2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

And Wambyana is not behold to San Antonio. He’s going to want his free agency just like LeBron. These new players don’t want the NBA to decide where they go or where there legacies will be. Wambyana is the carbon copy of that.

 

How do you "know" what's going to be his motivation when they have a "really" good team in a year or two and the money is so much larger contract wise to stay where he is?

 

Luka looks amazing. I can’t wait for this euro tournament to be over. Don’t need him playing in that. Can’t wait to have him in purple and gold.

 

Wambyana motivation simple.

Winning. You can say how good the team is and deep but winning is winning. If he ain’t winning he’s bouncing. And sure he can make a lot of money staying there. But he’s a world brand. And money can be made up being here in L.A. it’s San Antonio. He’s not Tim Duncan he’s a Nike guy. As much as you guys want to say it. He’s not Tim Duncan.


A guy like that is L.A. just like Kareem when he was in Milwaukee. He is Muslim.

and being in L.A. he will be able to do all he wants to do here. The kid wants to win.

Shaq had a pretty deep team in Orlando. Had Penny his boy Dennis Scott. Comfortable Orlando. Oh yeah that Kid Kobe was coming here.

and we have a kid Luka who is pretty good.

 

yeah, i guess we learned from the luka trade that you just never know what could go down

i expected the lakers to court luka 4-5 years from now at the earliest and instead, look what happened. it's never too early to start speculating

 

Luka is great. People forget. But this guy is a superstar.

honestly in the league right now. With the talent. I’m going.

1. Luka

2. Shai

3. Edwards.

we have one of those top 3 dogs Booker isn’t even in that tier..

So when you look at Bigs. This is just how the NBA goes Bigs want to play with perimeter dogs.

Jokic

Gianiss

Wembyana.

having Luka after that extension exposes the Lakers to the best bigs. It’s why Ayton wanted to come here. So all those guys are looking at us like this is the team. It was huge.

 

the culture is different, but it's also why you don't see these guys switching teams like the americans, imo.

i believe luka when he said he didn't plan on leaving dallas. jokic doesn't plan on leaving denver. giannis doesn't plan on leaving milwaukee.

i thought luka was our target and posted about it here on several occasions. i thought we'd trade AD for him, but i thought it would be because dallas was rebuilding and luka was a flight threat. i was wrong about the circumstances and timing.

i don't see the same with wemby. or jokic or giannis.

we got our guy, and what we do going forward is about how we build from there.

the complications are solely about lebron wanting to both contend and get supermax type money. we've navigated that about as well as you can so far, imo. it will be a tough trick the next couple years, but i like the approach so far.

 

Luka was going to sign here.

the Jokic thing is tricky because I think those two really want to play together.

Gianiss is tight with Luka. I do think Gianiss will do an AD hey we tried he tried to win there especially if they don’t win next season.

I’m not a hold out hope guy. But players talk and they have ambitions for greatness.

I know for fact Luka is a guy a lot of players want to play with. You add L.A. to the equation.

We start winning one of those players will want to come here.

I’m just saying Wembyana can get Kevin Garnett were he just wants to win.

you gotta remember Minnesota had Stephon Marburry Tom Gugliotta Kevin Garnett and still couldn’t win.

So players even on contending teams want to win championships.

 

After the trade of course. Before …. if you believe him and no reason not to he was planning on being a Maverick for his career.

And this was Jeanie on radio over in Poland a day or so ago.

Quote:
Jeanie Buss on Slovenian Radio: “Nobody knew the trade was going to happen. I knew but Luka didn't know. I've never had a player come to the Lakers & be as sad as he was because the trade was a huge surprise to him, so he had to process it. I think now he's embraced the Lakers and he's all about LA”

 

No I wasn’t referring to before the trade. I’m talking about after the trade. I knew he was resigning here. I wasn’t one of those people saying oh he’s Bolting and he’s gonna hit free agency.