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

It will, but who cares?

He was deemed a failure the year we won the chip, too.

 

There is no way the Lakers value 2 picks this much man. Did they watch their team play basketball last season? Get the deal done. They can buy second round picks. If they care so much about first round picks, trade AD when LeBron leaves & they’ll get a few of those.

 

It sounds like a stalemate and Jeanie is drinking. Nets playing hardball.

 

At first the insider reporting on the NBA was fun, but its become so annoying to have to suss out the motivations behind every tweet/leak. It was just a week ago that Shams broke the story on Kyrie opting in and "fulfilling his commitment to KD and the Nets", only for it all to blow up again days later. I can easily see it being true that there's no traction on a Kyrie trade and everyone has gotten ahead of themselves, but I can just as easily see the Nets or even Klutch planting this to motivate our front office to add the extra pick/swap. I'd watch the betting odds on Kyrie's next team to see if there's a significant response to Shams saying this.

 

I hope they wouldn’t but I’m just not that confident in Rob / Kurt.

Jeannie’s tweet makes me think the organizational problems in the front office are still there.

A play against Klutch/LeBron after signing so many of their clients feels too little late.

 

Some reneging from BKN this morning on the agreed upon framework. Came back asking for additional picks from a third team seemingly out of the blue, which makes it really hard for LAL to put something together. Thinking on the LAL side is that this is just BKN trying to gain more leverage and the plan is to wait it out. LAL isn't happy with the 2 team deal, and BKN is making the 3 team one a lot tougher. FO is still confident that the deal isn't dead, but the key variables right now are not ones that LAL controls, so impossible to make guarantees.

I expect both LAL and BKN FOs will be hearing some angry words from Klutch and Kyrie's camp, respectively, if they haven't already (EDIT: joking, BTW).

 

I think its more about wanting to keep one of the 2027 or 2029 FRPs to use in a subsequent trade. Looking at the current roster as well as potential roster with Russ swapped out for Kyrie/Harris, there's still a glut of guards and a clear need for a playable wing to push AD to the 5 in crunch time. THT/Nunn/a FRP is probably the only way to get that kind of player if one is even available.

 

I'm concerned about Rob's rep around the league. On top of everything else that has been floated about him, we seem overly reliant on Klutch for players.

 

What clients are signed to long-term deals besides AD?

It's nothing we can't work out of. If you're talking about this season, you're probably right.

But I'm not ready to surrender it s loss just because we don't have Irving; I think we can still get creative enough to put something decent together.

 

Interesting. I do think the Nets want to be viewed as having won the trade.

 

Yeah, well, it is what it is.

This is what we're working with.

 

Welp, we have two roster spots to solve our shooting issue and our size issue. We still have a log jam at the guard position...

 

Fair points but I can't shake my doubts. I think if another deal was there, we'd just pivot to it.

I'm also just not going to tune in to another year of Russ. I've seen enough.

 

Personally, I think it is on the Lakers end.

I know the "feeling" from us fans was the hiring of Ham and the "embracing" of running it back with RW was more of a "strategic" trade value thing- but now I am not sure....

I think Buss and the powers to be really went with this because they gave up so much to get him and now they are insisting that they need to make it work.

Then it was the Irving noise AFTER where some had him even taking our MLE to get out of Brooklyn. I bet there was some sigh of relief when he opted in, erasing that doubt (idiotic that ANYONE assumed he would walk away from 30 million) for a meager 24 hours until KD shocked the world with his trade request, basically putting Irving back on the table.

I don't think Pelinka and co. have a clue (obvious with their roster construction post championship and pretty much so far their roster construction this offseason- although I do like the fact they have prioritized youth) and I think Buss is caught (tweet insight) in the middle.

James remains quiet in all of this (so far) but there is only ONE UNDERLYING REALITY that needs to happen here...and yes, ALL OF THEM need to realize it....EVERYONE needs to come to this conclusion. What is that conclusion??????? Well before stating the obvious, lets list who EVERYONE is:

1) Lakers
2) Lakers fans
3) LeBron James
4) Anthony Davis
5) Jeannie Buss
6) Rob Pelinka
7) Kurt Rambis
8) Darvin Ham
9) Russell Westbrook*

EVERYONE!!! #9 is the only one who doesn't have to face that underlying reality (it would help if he did, but it isn't necessary) and that is:

THE RUSSELL WESTBROOK TRADE WAS AN UTTER DISASTER AND HE DOES NOT FIT WITH THIS TEAM......PERIOD!

You can't put a square box into a round hole, and until everyone (3-8 anyway- since they are the ones who HAVE to realize this) realize this AND ALSO realize it outweighs the other BS (we gave up a #1 to get him, LBJ/AD wanted it, don't want to give up more draft picks, etc, etc, etc) then we are pretty much in a holding pattern....

I just don't think we are anywhere close to being there yet, or at least that is my feeling coming out of the holiday break...

 

So, apparently the Lakers found a third team to consummate the deal?

And now BKN is asking for more draft compensation from that third team?

This gets funnier and funnier.

 

oh yeah. no picks for buddy. if turner comes, too, they get a protected pick.

they took basically the same for brogdon.

dealing with indy could give us a big TE, which we could, in theory, use to pick up another player someone wants to get off of.

everything is. i don't think it matters to players, though, more to fans.

twitter's jubilant about the lakers not getting kyrie, and they'd be jubilant if we did. because they hate us and whatever we do is dumb and bad.

 

We can pivot.

Does Rob have the stones to pivot? Sometimes I you just have to tell LBJ "No.".

And sometimes it isn't best to trade one problem for another problem. Meaning, we pivot, move on from the Kyrie business and finish putting together this team.

Just a thought.

 

I think there's also the danger that the longer this drags out, the more likely it is the Nets say f*** it and just hang on to both of them. All it would really take is for Joe Tsai, KD and Rich Kleiman to get in a room and potentially hash this all out, in which case the Nets may open the door to Kyrie coming back. I understand trying to get the best deal for yourself and I think Rob is trying to avoid the criticism he got after the AD trade of giving up too much for a guy who wants to come anyway, but there's also a danger to letting this drag out to long.

 

I never saw how there wouldn't be a 3rd or 4th team in this deal. Not enough for both teams to make a deal with only each other because one of them would get reemed no matter what.

 

well, if you buy that story.

let's say you do. maybe bkn furnished a list of desirable third-team returns, the lakers found something they thought worked, and bkn disagreed but said if someone adds a pick it works. could totally happen without anyone really being a bastard about anything.

i just hope there's not pressure coming from the top to get this done at any cost (like most of the fanbase seems to want). that's how you do stupid things. it's how we got out-negotiated on the russ deal, imo.