2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

Bleep your cult member blast. Not you.

 

As far as agreeing with Magic going on multiple national shows to air his grievances and toss s*** on the organization over the course of the most important off season in decades … for those fine with it because it’s true …. it’s also true HE was the one who explicitly told her either in person or via the press right after he quit …. ding ding ding … to make sure she had people around her she could trust. Since his panties were in a bunch over Rob.

 

I feel LeGM, AD and Rob are all equally to blame for the Russ trade. For the record, I don’t think Buddy “turnstile” Hield was the answer either. Would’ve much rather built a team with more than capable depth to supplant LeGM and AD’s inevitable injuries. The 2020-2021 season gave us enough evidence to see that them missing games wasn’t an anomaly but a new normal. As much as I hate to admit it, the Clips did a great job of building a roster of quality depth as insurance for when their two snakes are out to keep them afloat.

 

Buddy Hield would have allowed us to keep depth such as KCP, Caruso, Schroder etc. So much more options instead of losing them + a pick for an albatross

 

i didn't love the hield deal, but it kept our options open in a way that a good gm would. the russ trade was an all-in gambit that doesn't feel like it was authored by the same person turning down the hield/turner deal. i just find it strange that those blasting rob for russ are blasting rob for not doing something like the hield/turner deal. they're the same, imo--huge swings with potentially disastrous consequences.

 

If the organization will tell Kobe and Phil no at the peak of their powers, why are they scared to tell Bron no in his twilight years and AD, who only has any voice at the table is because of Bron and Klutch. Kobe was a Laker through and through. Bron is a rental. If the organization is going to stand up Kobe, they have to be able to stand up to Bron. I don't care who the GM is. I get it's a bit different during this player empowerment age, but Kobe and Phil were at the top of their respective positions and had juice.

Rob doesn't get a pass. If the season ended today, we would miss the playoffs and would have made the post-season only twice during our five years with Bron. That's pathetic.

Bron isn't blameless, but much more falls on Rob, Kurt, and Jeanie. Any decision maker in the organization should turn over the keys before they lock up for the night because they're unqualified and awful at their position as a decision maker.

75% of the past decade has been an embarrassment as a NBA team.

 

I saw the Hield trade as a no brainer. You're trading Kuz (who's blocked by James/Davis and could never maximize himself with them) and Harrell (who was out of the rotation in the playoffs) for Hield (an elite 3pt shooter on high volume who fits perfectly with your two best players). I was stunned when Shams announced the Westbrook trade.

 

The truth is most people in the NBA (front offices/media/players) have been fooled by Russ. Pelinka had the Hield deal but when James/Davis told him about the Westbrook deal he happily jumped at the pivot.

Westbrook was one of Kobe's fav's and was a superstar so they thought it was a no brainer that it would be successful. I think only the analytics department was upset at the trade. All other parties (Klutch/Pelinka/Jeanie/Rambis/Jackson thought Russ was a good move so that's why it was done. They typically only do moves when everyone is in agreement so it's not only Lebron/klutch who was for it. They might have brought the possibility of it to everyone's attention, but everyone with a voice was for it.

 

I’m this scenario, yes. However, My belief is that our FO is still Star Chasing and won’t give up any of these firsts for anything less than.

 

it's not like that, it is that. rob negotiated an ok deal with sac. lebron/klutch were doing their own thing and brought something nearly complete to the table that they were excited about. my guess is rob was lukewarm on the hield deal like many of us were, and given his circumstances pivoted to the russ deal. in fairness, very few envisioned the unmitigated disaster it would turn out to be--even if many (most) were skeptical.

again, proud to see that i was fine with sitting tight at the time. other hield-level deals were going to be there. we could have done two or three of them in the time that's passed and been in much better shape.

anyway, that's all water under the bridge. the question is what to do now. we dodged the john wall bullet. we eschewed the turner/hield deal (i'm willing to revisit this in a year and admit i was wrong if certain things play out).

we've got about 7 months to see if the current management apparatus can right the ship, imo.

 

I’m glad the Turner\Heild deal fell through. I’ve never been high on Buddy and only wanted Turner.
I’m okay if we completely miss out on Turner this summer because his injury history still scares me. We have enough to worry about in that department with our “stars.”

 

Yeah. I don’t think that Buddy deal was that good. Maybe if I did I could give Rob more credit for it. Seemed more like him fixating on a former client at the time. I don’t recall the board being too thrilled about it either at the time.

The main plus is that we likely keep Caruso and KCP with that one.

 

Yeah. I think everyone was on board.

 

i didn't like the hield deal because i preferred other hield-type deals. but at least it preserved the structure of the title team.

again, not saying rob's the guy to helm the organization. saying we can't have any idea whether or not he's the guy due to our weird upper management situation.

i think that's getting clearer, and i think we've learned some from our mistakes.

i think weezy sees us tied to beal in the headlines and thinks we haven't learned. i get that. but beal's not here. it's possible we're just throwing that out there to let our current trade partners know we have lots of options (and we do). utah played with us and ended up selling bojan for less than his value. they're about to watch detroit flip him for more by being more savvy than they were (which is f***ing awesome; eat it, ainge). or they'll just live with having given up salary relief and a 1st for kelly olynyk and not victor wembanyama. teams trying to bend us over have hopefully seen enough from us that they might be willing to negotiate in good faith in the coming weeks and months.

 

I hope so. I think there is still a chance to at least get some solid pieces on this team.

Ainge outsmarted himself which is always nice to see.

 

While I've been firmly in the blow-it-up camp, I think if we add 2 solid pieces and get rid of dead wood, we'll be back in the play-in picture even without AD. Then if we get AD back at some point, a solid playoff run is still possible.

Despite being terrible, we're still only 3 wins away from the play-in, and if you think about it, it's more likely than not that overachieving teams so far like the Kings, Portland, and Utah, all trend down.

Seems Rob himself doesn't believe the above is possible. If we wait another month until the trade deadline, it will probably be too late.

 

I think we have hit the point where if we stand pat, Lebron is going to leave this team.