one ring and a conference finals appearance during the horrible period. the off years involved the players who are being wronged not being available for huge chunks of time, save last year, when we had a very bad coach and injuries to key support players that spanned the entire season. i just think these are dumb, lazy takes from laker-hating media. the russ trade was horrible. the caruso decision was horrible. otherwise, we've been largely good and probably better than most teams in terms of personnel management and acquisition. considering russ is on AD/lebron, and one could argue that even the THT/caruso thing was at least partly a klutch issue (cheap ownership/klutch). i also think it's weird that the olympics are being held up as the evidence that lebron and AD are able to carry an nba team for 82 games plus the playoffs. i mean, we won the IST, which is a lot more analogous to the olympic situation. lebron played 25mpg in the olympics, AD 16mpg. they were surrounded by a full complement of max players and the league's best role players. it's just not at all comparable. again, dumb/lazy comparison.
Well...Dropping Javale and Dwight, for Gasol and Harrell, was a bad decision. Letting Shroeder walk for nothing, was also a bad decision. Signing that roster after the Russ trade, was a poor decision as well. Letting Bamba, and Beasley go for nothing was another poor decision IMO. Giving out all these player options, doesn't look like a good decision today either. The chip team team's roster, was already pretty much in place, when Rob took over. Rob hired Ham, it's rather ironic that he was such a bad coach, but outside of Lebron and AD, playing under Ham, was the most playoffs success anyone else on the roster, had ever had in their careers. If Tinkerbell hadn't choked we might have won another chip. That's also true with the same "bad" coach. The book is still open on Rob IMO. What happens this season will be another chapter.
upgrade. first time or second? either way, first time was a financial issue, and nobody was going to give up anything in a s&t (he signed for tpmle, iirc). second time he got more money than we could offer. nothing could work with westbrook starting and playing 30+ mpg. zero. nada. i didn't like it, but blame jeanie here. i'm sure rob would have loved to just hang onto them for salary ballast. it is fun to look at these things after the fact, isn't it? literally nobody made a fuss about this at the time of those signings. the forum was super excited about wood. several members of the forum had been pining for reddish for years and wanted to trade assets for him in seasons prior. teams that have few options in terms of initial salary use the player options to make the total guarantee larger. just how it works. if any of hayes/wood/reddish plays well this year, everyone will be glad those POs were there, as we'll have early bird rights and would be less likely to lose them for nothing. as it stands, they're players at spots 11-15--spots at which if they're making an impact, probably something has already gone wrong. kcp, caruso, and kuz were the only people that were there prior to rob and on the title team, iirc. agree. rob hired ham, and that was a bad hire. our stars no-showed in pivotal games in that denver series, too. and ham's terrible decision to go small to start the series for no reason whatsoever was probably as impactful as dlo's no-show. denver was also playing near perfect basketball, so whatever. the book is still open. the post-lebron years is where we'll start to really learn things, imo. but even then, rob (or whomever replaces him) will be hamstrung by our ownership's tight finances. it loomed large in a lot of your complaints above. those weren't choices that bob myers or lawrence frank ever had to make.
Meh Chip team...Rondo was here, so was Javale, and Lebron. Rob signed Danny Green, Dwight and Kief as a buyout. He didn't seem to be all that enthusiastic about signing Dwight. He was on a non guaranteed min contract. No. Gasol and Harrell were NOT upgrades over Dwight and Javale. I'm not agreeing on that one at all. Bah. Ham went small in the 1st game of that series. Big deal, he had to go back to Shroeder after Tinkerbell no showed anyway. Folks try to over hype that going small stuff. IMO..he should have stuck with Dennis and brought Tinkerbell off the bench. We won 1 out of 9 games against that team. That wasn't all on coaching man. We could have signed Shroeder to a different contract, it was clear early in free agency, that his market was tepid. We just chose not to offer him anything. Rob was going to trade Kuz and Trez for Buddy Hield, I guess Lebron was going to be the PG Again.. I don't know, what would have worked with Westbrook, with Lebron and AD missing the bulk of his time here. The trio was supposed to be the idea. Not 1 guy showing up every day, and the two guys he was supposed to support didn't. The rest of that trash roster didn't help matters at all. Folks were hyping how great Stanley Johnson was on that squad. SMH As far as this current roster, we have too many guards and power forwards. Too much overlap, that doesn't address the lack of rebounding or interior defense. And we went out, and drafted two more guards. Hindsight is a fans prerogative..we tend to give the benefit of the doubt in every campaign at the start. That's what fans do. So...it's all on Jeanie huh? Hey if that's your take, then Rob is absolved of all dumb decisions forever then.
rob came in 2017. you don't have to agree that earth is round, either, but it can be true nonetheless. howard and javale both dropped off after leaving. harrell and (yes) gasol both played well for us and statistically better than the other two, iirc (i'd have to dig up the numbers again, but that's how i remember the last time you made these claims). we led in many of those games and most were tight down the stretch. that can't be laid at dlo's feet alone, as you repeatedly attempt. both lebron and AD had some poor performances in key games (game 3 of the sweep year was one that sticks out for me), and ham did a lot of dumb stuff, but starting small instead of playing big--the way we had mostly played to get there--against a very big team was headscratchingly bad. he couldn't have signed for the tpmle here after turning down 20 per. just wasn't going to happen. showing up and actively making the team worse. the rest of that trash roster was because we were paying a vet min player 50 million per. that's not management, that's math. lol, i'm saying most of your concerns were about management were choices that were forced by a tight budget, which was at the discretion of ownership. this is all pre-second apron stuff--we could have easily just kept bamba and beasley and schroder and whomever if ballmer owned the team. this is just facts. had we done so, we could have traded salary ballast for any number of players in the time since. instead every move we make has to be talent-for-talent. that's harder than people think. but yes, i'm saying gm isn't our problem, really. it's generally that we operate as a mom and pop shop. rob's exit would do zero to change that.
I'm talking about Rob as the guy running the team. He took over after Magic quit. Magic quit during the AD pursuit. I'm not sure, what Rob is supposed to be credited for, or blamed for, prior to that. However he only added the 3 guys, I mentioned to that team No..Gasol and Harrell didn't play better for us than Dwight and Javale. Period. I couldn't care less about personal stats or something, it's the fit on the team, they allowed AD to play his preferred spot, we won a chip. Trez was a 6'7 SF, I still have no idea, why the hell we signed him at all. Gasol was shot man, that's why they brought Drumdawg in, fat boy was loafing out there That is not an Is the Earth flat or round question. That's a is the sky really blue or is it an optical illusion that you are seeing, type of thing..matter of perspective. 1-9 tells me more was going on, than some coaching decisions. True Lebron and AD fumbled bumbled stumbled, down the stretch in some of those games. Tinkerbell no showed in most of them, and sometimes Austin and Rui did too. Vanderbilt was injured. That's not all on the coach, an open shot is an open shot, we hit them pretty regularly against that team in quarters 1-3, that's why we ran up leads. Then in crunch time we choked on those very same open looks. Yes..I can agree with that.That's not all on the coach tho. This last series what were our other options anyway? Frankly I thought Ham's biggest issue, was giving Tinkerbell, Austin and Rui too much of a green light. It bit him in his a** too. Those 3 did most of the whining last season, and then were all pretty mediocre in the playoffs, especially in crunch time. Somehow he forgot that AD, was more important than those guys. Cost him his gig. Now the Jeanie thing..You have some weight there, I'm not convinced that we made the best decisions tho, even being under a bit of a tight leash mony wise. We'll see how this campaign goes
fat boy's advanced numbers were better than either's (javale was closer, but still not as much positive impact as gasol the next year). simply put, we played better when gasol was on the floor, fatness notwithstanding. we brought drummond in because we were stupid. he's the only one of the four guys in this discussion that was an active negative on the floor for us. man i hated that pickup and continue to hate it. funniest part is you know who was better than all of them? montrezl harrell. the reason we didn't repeat wasn't bad management, it was AD and lebron's injuries. it's super weird that you trot that out any time someone says something bad (accurate) about westbrook, but ignore it when you're trying to trash gasol or harrell. they were upgrades. they were positives on the court that year. better than dwight and mcgee the previous year. they were just playing without lebron and/or AD. this last series was on the coach because if he didn't suck, we wouldn't have been playing our worst possible matchup in round 1 to begin with. and yes, we lost to denver for many reasons, all of which we've named, but one of which was definitely ham. he benched both reaves and dlo, basically for not shooting well enough. meanwhile, he threw taurean prince out there, results be damned. he lost the team then, and he never regained them. AD didn't get the ball in second halves because we stopped running organized offense in second halves. who should be responsible for such things? obviously if forced between THT and caruso, we made the wrong choice. my point is that other contending teams simply aren't asked to make that choice. it was totally possible to just keep both. we've nailed a lot of little signings that people forget about or discount (hello, malik monk!). we've not nailed others. just like basically every other team. i truly have no idea. my beef is with people saying lebron and AD winning gold somehow means the lakers have been badly mismanaged. it's a pretty stupid argument.
The Olympics doesn't mean jack to me, we are supposed to win that. The only good that comes from the Olympics IMO, is the guys are already being in shape. Back on topic, I don't care what Gasol's advanced stats said, he was slow as an iceberg, gun shy on offense, and he loafed around a lot . That was pointed out when they made a play for Drummond. You forget that part of our issues with Gasol was his effort level? That was brought up in a couple of articles. Gasol didn't like it, so what. He was gifted the starting position anyway. The other " "back up center" was Trez. Sure we played better with Gasol on the floor, when AD and Lebron was available, early in the season, AND it was the same thing with everyone else on the team too it was AD and Lebron. No..they were not better than Dwight and Javale, definitely not some upgrades. I'm not rocking with that at all. Vogel didn't even want to play Trez, Fat boy either really. Neither were the drop coverage bigs he likes. Drummond wasn't either, but at least he hit the boards. Now..of course you already know, who was responsible for going away from the organized offense man, the oldest dude in the League. I don't expect that to change at all this season. Austin and Tinkerbell deserved to be benched, they were playing like crap. Folks were talking about Reaves, needing a month off. Interestingly enough, BOTH played better after getting benched too. As far as last season, once Jarred went down, with Gabe already pretty much done for the season, we didn't really have a lot of options. We went offense first, it worked OK..except against the better teams, we faltered down the stretch. I don't think we would have beaten Min, or Dallas in the 1st rd either. Maybe OKC, maybe.. but we were going out in the 2nd rd regardless. That team wasn't that good, still isn't that good as currently constructed IMO. Jeanie ain't selling, so Rob has to be better, or we will find someone else. If JJ Redick is getting these guys open looks aplenty, and they don't convert, that won't be on him either..IMO
Gasol played very well at the start of the season. The passing was there and he was a focal point in the offense, and we were still a top rated team on defense, even though he certainly wasn't in his prime, of course, but he was still smart about the angles and could be a force down low. What happened if you recall is AD got hurt, and LeBron, and not too long afterward Gasol picked up some kind of injury TOO which was affecting his play and defense .... not having AD there with the "Tandem" Rob wanted to continue with AD at PF to start halves. The plan, I think, was Marc was replacing Javale and they did want to bring Dwight back, with Harrell replacing Morris. But Dwight for whatever reason(s) didn't want or care to wait while the Lakers were making the deals "first" they had on highest priority .... with Gasol, Schroder and Harrell. Drummond was NOT brought at that exact time because Gasol sucked or didn't work out as you claim and of course will never admit differently. He was brought in at THAT time because we had no healthy BIG men, and to get him Rob had to promise him starting .... because AD was out for an extended period and Gasol was hobbled and no longer as effective as when the season started. Maybe(?) whatever articles you're referring to were later in the season after he was clearly not happy with his starting position given away at a time when he was dealing with an injury.
you realize that's what started this whole argument and was the substance of the link you posted? so...it IS the topic. you have a clear record of not caring about reality, so i am not at all surprised. i will keep pointing to the fact that we were better when gasol was on the floor than when dwight, javale, or god forbid drummond was on the floor. just facts. we were better. if gasol at half effort was basically infinitely better than drummond at full effort...that's...worse! gasol was promised things and then scapegoated when things went poorly. if you want to make an argument against rob, i'm listening to that one. but signing gasol in the first place was a victory and/or no-brainer. try again; defense better with either on floor. just stop with this stuff. here's no-d trez in vogel's system: here we agree, and i f***ing hate it. how can a guy this accomplished have this big a blind spot. i actually fear that his success with similar tactics in the olympics bodes poorly for us. his hero stuff simply doesn't work in the nba anymore, imo. or at least not often enough. i was ok with reaves being brought off the bench, as we had sensible configural options to work with. moving dlo to the bench while gabe was unavailable was just incredibly stupid and probably helped land us the date with denver. half agree. i think minny was super vulnerable, tbh, and we matched up better with them and okc than with denver. i would have liked our odds against dallas or the clips, too. just denver was a bad matchup for a bunch of reasons. and yeah, maybe we end up in that spot anyway. agree. this isn't a title favorite on paper. the question is whether that's a failure of management or just...the reality that 25 nba teams face each year. i don't at all believe that redick is the magic salve, and i again agree that roster issues are the obstacle. where everyone loses me is the idea that there were these obvious moves anyone (but rob/jeanie) would have made that would have changed things. lebron's old. AD's getting older. they make a ton of money and ownership doesn't have much. add in the new cba, and here you are. the good news is that the new cba will make it harder for the clips, gs, and bkn to just outspend everyone forever. i'm hoping our brand and geographical advantage will re-emerge to some extent, paradoxically. otherwise, we have to hope to get better internally in terms of management. and here, i again share in the pessimism.
It was before Drummond was on the table. I think Marc was just pretty much done, as a major rotation piece. I did like the idea of his 3pt threat, but he was afraid to pull the trigger for some reason. Idk what really happened with Dwight that offseason. He says one thing, Rob says another. Kinda like with Caruso, but I can buy your idea, sounds reasonable, Dwight might have had a misunderstanding of the situation...IDK.
Now that guy chose to focus on the Olympics, I don't put much stock in it myself. I was referring to the roster management angle. See the thing is, Dwight and Javale, only played one year together, the chip season. I just don't see anyway Gasol and Trez were superior to them, in their one season here. It's a real hard stretch to make it so IMO, the sample size with Lebron and AD was much smaller for the latter. Javale and Dwight complimented AD perfectly that season, Gasol didn't play that much with AD. It's just not an accurate assessment. Those guys went through the regular season, and a full playoffs run,all the way to a chip. I would have brought both back. The teams were different after Dwight replaced Gasol too. The second time around, Dwight's act had gotten old and Frank didn't play him much. After that dustup with AD on the bench, Dwight was an afterthought in that season. Lebron is Lebron..it is what it is. Hopefully JJ can light a fire under Tinkerbell's a** this season, for as long as he's here at least. Instill some heart in him possibly, IDK..show him some more love. He only sat for 12 games I believe, I'm pretty sure he would have went MIA in the playoffs anyway. However I will agree that we would have kicked the Flippers a** though. I just think that we have too many guards and power forwards. We don't have a true two way 3 on the team. We have a couple of big 2's that could play 3, and a slew of 4's. Vanderbilt can play 3, but he's not an offensive threat. We need to move some bodies and consolidate at those spots, and bring in a decent big. That being said, if what we have is what we have. I'm still hoping for the best, we still have AD and an aging Bron. It's possible that playing with his son, might just prompt James to be a better leader and teammate. We shall see. Hey.. we are still the Lakers though, someone, somewhere is still dreaming about rocking the Purple and Gold. We'll find more stars, I'm not sure that Rob will be here to make that happen. I think his position is shakier than some folks think. He can be "fired" by being moved into another position in the franchise. You know how we roll, Jeanie would hire Bob Meyers, and give him a blank check. (Well..for at least a couple of seasons). Lol.
jeanie's giving no one a blank check, and i'll be shocked if rob is fired or reassigned until significant time passes post-lebron. he's going to get a shot at trying to navigate that, imo. but anyway, the bulk of your post is just agreeing with me and disagreeing with the article you posted, imo. the premise there is that because AD and lebron were key players on the olympic team that (barely) won gold, that it means the lakers have done a terrible job building a team around them. you pointed particularly at the post-title team, and i said i thought the post-title team was actually better on paper (i feel this very strongly, actually). the claim was that we've been terribly run for years. that's just garbage. we made one of the worst trades ever--at our stars' behest--and we couldn't dig out of it. prior to that, we had made some great moves, and subsequent to that, we have made some solid moves. but that one killed everything. that was the end, man.
Not exactly. Like I said, this guy used the Olympics, as evidence of Rob coming up short. I don't need that as an example. I pointed out where I thought Rob has come up short IMO. He's made some shaky decisions, starting with the Gasol/Trez over just running it back with Javale and Dwight. Now better on paper? No..I don't think the team was better on paper in the following season at all. I thought we took a step back without our bigs. Bringing in Dennis didn't makes us better than we were with Green and Rondo either. It became a moot point because Lebron and AD were injured for most of the season. The following season, letting Dennis walk for nothing, after we just gave up a 1st rd pick for him, was a poor decision. He then attempted to trade Kuz and Trez for Buddy Hield, chose Tucker over Caruso, and then made the Russ trade. We had Schröder's Bird rights, he didn't have to take a TPMLE at all. Now the Russ trade, wasn't this worst trade in history, and all that IMO. Lebron and AD were hurt again, and played even less together. That wasn't Westbrook's fault. Neither was chosing Tucker over Caruso. Like I said Russ 47M expiring contract was an asset that we could have flipped to improve the team, if it didn't work out. It wasn't his fault how Rob chose to fill out the rest of the roster either. It's a popular sentiment around here, blame it all on Westbrook. It's still a false premise today. The Westbrook trade didn't break up our Championship core, we did that immediately after winning the chip. We let 4 key players go from that team. Caruso wasn't traded for Westbrook either. We could have flipped Russ for Kyrie, we chose not too. So we made the Tinkerbell trade. Ok..finally we had a healthy Lebron and AD down the stretch for a playoff run, and we went to the Conference Finals. It was moreTHEM two guys , than the players we got in that trade. Trading Tucker,for Bev, who was traded for Bamba, who he let walk for nothing. Then letting Beasley go for nothing, taking away potential trade assets. At least he flipped Rui for Nunn. mixed bag here. Now we are looking at moving Tinkerbell and maybe Rui and Jared to be a legit contender again. I wont go as far as Ox, and say that Rob is a total idiot, but he's made his share of poor decisions IMO. Now it depends on what he actually does with this roster this season, but I definitely think criticism for some of his moves are warranted. I wouldn't doubt Jeanie on be willing to spend the money. She knew Russ's contract was going to end up at 47M. She thought it was worth the gamble and pulled the trigger. So it depends on what's presented to her IMO. Perhaps Rob hasn't presented her with something that she felt comfortable with enough to do it again. Can't blame her, considering some of the shaky decisions that's he's made to date.
yeah, i can't add more to my already fairly definitive proof that harrell/gasol was better than howard/mcgee. you hate dlo for playoff performance but want to go to bat for green? he needed to go and was upgraded. rondo was never the same after that, either. it might not have been our decision, or it might have been ownership saving money (this is VERY LIKELY). kuz/trez for hield retains our most important piece, imo (kcp). still not a good move, but better than the russ move by a country mile. we've been over THT/caruso; i put that on ownership first, but rob should be held accountable there, too. it was his idea to get in bed with klutch. honestly, stopped reading. i understand that this is your persistent fantasy. like, just...f***ing false? dlo was a HUGE addition. he and vando were why we went from being just putrid to becoming a legit contender. well, that and having successfully removed a malignancy. tucker for bev was salary dump, imo. i'm with you on not re-upping bamba, but again, not rob's call. that was most certainly ownership mandate. can't get on board with absolving jeanie and pinning it on rob. btw, if jeanie agreed, rob would be fired. the reason rob's not fired is because he's taken the public hits for some stuff that he didn't want to do, imo. that's fine; part of the job. i'd say to ox or you or whomever that bob myers wouldn't take our job if it was offered to him. and he left gs because he saw the money train running out. i'm just mad we jumped off before the cba made it to where we had to.
I see we’re back to the point in the offseason where Slick provides objectively false takes to pass the time. Can’t wait for the season to start so we can get some fresh objectively false takes.
1. You didn't show any definitive proof of anything. How so? The chip team was the best team in the League before Covid. The best team in the bubble. I'm not getting how you are extrapolating how Gasol and Trez were some how better. Were they better on the boards, on defense? It doesn't make any sense to try and compare, how two guys that played a whole season and the playoffs with Lebron and AD, to two that played a few games. Nah. 2. We gave up a 1st rd pick to move Green and then let that player walk for nothing. Bad move At least Green played defense in the bubble. What does that have to do with Tinkerbell anyway? Rondo was lights out in the bubble wasn't he? The anti Chokeolo. You don't know how he would have played if he came back. He was known as "playoff Rondo" wasn't he? I imagine he would have been up for a matchup against CP3 3.Chokeolo was huge?..Meh..Kyrie Irving would have actually been huge for real. He had the proven track record, to back up that statement too. Tinkerbell has always been who he is now. Fools Gold. You can keep dancing around it all you want, but we simply chose not to offer up Reaves and Max for Irving. Poor decision. 4. You flip around with injuries didn't matter in regards to Westbrook. Yet Caruso, Kuz,and KCP all shooting 30% from the floor and 20% from three against Phx, wasn't some big deal because Lebron and AD weren't at 100%. What about that Championship experience? Phx had a bunch of guys that had never even been to the playoffs We see things how we want to see them sometimes. You and me both. It's more than one way to view almost every thing.
