2026-27 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Does anyone else find the wording of that tweet strange? Lebron wants to play meaningful, competitive basketball?

The same offseason we decide to let Smart, Kennard and Rui walk. I wonder if it’s a shot at the front office - sort of: you guys are letting good players leave to pursue RFA’s.

 

Lebron on riding through my city but i dont think he is going back there. I think all roads lead to GSW.

 

So it’s clear the plan all along was to let everyone leave so we can go pursue RFA’s

 

I thought the part was cool where he told he us was allowing us to move on without him. So kind of him.

Since the decision was going to be made for him, he chose to control the narrative one last time hahahaahahahahahahaha. He's a genius at this media stuff. Always finds a way to do some back hand slapping. I guess he'll go to a contender who needs him to get over the top and try to take credit for making that happen with a 4th NBA team.

 

LeBron James bluntly admitted the Los Angeles Lakers were not a championship team after a 119-110 loss tOKCo the Oklahoma City Thunder. He pointed out that their inability to sustain energy and effort for a full 48 minutes separated them from elite contenders like the Thunder. thats with all those guys. Lakers lost all 8 games they played last season vs OKC. The plan was to get younger and more athletic. You cant achieve that by holding on to the oldest players. personally i think the only problem that might come back and haunt is 46mil on a player that never made the all star. These are not La type stars fringe stars.

 

Marcus only went for 2 years 13 million what are we doing rob???

 

he's worth paying that even if he was a mentor and stuck on the bench and just practiced with the squad.

but older and high mileage. He's hoping Ime Udoka can help him rediscover his magic for one more large contract.

Houston may be very tough next year. They needed guard play BAD, and if FVV is compromised, Smart may have a major role there and can shine.

 

While Smart had a solid first season in Los Angeles—becoming a dependable backcourt defender and playing a key role in their playoff series against Houston—both parties moved on because his age, offensive limitations, and contract demands didn't align with the Lakers' long-term roster construction. The Lakers were reluctant to commit long-term to the veteran and wanted more offensive firepower in their backcourt. Lakers goal is to get younger and more athletic.

 

Smart became a starter. next to Luka and Austin. Smart Dont provide what the team needs without Lebron. If Luka or Austin gets hurt Smart is not that guy. So not only is he an undersized to play the 3 he also not a bench scorer. We are not trying to duplicate Last season and more trying to build around Luka.

 

The FO better have some big moves lined up. Seeing Smart and Kennard go for a combined $13M annually is a bad look if you don’t already have something else in mind.

I’m willing to stay patient for a bit and see how it plays out, but the early optics aren’t good. They obviously had different plans from the start, but better execute on them.

Also, I’m curious what Walter’s involvement has been. Can’t imagine he bought the team with a generational star in his prime and is sitting back with no input in the offseason plan.

 

You keep bringing this quote up. First of all, it was from the first game against them and not the playoffs. We were without Luka and Reaves had jsut come back from injury and was playing off the bench on a mins restriction.

This is the full quote:

"You want me to compare us to them? That's a championship team right there. We're not," James told reporters. "We can't sustain energy and effort for 48 minutes, and they can. That's why they won a championship."

Here is his quote after the playoffs:

"If we're being completely honest, we were out-talented. We were not out-worked. They didn't out-physical us, they didn't out-smart us. I feel like we were just out-talented by OKC. They just possess so much more talent."

We were missing Luka and Reaves wasn’t healthy. A top 5 MVP level guy is a huge hole. But we developed championship level habits, that team played hard and competed.

Stop with the goofy nonsense bringing up that quote all the time. It’s not indicative of anything.

 

The funny part about this is, that figure is what we could of paid him with non bird rights. Both Smart and Kennard, legitimate bench pieces left for 13m.

I thought it would take 20-25m to retain them.

Both could be had for not far off what Vando makes yearly.

What on earth.

 

There is no amount of spin that can make the Smart decision palatable. Rob apologists, just stop. He played at a borderline NBA all defensive first team last year and his defensive numbers were on par with the year he won DPOY. He didn't register enough games but guess what NONE OF THE f***ING DEFENSIVE PLAYERS DO. It's the cost of playing defense that hard. I know that's strange to us since we're allergic to rostering that kind of player and instead Rob has a scoring guard fetish. AC makes $18m a year for less than 60 games of 20 mpg of that level play. Smart walked for essentially the TPMLE.


Anyway....

Latest from Fischer:

On the new salary for the new Lakers

Kessler is our guy

... but he's also Utah's guy

Then there's Duren

Details of Bogdan's deal with Houston

SA is only offering two year deals to the forwards they're chasing

 

but to be fair, Vando is way overpaid for what he brings. Not sure we should compare a bad contract to competitive ones.

But dang. The richer get richer in the NBA. It's a story of max contracts, a small middle class, and minimums and exceptions.

 

If the Lakers offer one RFA first, the other one is likely pissed, and both may go back to their teams on a salary match regardless leaving us empty handed.

This is good times.

 

Rob simply just focussed on checking the center box Luka had said he wanted, even if it means the rest of the roster suffers.

 

why cant it be that smart chose the rockets because he wanted to ‍not everything is a rob decision

 

I can’t see us being able to rebuild this offseason. And most likely we won’t have assets at the trade deadline to improve because presumably we will use them this offseason.

So next year, we will have the MLE and BAE to add to our team.

I’m quite sure that we won’t be competitors for the next 2 years which will be 4 post seasons with Luka on the team.

Meanwhile this offseason we let go of an All NBA defender, two of the best shooters in the league and a top 20 player.

 

yeah, i don't get the duren stuff anymore unless some of a few things are true. one is that we might be offering more money than anyone. two is that the s&t negotiations between sac and detroit aren't going well. this second one makes sense as detroit has been spraying everywhere that they don't want to "facilitate duren's move". i still say they could have ended all this by just signing him to something just over the standard max.

another possibility is that we're doing all this as a solid to duren's agent, who's part of bill duffy's group. like, yeah, we want him, but also we want to help him get a big bag. sacramento's threat to poach is toothless without us, as they can't scrape together the cap space to make an offer outright. we're the only team that can do this right now (i think both chicago and bkn have taken themselves out of the running to do something of this magnitude).

i thought duren was our target bc kessler wanted to go back to utah, but now i think kessler is the target and duren is a diversion as a favor to him. guessing kessler's agent knows all this.

so does detroit know this? sure. but we're also a threat to make good on an RFA offer if we don't get kessler. waiting game. my guess is detroit finally breaks and gets duren an offer he likes, and then we immediately either trade for kessler or sign him to a max RFA offer.

i still feel like it's a trade we've been pursuing, and one that involves us freeing up more salary. but we'll find out....probably not as soon as we hope, though.

it's definitely a shot. that's what he does. whatever. you're right man, we've just been not trying to win.

this. and your contract is based on theoretical future value, not past performance. smart was better than grimes last year. the team is betting that over the next two years, grimes will be better. we'll see. now in the case of mamu, he was better last year than rui AND the team is projecting him to be better next year.

ah, so it's tpmle. makes more sense now. i just couldn't be believe we'd let him walk over that. that's definitely sticking your neck out.

i know you're not among this group, but...do people really think rob hadn't thought this all through and wasn't aware of the perils of pursuing RFAs? it continually shocks me that a good chunk of our fanbase is convinced that this is a genuinely stupid person. he's not. you may not like him or agree with the general approach we've taken in FA (i actually do), but he definitely knew this is where we'd be sitting on day 2 of FA (with everyone convinced we were fully dead). he decided the risk was worth the potential reward, and much like SUPER GENIUS brad stevens used the second apron as an excuse to divest of all of boston's old players last year, we may be using the RFA chase as cover for doing the same. like boston, the team we put on the floor may not be better than last year's, but like boston, we will be better set up going forward. we could also pleasantly surprise like boston did under lower expectations and with young players making contributions.

anyway, our FA period is going to extend a while. i'm certain there is a backup plan for the fairly likely situation that kessler and duren stay put.

it's clear we thought a) the full max slot was crucial and b) grimes was a better bet than one of those two. recent stats say smart was by far the best of those three last year (though grimes had the edge prior to that). as someone else mentioned, luka's prior experience with grimes might have played a role. we clearly think we can get more out of him than he showed last year.

weren't you a big grimes fan less than a year ago? wouldn't you have been thrilled to sign him for 9m per or less? do you believe he just got worse?