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

This is more a Pelinka tax than a Lakers one ..

Pelinka as an agent stole clients from his mentor including Kobe back in the days .. His mentor now works for the Pistons

 

Teams have never wanted to be seen as "helping" the Lakers, but I still can't recall any talk of a Laker tax with Mitch and definitely not with the logo. I'm sure it existed in some form but those guys had good relationships around the league which is key for that job. Its another reason I wish we'd go with the best and brightest instead of always looking for someone with existing ties to the organization.

The front office can still bring in someone to help and split duties with while keeping Rob as VP if they wanted to, but like the coaching staff, they won't and we've just got to hope he figures things out.

 

That said, I wasn't blown away by any of the offers out there and am not really upset that they didn't make a move.

 

The key moving forward is cap space and shrewd draft choices but after JHS I think we just have to attach future picks to salaries

 

i'm confused--which deal did we want and not get because of rob, in particular?

the only one i can really think of is the paul george indy fiasco (and all attempted indy relations since then). that was rob/magic just botching the forced trade request like noobz.

imo, if everyone hated rob, we wouldn't have gotten rui for seconds nor the haul we got for westbrook (dlo himself is worth like 3x as much as russ, and vando and even beasley are each more useful players at this point).

to me, if there's a tax, there's a laker tax. and i'm not even sure it's a tax as much as the press likes to devalue our guys. as i said the other day, i think gms are always throwing out this b*******; it's up to reporters to decide how to phrase it/frame it. i feel like we often get better deals than are reported ahead of time, and that those deals are comparable to what other teams get.

this year, expirings were the currency, and we didn't have any. that atlanta decided not to move murray might have just been a good business decision for them and nothing about us. their coach supposedly asked them to keep him, and he's having his best offensive year ever heading into a reasonable long-term contract. wanting more than dlo/jhs/1st isn't ridiculous there. and they may regret not doing it later, but i could see why they held out.

my only concern with rob is what happens when lebron's gone. will we still be a klutch outpost? is that worth as much when we/klutch doesn't have lebron? does it become a burden? can rob operate outside that framework? has he alienated other agencies?

none of that can be known now, but i'm pretty sure that if there's any unfairness in dealings, it's more about brand envy than it is about rob. the worst thing to ever happen to his franchise was the cp veto, which happened under mitch, whom everyone loved. they still b****ed to the league office to prevent it and basically undo the end of kobe's career here.

 

It will be interesting to see who ends up where.

I think we end up with Spencer.

 

I am brand new on this forum, but a Lakers fan from Wilts days. I have a question I need answered. If Lebron wants to win championships so badly as he says, why doesn't he help the team sign another great player by simply signing a contract and play for $5 million per year. He clearly doesn't need the money and he wants to win. I don't get it. It shouldn't be about money at this point. Hell he could get the Lakers to pick Bronnie in the draft too as a big bonus for Labron to get to play with his kid now.

I also wanted to comment on a player that got traded by Philly and subsequently was waived. Furkan Korkmaz.6'7 wing player who can really fill it up when Philly gave him the chance, which wasn't very often. Look up his highlight video scoring 34 against the Nets. Good 3 point shooter/floor spacer. He has other impressive games on YouTube also. The guy is only 23 and really athletic. He played European ball and lit them up as a 17 year old. This guy is worth a chance. Philly picked him @ #26 in 2018.

 

Welcome to the site!

He doesn't need it for his personal life, he's amassed plenty of wealth during his two decades in the league. But he has loftier goal and wants to buy a team when he retires, in order to do so he needs every penny he can get his hands on. I expect he is going to take the max until he calls it a career.

 

Welcome!

In general, I think players taking discounts is nice but don't blame them if they don't. Especially a guy like LeBron who brings in so much money to a franchise. It's one thing if there is a specific player we have identified that will absolutely come to play here if you shave a bit off your contract. Or if you're a lifer with a team and things are winding down. I don't know that LeBron has that kind of relationship with any team and I'm not sure I'd pass on money for a hypothetical move later on.

I don't know much about Korkmaz but I will check out his highlights.

 

Latest from Buha now that the dust has settled. A lot of this he's covered in his recent Twitter Spaces drop ins.


Teams didn't want who we were willing to part with

Laker tax

Buyout targets

The 3 star plan... again

 

I'm just not seeing how we can land a star. I guess they think Austin with three picks is enough. I suppose that's possible but man. Just hard to see us not getting outbid.

 

welcome to the site!

i've mentioned this several times. i point to tim duncan and dirk nowitzki taking flexible lower dollar contracts to help their teams compete near the end of their careers. in dirk's case, he played for 8 million one year iirc, but then the mavs bumped him up to 20 later to make up for it. it takes trust to make that happen, but i think rob has earned that with lebron, tbh.

that said, the counterargument is that when dirk and td took less money, they were no longer superstars, while lebron still is. i think lebron is better than they were when they took paycuts (questionable on duncan, though), but both of those guys were still very good when they did. in dirk's age 36 and 37 seasons, he made 8 million each, played more than 75 games in each, and made the allstar game in the first one! duncan was even better. around the same ages, he took a similar (more than 50%) paycut to 10 million, then proceeded to win a ring and make the all nba team twice (1st team once) in three years.

if lebron made 20 million instead of 50, it would go a longer way towards his title dreams than sending snarky hourglass tweets and making us trade for russ.

so yeah, it's very hard for me to sympathize with lebron's "lack of help" all the time when he's eating that large a chunk of the cap.

 

understandable. rui's disappointed after getting a raise, gabe's dead, and we sabotaged dlo's value tragicomically.

don't get the logic--how is it a laker tax if nobody moved? it's a laker tax if the lakers offered something and the guy went for less. these guys went nowhere. i guess he's saying teams took tougher initial negotiating stances? not sure that matters. it only matters if we made an offer better than someone else's, and the target went elsewhere.

why would dinwiddie go back to dallas? i think we should get him. i'd take lowry, but philly seems like the natural landing spot.

we have no shot at mitchell, so it's young or irving. with irving, his price may be reachable if dallas doesn't do well. by most accounts, he's happy there, though. he's also missed 40% of the season, which is becoming a longstanding trend. other than availability, he's actually probably better than trae young, all things considered. but age and durability are important, and young has him beaten there.

i still wonder if the star-chasing stuff is PR, though. they know folks are disappointed. sure they'll kick tires on those guys, but they're under contract for a couple years or more in all cases and don't have a ton of leverage.

i think we'll use a pick or two to make marginal upgrades.

 

Trae is one of the best offensive players in the league, but you need an almost perfect defensive supporting cast around him. AD is a great start. Another year of development and Max could be a really nice fit in the backcourt on both ends. But then you have a 40 year old LeBron putting even less consistent effort defensively, and we already don't have a good two-way wing.

I do think Trae is a special and frankly underrated talent as an offensive player, and probably the best single player we could get for three firsts in the offseason, but fit is a big question. It's far from a no-brainer.

 

same. but mitchell's had his sights set on the knicks for a while now and i'd be surprised if he doesn't end up there

 

According to Trevor Lane, Ham blocked a trade that would have sent his son, Prince, a second, and one of our minimum contract players out for Royce O’Neal.
Of course he did.

 

Prince is better than O'Neal. Ham doesn't have the power to block anything anyway. He can make a suggestion, it might get ignored too. According to Ham, he pushed hard to bring Dennis back.

 

We have what we have, it's still a solid team, with some decent health.
When we are missing key guys, the superstars need to step it up.

AD was excellent last night, Lebron was not, especially in the last 2mins, when you really expect your best players to come through.