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

He wants to see how D'Angelo performs under pressure Cookie. Lol

 

Well he and AD pulled that one against the C bags …. enough is enough.

 

We won though

 

Yes I know but to suggest he or they “keep” f****** around like that is nuts. We can’t afford to drop any games that if he can play at all would help us win. Sit the San Antonio game out then and play some in the Warriors game. Didn’t need to go back into the 2nd quarter of the ASG after appearing in the 1st …. if his ankle’s that bad. Isn’t this a tiebreaker game with the Warriors?

 

I feel you LT, but we gotta do what we gotta do. Lebron has been acting weird lately, I think those reports about him, signing off on a Lavine or Murray trade, were probably true. He's been flexing a lot lately IMO. But it's Lebron, he thrives on tension and chaos. We made a run without him last season, I don't think he's missing that Phoenix game. We have two more games left, with the Warriors after Thursday.

 

Lavine would have been stupid like Westbrook for similar reasons and if Atlanta would only let Murray go for Reaves plus everything else, I seriously doubt he would still make that choice.

 

I'm sure that he was fully aware, of what was on the table, Rich Paul is his boy. Zach probably shut it down once he knew he wasn't getting traded but who knows. I still think Russ was AD'S choice, Lebron wanted Dame or Derozan, Russ was the 3rd choice.

 

what? so lebron wasn't at his house with all these guys? what lebron PR guy tried to pin russ solely on AD? the fact that anyone was pushing for lavine after the russ debacle is QUITE concerning.

i'm just glad lebron the gm has been fired. that was a rough nearly 2 years for no good reason.

given what lebron and magic have done as decision makers for us, i'd warn any team against incorporating oscar robertson into their planning.

 

Whew boy. I hate to step in this pile of poop again and wish I could say more but no one would ever go on record and confirm any of this.

My understanding though is this is partially right.

LeBron and AD's top guy was Dame but there was no real path to it. Not sure the exact ranking beyond that but Demar and Westbrook were behind Dame.

Do with that as you wish. lol

 

The 2021-2022 roster Lebron, AD and Rob cooked up was horrid, and cost Vogel his job. Prime Popovich couldn’t have won with that roster.

 

sure, i buy it. of course they wanted dame, and of course they weren't going to get him. we still could have just...not done russ.

the only thing that seemed weird to me the whole time--and i don't think we'll get the real answer--is how derozan factored in. we know they courted him. some claim they had a path to get him and deal done before russ became an option, but i've always questioned that part. i think SA wouldn't have made an easy deal with us like they did with chicago. i'm also not sure derozan was worth kuz/kcp, either. i don't buy that derozan was going to take the mle here at all.

yes. i was just questioning the claim that russ was all AD. that seems like a giant steaming pile of b*******. russ was engineered by our star players, and they need to get out of the management business.

 

Yeah, I heard there was a path to Demar but I never quite understood it. The thought seemed to be that SA would do right by Demar unlike what they did with Kawhi. I have doubts on that but its all moot now.

Only folks who weren't on board the Russ train was our scouting department including Joey and Jesse. Everyone else really thought they had a big three and were going to be able to sell Russ coming home.

Not an insider at all, but some of the things I heard at the beginning from the handful of folks I know who are pretty plugged in do line up with what later came out publicly.

But once it was clear it wasn't going to work, everyone started spinning so we probably won't ever get all the facts on it.

Front office hands are not clean at all though.

 

https://x.com/HarrisonWind/status/1760541659945738257?s=20



i think the story here is supposed to be comparing records, but it's funny how for the most part it's just the number of games that teams have had their top 5 that is predicting the standings.

wolves and thunder have had them for 75% of games, and they're 1-2. shocking. clips, nuggets, and suns are beasts when they've got everyone, but really so are the lakers, warriors, and mavs.

how did the west get back over on the east again so quickly?

 

Derozan would have hard capped us so we would have been no better off. Team would be completely gutted as there was NO WAY he was taking the mini-mid level. Our best bet would have been to just re-sign Dennis and Caruso and trade Kuzma/Harrell for Buddy Hield.

Dennis/Caruso
KCP/Hield/Reaves
Lebron/THT
AD/Morris
Jordan/Dwight?

Obviously there would be holes to fill at center as AD was starting at 4 then.

 

Lebron recruited Dame and Derozan too, Demarr thought he was going to be a Laker, according to him. I don't know what the particulars where, but he reportedly thought it was a done deal.

Agh..Magic signed Lebron, probably would have signed the claw too. I don't think anyone is complaining about Lebron pursuing AD either.

Some things don't always work out, the roughest part of those two years, were the amount of games James and Davis spent in street clothes to me.

 

Hell, we could have stood completely pat and signed the same minimum guys and been better off too.

Dennis/Caruso
KCP/Reaves/Monk
LeBron/Bazemore/THT
AD/Kuzma/Melo
Dwight/Gasol (in my ideal made-up scenario we don't piss off Marc and he comes back too lol)

We made the worst possible choices in the 2021 offseason lol. Even if we just re-signed everyone, tinkered around the edges and realized we still didn't enough, we probably are able to get Kyrie when he demands out.

 

well, just remember that there was this old guy named Jerry West, who was a pretty darned good player, for an old guy and he was responsible for making player decisions and tended to make pretty OK ones. Just ask Kobe.

 

Just picking a small nit (not small talent loss) but Monk was gone, no way to keep him.

 

Unless I'm going crazy we had Monk on a minimum deal for 2021-2022, the first year with Russ. So we could have just not done the Russ trade and added him.