The "problem" is we essentially chose him over Randle. $14M for a backup PG is ridiculous. Lebron doesn't need a pure PG playing next to him. He's basically the best PG in the game. We just needed a guard that could bring the ball up and shoot.
Agreed. People want to blame it all on Mintz and free agency, but we treated him like s*** all year and came up empty handed. We basically spent 4 years developing him into a beast and let him walk for nothing. That is just poor management. No excuses.
Literally all it says there is we weren't willing to offer him a long term contract. He then left and signed a one year deal with a player option. He chose a one year deal elsewhere because we told him he's probably coming off the bench and wont control the ball as much. Just look at his usage in NO! There was zero chance he was getting a 25% usage again here let alone the nearly 30%(!!!) he is getting in NO. You can downplay Mintz all you want. You cannot downplay the fact Julius got a s*** deal while Jabari Parker got 40 million, LaVine got 80, Embiid got maxed, Smart got over 50 million. Mintz blew it. He overplayed his hand and now is going to try to make it up in 2019 FA. Either way the Lakers got LeBron and are positioned to add another max deal in 2019. Their plan worked.
I don't think so. After the meeting he basically said "f*** it I'm not dealing with this s*** for another year" so he put himself in a better situation. Julius getting a s*** deal has little to do with how he felt the Lakers treated him. I agree that he probably could have gotten more but his sights are clearly on the 2018-19 offseason, and with the way he's ballin it seems to be good plan. Again, signing Lebron has no relevance with letting Randle walk for nothing. They clearly f***ed up the Randle situation.
I dont deny it could have been handled better, but I also am not going to pretend Julius and Mintz didnt f*** up this summer. Considering Mintz's other clients have settled for less than they're worth is just further proof that Mintz is a fool. The Lakers could have equally said "We arent dealing with this **** anymore" when it comes to Mintz who had his client Paul George use the Lakers as leverage (and then failed to get Paul George a max deal anyway).
I'm not denying that Mintz was a factor. It didn't help that we handled the D'Angelo situation poorly as well. Clearly, the FO and Mintz aren't on good terms. But those are all behind the scenes politics and relationships that should be worked on if the priority is to build a good team. If Mintz got into the FO's head and emotions affected their business decision, that is really disappointing. We should be evaluating the talent and not the agent. It's like factoring in the Lavar when drafting Lonzo. It shouldn't happen because it hurts our chances of building a good team.
1. I disagree wildly with Lavar being a factor in anything. 2. I have no idea how you pulled the FO basing their decision on Randle solely by the relationship with Mintz. I've been consistent that the FO wanted their cap space more than a 6th man. All I'm saying is that you keep denying Mintz's faults in this and it's entirely possible the two sides stopped seeing eye to eye a long time ago. 3. I have no issue whatsoever with how they treated Russell. They traded him. Trading a guy isn't mistreating him, especially when the guy is having a tough time in the city he's in. The only somewhat questionable way they treated him was talking up Lonzo as a point guard by comparison, but they were pretty accurate. Russell isnt a point guard. 4. I'm done with this. Clearly we disagree on this. To me, Mintz f***ed the Lakers and they f***ed him back. Both sides made mistakes, but only Mintz came off incompetent.
1. Exactly. An agent or family member of a player should not affect the decision-making. 2. I'm not arguing that either. Many others think it's solely on Mintz though, which is far from the truth. He's just an associate. He's not a player. And that's how he should be treated. I'm not denying his faults. I'm saying Mintz is irrelevant because we had Julius' rights. If we wanted him back, Julius would still be a Laker regardless of Mintz. Yes, I agree. That's how the FO valued Julius Randle. I don't agree with their decision, but that's the bottom line. Nothing more or less. I'm going to judge them on their valuation of Julius moving forward. I'm not making excuses for the FO by bringing in Mintz into the equation. 3. I don't either. I never liked DLO. But it probably factors into the Lakers-Mintz saga, which again, should be irrelevant to the Julius decision. 4. And we lost a lottery pick for nothing. Both sides lose imo.
if this is the plan working... lebron could have been here with randle--i'm certain a deal could have been brokered to preserve the precious 2019 space while not squandering an asset. and as we already know, i'm not bullish on the 2019 FA plan. we completely wasted the second max slot this summer, and the misuse of that money is showing in the "L" column. once you get a lebron, "kick the can down the road" team building needs to be over, imo. this is the real story for me. and not just a lotto pick--a non-bust lotto pick, which is better than half of them. by the time the lakers looked to trade him, they had tanked his value. even then, they were just looking for picks and weren't willing to take on the salary of a useful player because it would have jeopardized the always-ill-fated two-max plan. the FO is really lucky lebron wanted to play here. because several other moves have been pretty bad/useless, and we're able to ignore them cuz lebron.
Eh. The team did it once to literally the utmost success. I have no doubt they're tampering again right now to do it again. I suspect we're gearing to throw the farm at AD and also sign a max guy this summer. You can't do that without the flexibility the Lakers preserved. Their win this summer is not going to be rewritten to appease Randle or Mintz. Signing LeBron with the goal to get at least one more star > 6th man Randle. I honestly didn't think this would be such a difficult topic to agree on, but here we are.
we can gear toward whatever we want. we geared for two maxes last summer, got one. we're gearing toward one max next summer, and that market could dry up before then. others will be bidding on AD, and NO has to agree to move him, too.
We did gear up to what we wanted and we got what we wanted. You've said before that you wouldn't support this path unless it worked and it did. Had Mintz done his job and gotten his client George George's admitted dream job we would have had two maxes. Regardless, the FO proved they were right to you and to everyone. I have no reason to think they'll fail now, they've already won the highest prize.
We need to get one of the KKK's this summer and/or trade for AD. If not, Magic and Rob have failed. Just lebron is not good enough.
You really drawing that line? The Lakers gave the extra spot to Mintz and his boy and they didn't give us a meeting. Now we're well positioned to sign and possibly also trade for a star. Magic and Rob have already come through with the best player in the game. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Why are we doing all these gymnastics trying to pine after Randle? I loved Julius and would have liked to retain him, but it didn't happen and we're doing just fine going in a different direction.
Really? I think we'd all be fine with losing Randle if we were winning more games and had no glaring weakness in our big man rotation. Adding to insult is signing scrubs like KCP/Beasley (and in my opinion Rondo was redundant) which would have been enough to retain Randle. We also could have recouped assets at the trade deadline if we had no plans of keeping him. (extra assets that could be used for your AD trade scenario btw) That's an undeniable error by our FO that can not be dismissed. Signing Lebron was fantastic, but that alone doesn't right all the wrongs, as our record shows.
1. Yes we are doing just fine. At 4-5 through 9 games, we have the same record as your boy's team. We were a missed shot or two from being 5-4 or 6-3 even which would put us up in the playoffs. It's way early in the season. 2. Signing LeBron kind of does right most of our "wrongs". We've succeeded in the greatest terms in the FA department. It should give every Laker fan confidence in the FO.
1. Are you comfortable with our big man rotation? Would you rather not have Randle over KCP/Beasley? (setting aside that KCP may have been necessary to sign Lebron for a moment) 2. You're OK that we're gave up an asset for nothing? With DLO we dumped Mozgov while getting Brook and Kuzma. We got nothing for Randle. If you're acknowledging the above, we could just agree to disagree. But if you're not, I'd have to take your thoughts on the FO, Lebron and Randle with a grain of salt because that's just blind homerism.
1. We just signed Tyson Chandler to a minimum deal. Finding a competent big man is far easier than finding a point guard of Rajon Rondo's caliber. I was all for bringing back Julius or Brook, but Tyson will be fine. 2. Nope. Are you okay with the way Mintz operated? According to you we mistreated D'Angelo too. What did we do to him? You can go ahead and agree to disagree. Maybe you're actually Mintz like that time Bynum's agent was supposedly on the board, but Mintz is an idiot. He cost his clients millions and millions of dollars and tried to play the Lakers FO. Ideally Randle stays and is the backup Center, but if you're honest with yourself he's not a great fit and he chose to go elsewhere. The Lakers should have traded him at the deadline last year, but for what? And maybe they got no offers for expiring deals or picks. You want to assume the worst about the Lakers FO and I won't do that. If that's homerism, then so be it. I'll own that. Hopefully you'll own that you're beating up the FO because you like Randle and he's not on the team anymore.
