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

i was watching that one in real time. couldn't believe duncan hit that shot, thought it was over, and then couldn't believe fish hit it.

just peak clutch shotmaking. holy s***.

 

Was that the series room service up there gave Kobe the salmonella burger?

 

No.Food poisoning was in Sacramento before game 2

 

That’s what I meant …. “that” series.

 

Fish had hair!

 

Legendary.

 

Capella isn't compelling to me as a Laker fan. The only Hawk I covet for us is Dejounte.

 

why not both?

"insert meme"

 

Atlanta getting the #1 pick really looks scripted.
Atlanta is on the verge of blowing it up. This #1 pick really pushes them to do it They own '25 and '27 pick to SA which was holding them. Trae is a great fit with Wemby so those 2 picks seal the deal. They may through the #4 or #8 too and SA keeps a ton of assets and add Trae.

Dejounte becomes available too which is awesome. Wouldn't mind Capela but it may get tricky to match salaries. Dejounte is a great fit with Reaves, I think they can become a long-term pairing

 

if fisher hadn't made his shot, the duncan shot right before it is the one we'd constantly see in highlight reels. still have no idea how he made that with shaq right in his face and falling sideways

 

That Duncan shot has to be way up on the list of doom-shots against the Lakers, but we recovered and went on to lose to DET in the Finals. Tayshaun Prince had this incredible way of just slightly nudging Kobe's shooting hand, touching his upper arm, throwing his shot off, and getting away with it. Maddening. How the refs continually missed this I don't know.

The Ralph Sampson 1986 shot had me depressed for weeks. Hey, I was relatively young:


1969, Game 7: Don Nelson's shot. C Bags announcer Johnny Most with the harshest, most nauseating voice in the history of sports. Chick Hearn forever referred to any shot that hit the back of the rim, bounces straight up and then drops in as a "Don Nelson shot."

The dark, dark, endlessly horrific nightmare 1960s of Lakers/C Bags finals:

 

Our local sports coverage is lacking (i especially hate who covers the falcons for the AJC) but i did some looking around.

Omar Wilkes (son of Jamaal Wilkes) has been Trae's agent since day 1. He left Octagon in 2020 and took over as Klutch head of basketball. Trae followed. In February Omar left Klutch for Fanatics to be their Head of Athlete Partnerships. Since this went down in season Trae probably saw it prudent to wait till the off season to make any moves. He's been very loyal to Omar and I'm not sure what terms he left Klutch on. I assume he was chasing the money but maybe it wasn't on the best of terms and since Trae has loyalty to Omar and not Rich Paul, he bounced too. Why CAA? that's a good question. They've actively big trying to poach a lot of the big names elsewhere, I image all agencies do, but most aren't the size of CAA so it's not noticed as much.

 

From Buha's pod yesterday

 

that all makes sense.

tbh, i'm not even sure reaves/29/31/swaps is enough for the donovan mitchell sweepstakes. my hope remains that we can use the 29/31 and swaps to get dejounte murray and not have to give up reaves. he's not on atlanta's timeline anyway, if they're really moving on from young/murray.

i wonder what the asking price for second-tier "stars" like jerami grant will be. would one of those picks be good enough? is even that an overpay?

the market is so barren, though. i look across the league for teams that should be in sell mode...a) there's not many and b) the ones that are don't have much left to sell.

we might really be stuck.

 

And yet another search just now still comes up empty about them doing anything about Russ starting the ruckus with his dirty play in the Mavericks game, throwing a punch and F-bombing the Mavs fans on the way to the locker room? $75,000 for paid off ref gesture? I guess that's far far worse though since they have to know their refs are missing calls left and right and then still don't correct on obvious replays.

 

I'm also growing pessimistic because our whole offseason plan is predicated on having the three picks available on draft night. Once that pick turns into an actual player picked at #17 in a draft no one likes, it becomes even less valuable. We also hear about all this stuff that might happen on draft night, then when the time comes teams tend to just make their picks and continue negotiations through the summer. I also believe the deadline to exercise player options is before draft night, so if we wanted to keep Austin out of a big trade we'd need DLo to not only pick up his option but do it on our preferred timeline (like Harrell did in 2021). That's just a lot of variables that need to all break right for us.

We may be stuck with largely the same core guys, in which case we'll need to sell someone on taking less money with us in hopes of making bigger money down the line like Monk.

 

same core guys plus losing dlo for nothing...

on the positive side, nobody wanting our picks/players may accidentally back us into some continuity. say dlo leaves, but that opens up our MLE and we just sign dinwiddie using that. i'm not sure the dropoff between those two is huge, tbh. use the 17 on the bpa, sign a vet min bruiser center, re-sign max, and have one more open vet min slot for a monk/lonnie/cam type reclamation project.

dinwiddie/gabe/jhs
reaves/max
vando/rui
lebron/wood
AD/bruiser

another battle for the play-in, and maybe we don't draw denver this time. oh, and come deadline, we'd have all our picks and a lot of moveable salary--particularly if we sign max to a shorter term deal at an exaggerated dollar amount--say, 8 per (2 years 16 million, team option on 2nd year)?

there are paths even without a big summer trade.