2023-24 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

how does phx have 4 1sts after trading for kd and beal? i mean, i guess they have '24, '26, '28, and '30? but none of them can move, and now 26 and 28 are both swaps. so they got some 2nds.

 

It's definitely confusing. I did just stumble upon this:

 

This is a good point. Ideal scenario would be Biyombo or Wood to the 14th spot on a guaranteed contract, then Thompson or Gabriel to the 15th spot on a non-guaranteed contract

 

Preferred Bol over Wood. Far better defensive upside.

 

So he reports the Lakers would not value Wood in a trade/above the min, but then proceeds to throw Vando's name out there for no reason?

 

Cynically, Quinn probably threw that in there for click bait.

But actually I think he’s just clarifying the mathematical reality that Vanderbilt is the only tradeable salary we even have. There are a lot of Laker fans on Twitter that don’t know how the cap works at all and would otherwise probably think we could still somehow get Wood in a sign and trade via some other mechanism.

But yeah, overall hell no to the idea. Almost threw up when I read Cranjis actually advocating for it…

I think Stein’s original report here almost reads like a message from Dallas to Wood’s camp. Basically indicating that they are free to seek out sign-and-trade scenarios, but only if it makes sense for Dallas. They’d rather let him walk for nothing than take on salary they don’t want in a sign-and-trade.

 

I'm open to the idea of trading Vando for a floor-spacing 5 to give us a different dimension, but I'm not sure Wood is that guy.

 

Disagree. I don't know what 4M player is out there that is better than Vando. Any position actually

 

I'm not the biggest Vando fan in the world. Great energy and good on-ball defense, but bad at screen navigation and is not guarded on offense. The latter really hurts us when he's playing next to LeBron and AD, the number of looks they get at the rim when Vando is in the game plummets. And its not just in the playoffs, teams started ignoring him a lot down the stretch of the regular season. He's only 24 so he can improve, but its really rare to go from complete non-shooter (that's what he is, objectively) to one that needs to be guarded. I'd love to be wrong.

 

We’re going to have tons of scoring this year. Get a different big than Wood. Sure as h*** don’t trade Vando for him. Yuk!

 

We’re already hard capped. Nothing has been reported about this actually being a possible move either side is considering/discussing. Quinn throwing out Vanderbilt’s name means nothing.

Sign and trading for Wood wouldn’t inherently be a problem IMO. If for example hypothetically Biyombo signed elsewhere, and Beasley was still holding out for a better deal instead of signing for the minimum with Milwaukee. Sign and trading Beasley for Wood at $4M would have been fine.

 

Yeah, let’s trade our versatile starting defensive wing for a guy who’s sketchy in the locker room.

 

I can see Vando being dropped from the rotation early in the season if his offense hasn't improved quite a bit. The fact is the Lakers were 7 points better defensively with him off-courts vs on-court. Probably due to the fact that we are horrible in transition defensively and teams just run us into the ground off of his bricks.

His offense (or lack there of) makes the teams defensive worse overall. He can be great to use in limited defensive situations but I anticipate Rui and Prince getting most of the minutes.

 

I agree that Vando will need a consistent source of offense (shooting the 3, finishing at the rim) that makes him more respectable, but he will play a lot whether it's a starter or bench simply because we need to manage LBJ/ADs minutes. He's still only 24 and in a contract year, I have confidence he will continue to grow.

The fact that no other team is willing to give Wood more than the minimum so far speaks to how overrated he is. He's been on 8 teams in 7 years lol. I know a lot of people get enamored with the stretch 4/5's but we got our lottery ticket in that with Hayes. Makes more sense to get a big physical athletic 5 that can play defense.

 

in to repeat that people go way overboard on the criticism of vando's offense. the idea that we lose because people run off all his bricks when he shoots 5 times a game and makes 3 of them? and his defensive stats are a positive (and a greater positive than his offensive stats are negative). i REALLY don't want to replace him with a non-defender who can shoot.

i don't get the fanbase's obsession with shooting, tbh. it was bad when we had westbrook AND a bunch of non-shooters. but now that our guards can all shoot, it's just much less of an issue to me.