I have a feeling that @therealdeal et. al understood my point about Hibbert as some sort of "I told you so". Not the case. I just have a feeling that many of the critical comments made toward our FO were made without knowing the whole picture. Mitch and co. clearly see the landscape much better than us, with all due respect to armchair GMs, me including, and our whining about closing and lack of action may have perfectly valid reasons. We don't know. So calling our FO incompetent from information retrieved from Twitter and other sauces is just ugh... Imagine that Mitch did have Hibbert in his pocket going into DJ or LA meeting? Would he go all out and try to appease them, knowing full well that they are: 1. perhaps not the best option 2. and are not the only option This is like a market place, you win if you have the leverage to leave the deal on the table.
For the last time, it's not about the players. It's about how the FO made fools of themselves In their pitch to Aldridge. It's been revealed the short comings in our FO. They need a change. It's as simple as that. Those of us calling for Jim and Mitch's head were doing so because it looked like they had no plan. They had a plan, it's just not a very good one unless they plan on keeping Hibbert around past this year. I'm no longer definitively calling for heads to roll, but I'm certainly calling for change.
ZenMaster, you make a lot of good points. I never doubted that the Lakers FO had a backup backup plan, or plans A-Z, my major fear was that plan being bringing back Jordan Hill for more than the 9 mil we had him for already because he was all that was left and we needed to fill the roster. Falling back on what we did last season genuinely scared me, because that's not progress, and IMO it would make our franchise look desperate and terrible doing something like that. We've seen enough of Hill already, and I think we've seen him reach his ceiling, so I didn't want to see that again. I didn't foresee a trade like this happening because we seemingly had no real assets to trade other than our rookies and I didn't want that. It was hard to foresee a team like Indy being willing to give up a still potentially very good center in this league (and former All-Star) for salary cap relief and some 2nd round picks. Didn't foresee Larry Bird doing us a solid like this either, but I guess he's not type to only make good deals to help his buddies out like McHale and Ainge. I guess Bird isn't a petty man though, and with Hibbert not in Indy's future plans, he's cool with his GM making a deal that's beneficial for both sides. I hope there's still more going on behind the scenes that we don't know as well. We need a backup PG unless we're counting Jabari Brown as one, or a backup SG if Clarkson is gonna start there and Kobe at the 3. So I think the concern with the FO chasing and waiting on Aldridge for days is legit, because the FA pool is shrinking, and we can't just keep trading picks and players we drafted and never used to fill these needs. At that rate we'll have to be offering picks for 2025 to 2030. I hope we have a plan for a nice player to spend our remaining 4 or 5 mil with, and that for some reason Ellington would be willing to come back on a minimum deal.
Price, Brooks, Sergio Rodriguez, Nate Robinson, Mo Williams, Andre Miller, Marecelo Huertas, Jameer Nelson, Will Bynum, Ishmael Smith, Kendall Marshall, Donald Sloan, John Lucas, Sebastian Telfaire, Toure Murry, Darius Morris, Jorge Gutierrez. Also RFAs: Matthew Dellavedova, Norris Cole, Cory Joseph
I disagree about the FO making a fool of themselves. They have to use their strengths when making the pitch which is marketing/indorsement opportunities as a Laker. They cannot pitch what they don't have (ability to compete immediately). This BS about the FO being incompetent to woo FA should stop. We were at a disadvantage coming in, trying to convince a guy who has more than made up his mind, to return to his home state and with a contender. So we hammer on our strengths, the LA big media market. The unprofessionalism on Aldridge's side of leaking his comments resulted in another meeting. That in itself manifest the power of our brand. The Knicks were bumped off because we wanted another meeting. It's just these talking heads that blew it out of proportion succeeding in creating panic among Laker fans.
I never claimed you said it was about the players. Where do you get that? ___ Now to the point. Where you at the meeting? We go with what pundits (that, for all we know, may be on Spurs payroll) tell us. Or worse - "people close to situation". I don't know if the pitch was perfect or lousy. Was it skewed towards business opportunities or just was interpreted that way by some posse person? Neither do you. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, you chose to take a somewhat negative approach (and I know you like Hibbert's signing). Why? Do you have some information or is it all a bit of conjecture?
Oh, and how is Hibbert not a good plan? We've been through this, but I'll reiterate: 1. it doesn't take development time from our prized rookies 2. it provides a sparring partner for our troubled, but talented summer league invitee 3. it doesn't tie us financially to a player with a lot of holes (defense, offense, age, inability or desire to play center...) 4. it fits our personnel, as Hibbert even last season was a very good anchor, by all measures I've seen What's not to like? This to me was the only correct move. All the rest of Koufos, Bismack, DJ, LA, Chandler are, to me, much worse fit for our roster and neither gets us to 2 things you claim are important for FAs: making playoffs and being an attractive pairing.
So you're going to dismiss a dozen media reports about the Lakers short comings as conjecture? That's true fandom right there. Aldridge and his people were the ones that leaked our pitch's short comings. You can choose to believe that Aldridge's people lied to the media, but do you have any reason they'd do that? What does Aldridge gain by embarrassing us? Or do you believe that just about every media outlet lied just for the heck of it? I find your faith in the FO in the face of clear issues both frustrating and admirable. They need change. Their deficiencies in relating to modern stars is now well documented and it's not because of what the media says. It's because Howard, LeBron, Carmelo, Aldridge, Jordan, and even Gasol are not here right now. We don't have good pitchmen in these meetings.
I don't disagree with some of these points. Aldridge and his camp certainly were unprofessional by revealingrevealing these problems, but they DID reveal them. Lack of analytics, lack of player understanding, selling too much media and not enough basketball. These are all PROBLEMS. They need to be fixed. We need better salesmen in these meetings. We need to more readily embrace analytics and be more forthcoming with those results. We need people who are personable in these meetings. Dallas just got Jordan by selling HIM. Their roster at the of Jordan signing was worse than ours. That's a great salesman.
You may be right and we don't have a good pitchman. I find it hard to believe that to be a deciding factor. I am in software industry, as you may know, and many times there is a meeting with the client, where you pitch stuff. When you do it to business people - you need that pitchman. One that can present charts, but also have charisma to inject confidence in what you are selling. But when you have a meeting with IT - where the people across the table are professionals like you - there is no pitch. They don't like those pretty PPT files. You don't disrespect them with a pitch, you talk about technical challenges straight up, showing that you understand the work at hand and you've invested time an money in designing a solution for those difficulties. This to me is similar - you have a highly skilled professional in Aldridge, or Monroe. They are like that IT guy above, they don't want your pitch. They don't want the showman to show them a PPT. They want to talk about their role. What you are going to run. What defensive adjustments you are going to make. We don't have any of that because our team is an unknown. We don't know how our PG, SG and PF will do. We have an all-time great on his last leg. Basically we didn't have the software solution, operational mechanism and deployment strategy to show. An you know what - it was expected.
Personally, I think the media took a small story and ran with it. As they always do with small Lakers news and try to twist it into "Hollywood Drama". Okay, so maybe the Aldridge meeting didn't go according to how he and his people thought it would. Again, the only cards we have in play are the young talent and the name. I'm not sure even Magic would be able to force that down DJ or LMA's throat to seem like a better option than going home to a playoff team, and making a little more money with taxes. The FO's plan of attack looks minuscule compared to what the others had to offer, and that's what was embarrassing about it. I'll even admit that. But the fact of the matter is, we just don't have the assets or leverage to bring to the table what these others teams could to the types of prime FA's these guys were. The 2016 Free Agency Summer starts now in my book and it lasts all season long. It's a culmination of showcasing our young talent and building a roster worth playing for, then we can bring a pitch to the table worth considering.
I see the we don't have a closer any more like Doc Buss, Jerry West, Pat Riley, etc argument. None of our guys have that charisma. Will Ryan, god I hope so some day. But all those guys you just listed are not examples for the point. The teams we had in place and their personal preferences more so. Gasol got tired of the relationship (a lot of his own making) and the 2 coaching choice disasters.
I disagree. These guys hit the open market and most of them want to be wooed. They want the dinner, they want the perks, they want to feel wanted, and then they start talking basketball. Just look at DeAndre Jordan. They told him he'd be Shaq. Now THAT is a sales pitch. You're right about getting down to usage, but we apparently didn't do well enough at that in the first meeting and had to bring along our analytics coach Madsen to make up for it. It's just unorganized. Maybe that's Byron's fault because he doesn't embrace new techniques but then it's on the Lakers to MAKE him do it or to implement the techniques themselves. The FO needs to adjust and change. FAs are different now and if you can't sell them on LA like we have in the past, you need to sell them something they want. Sure we can't get them a Championship roster this season, but Dallas didn't either. The Suns really didn't either. Yet we were the ones who had our names dragged through the mud. It's embarrassing. We need to be more modern in our approach. That's all the "anti-FO" people are saying. A newer approach and a personality that is more engaging that Deadpan Mitch and Old Fogie Byron.
I don't disagree that we didn't have a team to sell, but neither did Dallas and they were well regarded. The Suns made a splashy move and almost won Aldridge over (although now their team is in disarray). We need a person who can understand these FAs and see what makes them tick. Magic is a tremendous example of the kind of personality we need there. Jeanie is supposed to be that person and she's obviously not embracing it or is unable to do it like her father. And we need to modernize our approach. To hell with Byron if he doesn't like analytics, the modern NBA player does and that matters more to me than Byron's outdated ideology.
They want to be lied to? That type of lie should be against the league by-laws. I think the last objective people on the planet on why FA didn't choose the Lakers are the Laker fans. I think it comes down to what's on the floor and we have Kobe, Swaggy and Clarkson and that's about it that's proven they belong in this league. Kobe's gone next year and most likely Swaggy is too. Maybe one or two of the young guys gets it going but even then they are at least 2 years away from being fully ready. Pitching something that may happen in the future like Durant is problematic as well. PHX has a better team and they got exactly the Center type that LMA wanted to play with. SA has a better team and a proven young player that will be there long term. They have a legitimate shot at a title this year. Jordan's never impressed me as someone that's got his eye on winning alone. Just about every interview you see with the guy he begins it with "I". His motivation is different and he's also vastly overrated. What ever we did to turn him off I'm happy for.
bonk I don't know if you saw my question to you, several pages back in this thread later last night. Am curious on what your feelings are with the hypothetical (not likely at all to happen) of Magic being back in formal or ownership position with the Lakers? I mentioned that Mike (Rooscooter) was as vehemently opposed to that as you are to Boogie Cousins. Wanted absolutely no part of him in that position.
