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

My man stans hard for Gasol. This could go on all day! If there is ever a conversation starter needed to spice up the day, post a Gasol sucks comment, Abeer will immediately appear, ready to battle to the death! LOL

 

I think Rob got the message loud and clear though. Once he jettisons Gasol’s washed behind, we won't have a bunch of "defensive specialists " afraid to shoot or clanking up brick after brick, when they do on the team.

 

Except nobody ever said Gasol was the main factor for our strong start. The arguments have been consistent: that he wasn't the problem on last year's team, even being slow he's better than Drummond, and the data shows we were a top defensive team with him as the starting center.

There were people saying he was washed, too slow, and bad at defense after the 1st game last year. All data points to him being effective enough to be part of a top defensive unit. Again, I've participated and followed this conversation for the past year, and nobody has ever made the claim that Gasol was the defining factor in our defensive prowess. Nobody has ever said he should play more than 15-20mpg. We've simply just been explaining that he isn't the trash others have suggested. By all means, continue to misconstrue the arguments though.

 

Well..my argument is pretty straightforward, I think we could do better than Marc Gasol, for the minimum role he plays. Data can show all kinds of misleading things fwiw. The eye test convinced me that this guy is done. It's just amusing to me, that he garners such a fierce defense around here. Now Caruso..I'm willing to concede some ground on him, I liked that kid..Gasol..never been much impressed by this guy. However at one point of his career, he was pretty good.

 

I saw a guy who didn't run fast or jump high, but played very good positional defense. It would be pretty arrogant for either one of us to say our eye test is more valuable than the other and that's where data can be helpful. Analytics don't tell the entire story, but you can't just disregard them entirely.

He's a 2x All-NBA Team member and a former DPOY, but you said yourself, you were never impressed much. It appears as though your mind was made up from the get go and it's not about data being misleading. It sounds like you were never willing to look at the data objectively in the first place.

But tell me, who could we get that would be better than Gasol for that minimal role? I'd say in terms of teambuilding, the ability to shoot would be an important prereq for any replacement. I'm happy to have Dwight back, but we don't need another Dwight on this team, especially when that role was on the bench for the majority of our championship run.

 

I know his history, that is irrelevant to me when it comes to right now. He's a long way from his heyday.. I played the game, been a fan for over 40 years, I don't need analytics to tell me what I am seeing. If that's perceived to be arrogance, so be it. Basketball is still a simple game, but sometimes it can be overanalyzed to death. I already told you that at a minimum salary, I would take Cousins or Drummond or even that Jones kid over Marc today. I don't think Gasol is that effective at anything but being big at this point in his career. He doesn't shoot enough to really " space" the floor. Teams didn't respect him enough to send their 5 out to the perimeter to guard him most of the times. Forwards rotated to him and didn't bother to really close out hard on him either, because he wasn't looking to shoot. His footspeed is terrible and even though he played a lot on the perimeter, he had problems getting back on defense against those same forwards, that were guarding him on the perimeter. Still he's a bit player, for a bit player, he seems to illicit a strong response to criticism for some reason. It looks like we just have a difference of opinion, on the subject of Marc Gasol , that's cool.

 

I thought we were just having our usual lively joust about Gasol. It's a frequent tussle point, nothing personal on my end. Point taken on the Stan tho. Fwiw I don't think stanning for a player is always a negative thing. I freely admitted that I was a Stan for Kareem as a kid, that's how I became a Lakers fan! Still point taken.

 

Nance is a nce get for Portland. They've still had one of the worst off seasons considering Dame's position, but that's a solid get.

 

So Cavs add another young big man to contend for mins with the other young big men already there?

Bulls get some athletic wing depth… new Lob City.

Portland gets a good deal here. Nance helps their bench 4/5. Still not enough of an offseason to help Lillard.

 

That's a nice move for Cleveland. Nance is a nice player but often hurt. Markkanen will help take some of the pressure of the guards and clear out the paint some for Allen. There will still be plenty of minutes for Mobley too develop and it's a very reasonable price tag that can easily be moved down the road.

 

This is exactly where I’m at with Gasol. Couldn’t have said it any better. The way some here stand up for him as some sort of integral glue guy baffles me. I’m not discounting his overall career, which was really good. But the Gasol I saw in a Laker uniform this past season offered very little. Several folks lobbied for Gasol during the Suns series, but he had the worst +|- of all the centers that played in that series.

 

Kevin Love is so getting bought out.

 

Not exaggerating that one bit. I’d have to go back to the Drummond thread to find it.

 

Every Lakers fan - K. Love getting bought out & signing with us.

 

Love this reply. The one thing that stands out in all of this and really at the heart of the entire argument for either side is that we're all passionate Laker fans.

I think @abeer3 makes some compelling arguments but I just can't get behind purely statistical driven "data" based claims. I've played competitive basketball my entire life, I'm definitely not a pro level expert but I know exactly what I'm seeing happen on the court. "Gasol is great at positional defense" but the other side of that is he's not deterring anyone from driving thru the lane anymore. My argument this entire time is you can see the age and effect on his game. You can see things not quantifiable by stats alone but yet here we are one side claiming he's great because "stats" and the other side watching the regression of father time and his declined play. We were not a better offensive team with him last year, there's a direct correlation in stats to prove that but everyone is screaming about his defensive stats and won't recognize that fact. "He shot 40% from 3", yea and he accounted for 1 make a game last year whooptydoo...


As far as being worse on defense this year with new additions yea we are. We lost youth on defense and plugged holes with aging players that can't contribute tons of minutes other then collectively. Losing AC was huge, and we got nothing out of that. He was our "Rambis". KcP was another valued defender that we traded for "offense" lol. Why is that so hard to admit. Russ is a capable defender and his career defensive rating is similar to Gasols statistically but again watching him throughout the years has shown his deficiencies as well. He gambles a lot on steals, misses rotations and at times can be plain lackadaisical (in other words he's not always locked in). Last year Russ graded out higher according to stat muse and his defensive rating was 109.7 whereas Caruso was 107.3. Here we go again right, I don't think anyone would say that Russ is a better defender when it came down to getting a stop. Most of us would argue for Caruso to be in the game regardless of the stats. Why? Because our eyes don't lie to us and Caruso is one of the better on ball defenders, defending most of the leagues best wings night in and night out. Russ isn't always defending the leagues best players so is there a discrepancy in these stats? Stats are good for reference but don't always tell the entire story and that's been my point this entire time. The only stat that matters for organizations like us is Titles/Banners.