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

Dennis was an extremely selfish player who never fit at all.
Trez consistently pouted because of the lack of PT and refused to guard anyone.
Gasol couldn’t even guard the slow bigs in the game, let alone be any help switching.
Matthews looked like he went to the Russel Westbrick School of Shooting when in a Laker Uni.
On paper, sure, it looked great. However, in living color, those guys did not pan out.

 

I wouldn’t get too attached- you know just how much LeGM values young, talented players.

 

I can’t really argue with this assessment. I have just lost all confidence in Rob over this last blunder of a trade.

 

We can only hope

 

I mean, that would fast track fans calling for Jeanie to sell the team

 

It’s a win, win!!!

 

Kurt has always been underestimated. That's when he's at his best.

 

True. Especially establishing that short lived Rambis Youth movement in the 80s. Things are going according to plan

 

I believe from memory at a certain salary level (below 15 million or so) it’s 125% + 100k. Which would bring the amount that THT’s contract could take back to be 12,925,000. Which is the missing 75k.

I hate that it has to be Stan. He has a ton of talent and when players like him figure out their roles they tend to be excellent glue guys. I don’t actually see as much in Gabriel so far in comparison to stan.

 

I tend to agree with many people here that we just aren’t making great moves around the edges.
To me this goes all the way back to drafting Lonzo because Magic has this affinity for trying to find the next Magic. Then when we traded for AD, we should of done a better job of trying to keep Ingram, I would have been happy to throw in an extra first alongside Kuzma.

Getting rid of Zubac for no reason. Getting rid of Bryant. Letting Caruso walk. Letting Brook Lopez walk. How many role players went elsewhere and performed that we didn’t value? Not sign and trading Dennis. Not trying to take on more cap when possible. Putting friends into positions of power.

These small decisions over time add up.

 

But, another way to look at that is that at least it puts Rambis in a position that he could actually be fired. You can't get fired from a confidant position.

 

I totally acknowledge that.

But Rob is the GM. Lebron is a player. Rob AGREED TO TRADE FOR WESTBRICK.

If we are playing that game, who got AD to come here? Definitely wasn’t Rob pushing that?

 

if it's inconsequential, why did ainge ask for it? this is sort of the point, to me. svtzr laid out some other examples of how doing this over and over again can lead to larger issues.

agree. that summer was a massive home run. i was feeling good about rob and feeling like magic was definitely the main problem (and he was, to be sure). but basically everything that's happened since that summer concluded has been a nightmare. just wrong decision after wrong decision, all foreseeable.

dennis needed to come off the bench. trez was great in his role. gasol was great in his role. matthews was disappointing but was a vet min slated as a backup, so not a big deal.

as you said, all of these moves made a ton of sense, and most of them actually worked. lebron and AD got hurt, then we brought in drummond, which disrupted both on and off court things. and we were still another AD injury away from probably playing in the finals again. the popular story about that season doesn't match what happened, imo (much like the story of the 2003-4 season).

anyway, as i said above, we've pretty much gotten everything wrong since that summer, starting with promising schroder a starting position and leading all the way through the bev trade.

 

The asset management has been all-time bad however, in the AD trade Ingram was required to make the salaries match. You can argue we should have held off and signed him in free agency the next year but there are no guarantees he would sign. Plus we would not have won the title the next year. Zubac and Caruso are inexcusable however. Same with letting Lopez walk.

 

Ingram's salary was $5.75m while Kuzma's was $1.7m - so we had to make up around $4m.

Surely it couldn't of been that tough to do; we had Mike Muscala earning $5m, Lance Stephenson earning $4.5m, Reggie Bullock earning $2.5m, Javale McGee earning $2.4m and Tyson Chandler $2.1m.

I understand New Orleans could of played hard ball for Ingram. But they were losing AD anyway - all we did was bid against ourselves (like we always seem to do). Having Ingram on the team really sures up a lot of issues we had later on and provides a complimentary star to Lebron and AD as opposed to Russ.

This is just one bit of decision making in a long list of unfortunate errors.

 

Ingram was always the main piece for them though. Highly doubtful a deal could have gotten done without him, especially with pressure from LBJ/Klutch to get it done. AD at the time was 26 year olds and had sky high value. The C Bags would have offered up Tatum if they had gotten word that AD would have stayed in Boston.

 

the downward spiral continues for pelinka. guy has done nothing good since the 2020 title

really starting to get sick of him

 

I didn't like this trade but now it's done. We have an extra roster spot open now, so perhaps Rob has some other roster move in mind. I guess we'll see what the plan is before training camp. Huff or Swider might get a permanent slot if they play well in camp, Gabriel has a chance to secure a place in the rotation. Or then again, we may scoop up a player, that got caught up in a numbers crunch on some other team. It's too early to punt on Rob for this season, but man, he continues to make some sloppy moves when it comes down to the details on things. Costing AD a couple of million, due to the timing of his trade comes to mind too. Do better Rob!!