump garland (i like him, but he can't stay healthy and isn't the best fit, imo).

mobley, mitchell, lebron, and some defensive role players who can knock down a shot is a threat, imo.

 

The Austin Reaves stopper. Lebron James

 

C’mon man.



AR had plenty of looks and shots … they just weren’t going in.