LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

Maybe, but butterfly effect. That might not have happened if he had been playing next to a real big man, if he didn't log as many minutes, or if he and Rui didn't have to play so much C.

Related to injuries due to playing too many minutes - I still blame D'Antoni for blowing out Kobe's Achilles. Kobe's minutes in the games leading up to that:

47:37
47:04
42:32
47:20
41:06
48:00

Then he blew out his Achilles at 44:54 min played of the next game, having played every minute so far with 3 min left to go that he would have also played. Those minutes are ridiculous. 7 straight games of 41+ minutes, with 4/6 being 47+ and the injury game going that way as well?! That's just stupid.

Back to the current Lakers, I'm not sure that signing Valanciunas would have meant going whole hog into the LeBron timeline. The origin of the discussion is if LeBron had taken a discount in order to sign him, so no other assets would have been given up. The only extra cost I see is $10m on the books for 1 more year in 2026-7. That's something, but not huge, and wouldn't have meant going all-in on the LeBron timeline imo.

 

yeah, two separate threads converged for me. i wanted us to sign valanciunas with money lebron gave up, but i will once again claim that i'm pretty sure lebron wasn't going to take the 15-20 million dollar paycut it would have taken to give jonas his 9 per.

yes, yes, i know jonas was on the (very short) list, BUT i still believe lebron was only on board if it meant small sacrifice--he wanted the FO to dump salary to get closer. that dump would have cost assets.

but we agree that lebron should have taken a cut if he was going to b**** about the quality of his teammates. i've never wavered on that.

 

Yeah, you're consistent. I gotchu.

 

stein's read is the same as mine, except i think the plan is and has been to go back to cleveland. i think he might just take the vet min to go there, too.

on the other hand, i agree with lane when he disagrees with stein about rich paul's statement. it was definitely a reaction to the fact that no 1+1 was offered. it wasn't meant as a play to get moved, but it was definitely meant as a statement of displeasure. not a nothingburger as stein seems to imply.

unrelated to lebron: glad he threw cold water on the "lopez chose the clippers over the lakers" stuff. he didn't. and that was always an incredibly stupid take. tell some of your podcast friends this. i believe we probably contacted both capela and lopez in case DFS stayed and told them they could start and have the tpmle. both players got more than that elsewhere, but they never got an offer from us because we moved on. both players should probably thank us, as i think our interest (real or perceived) probably earned them some extra money from conference rivals, btw.

 

Of course he will, but not for us

 

he may not; i could just see it. one could argue he kinda still owes them, and what a story to finish his career there on a contending team playing for no money. even if they didn't win another ring, the vibes would be amazing.

 

Agree

I just wanted to yell at the clouds, lol