Assistant Coach Discussion: McMillan And Brooks

pelinka wanted to trade for hield, but lebron/AD convinced him to go for westbrick instead. they panicked after the nets acquired harden

 

That's possible regarding Irving. It's also possible we didn't offer enough cause we were concerned with his track record, but I lean more to your thinking.

https://sny.tv/articles/nets-trading-kyrie-irving-2023

That's according to Ian Begley. Haynes and Shams said we offered both picks and Nets still wanted Reaves and Christie. That would be a STEEP price considering they only got Dinwiddie, DFS, 1 2029 first and some seconds. I can see Tsai saying F trading him to the Lakers out of spite.

I think Lebron has his power but other than Lue, I don't see him getting involved in coaching searches. (Vogel certainly wasn't for him, and Ham was more for Westbrook). I can see the front office assuming he prefers Reddick based on their relationship and making him their fav knowing that if things don't work, it absolves them of the blame as well.

Lebron knows that if JJ is hired, the optics show that is his guy. So now he is coming out through Rich Paul and saying just hire your guy and stand by it. Both parties are just trying to pass the buck to one another. It's safe to assume AD will align himself where ever Lebron is.

 

would have still been worth it.

you rarely can get a player of Kyrie's caliber available for this little. It was a freak situation that his value had tanked due to the off-court stuff.

 

i know at least one person (maybe more than one) basically reported this. i'm still convinced it was the same with indy for turner/hield. if we offered both unprotected picks, they were going to ask for reaves on top of it, etc. we weren't going to make those trades, imo.

the trade i want to revisit now is the second russ trade--was it possible to deal directly with utah and just take conley/NAW/vando and leave minny out of it? total hindsight bias (i thought we did better at the time, tbh), but man...minny would be still nowhere and we might have another ring and be contending right now. i'm surprised lebron hasn't said that he told management to just go get conley lol.

yeah, i agree. as elgin said, it's not a good look for anyone. i'd rather the FO and lebron say they're working together to find the best solution.

 

In hindsight I would have included Reaves but kept Max. Max would be a good fit at the two next to Irving. That's if we even developed him cause Ham hated to play him.

AD
Bron
Irving
Rui
Possibly Max

We would have those guys but what else? We would have had to take either Harris or Curry in the trade as well for cap purposes. Irving was looked at like a cancer between the covid issues and antisemitism so I can see why we passed at the time.

 

Yeah. I was against a move for Irving, but now I might have been willing to throw in Austin or Max. Not both.

I do feel like the Nets weren't operating in good faith with us.

I suppose all of us who were on Team Conley have been vindicated a bit lol.

 

i was firmly on team conley, but at the time i thought that dlo/beasley was better than conley/NAW. incorrect.

 

I'm not sure Conley has quite the same impact here. The Wolves needed a steady presence at PG and Conley's prior experience with Gobert helped. LeBron is already our floor general, so I don't think wanting a more dynamic scorer in DLo was necessarily the wrong idea. Still probably would have been better to have Conley.

 

Pre-hire posturing is ridiculous from both sides. Both want credit but neither want accountability for any future blame.

Bron probably still has PTSD from the Russ s***uation and doesn't want to be the only one holding the bag for his guy. Cause if things are bumpy, he's the one in the locker room every night talking to the press. Rob will hide in his office until a) a big winning streak. B) the next off-season where he introduces the new players.

 

i didn't see it coming. but i also didn't think he was done, which was why i was advocating trading for him.

i think he does have huge impact here. he wouldn't have completely s*** the bed in the playoffs, and even at his age he's not a defensive liability. interestingly, conley is what i think we hoped gabe was going to be. and maybe gabe would have been like that had he not perished so tragically.

and i'm still torn because offensively, dlo is the PERFECT fit next to lebron and AD. it's such a bummer that he can't get himself mentally squared for big games. but we don't have time to wait for him to gradually get inoculated to pressure.

does rob hide or do gms just sort of not talk to the press regularly? you're not wrong that lebron HAS to do it, but lebron doesn't HAVE to leak stories about his involvement or non-involvement in decision-making, and definitely doesn't HAVE to tweet hourglasses and other stuff that actively harms his own position. you're a man. you're 40. quit it.

 

Maybe not regularly but at the end of the season, you should talk to the media. It's fairly standard practice. He'll wait until the next coaching hire to deflect some of the attention BUT that's also not fair to the coach because it splits the attention that should be on the new hire and also makes the new hire answer questions that should've been answered by Rob weeks/months ago by that point.

After firing a coach, you should talk to the media. Post-deadline, make yourself available. If you're there to do the victory laps when the team is soaring, but there when they're in the gutter too.

You can often tell how well the team is doing at the point in the season based on whether Rob is in his seats for the camera to catch, standing in the tunnel or nowhere to be seen at all.

We're not the Knicks at least. Their media access policy is the most insane thing I've seen in the league regarding that relationship.

For better or worse, that's Bron. He's used the media and social media to push his agenda as soon as he learned how to. And it's worked. At the peak of his powers, no one has done it better in sports. Miami 'ships and AD for example. But the flip side of that is the Cavs when he left or bringing in Russ or getting rid of one of the Cavs coaches or trying to get rid of Spo his first year. It's a mixed bag. I think he probably would've left this alone if it stopped at the initial reports of Bron and AD will be involved in the hire. But as JJ seemed more and more imminent, the more sourcing painted this only as Bron's guy (it is, but there's more to it than that).

 

Team DLo all the way, we would not have made the playoffs without DLo both seasons, you guys forget Ham being our coach, Conley would have conked out early in the season

 

oh he will. he's laying the groundwork for that with these press leaks. jsm laid it out, but he's generally a pr master--he's had his missteps, but he learns from them. he's not going to crow about hiring jj like he crowed about his role in the russ trade...because RECEIPTS! so he's just hedging like crazy.

my point is that rob has zero good options here, and people need to understand this. replace rob with masai ujiri or sam presti, and ujiri and presti also have zero good options. actually, each has a great option: they snow fans, media, and their small markets into thinking they're geniuses when they've really just found places with low expectations and minimal scrutiny. lebron would chew those guys up and spit them out, too.

 

excellent, rich. can you give me assurances that either a) lebron will let management know who he DOES like or b) he'll...i don't know...shut the f*** up and play for whomever we hire?

sorry, man...do you think we're all idiots?

edit: i'm not f***ing finished!

"look, lebron and ty lue just won a ring together and have mutual respect. that doesn't mean the lakers have to hire him. c'mon, guys. don't be children..."

flash forward to a point in the future when a) we won a ring with "not ty lue" and b) ty lue has won jack f***ing s***: "if people would have just respected lebron's wishes and hired ty lue, we'd have 11 rings in the last 4 years! FIRE ROB!"

 

This is exactly why I for one, will find some massive way to celebrate when LeBron is no longer a Laker.

 

me too Harrison. Me too.