Anyone but Rondo. I like the Seth Curry suggestion I’ve heard from multiple people now, silver screen and roll guys and from Windhorst. He is shooting %45 from 3, career average is like %44. He doesn’t put up huge numbers, but he doesn’t need to as a backup, he plays defense and he plays hard.
historically, seth has gotten hurt a lot, so that's an issue. but he's definitely a 20mpg role player in this league.
It'd be nice if their was a backup pg out there that would be cheap and has experience playing with our guys. Someone that could even score, hypothetically, 32 points in a game if things break right. The cherry on top would be if this pg was suffering from male-pattern baldness at a young age.
But you are 100% right about all our frustrations. Obvious s*** to us here and stated when happened that many of us are proven correct even without hindsight .... that they f***** up with in building a damn good team we should have had THIS Year. No hyperbole and no exaggeration. They could still have had their financial flexibility. The stupid moves ended (so far) with Zubac.
The experiment wasn't as bad as many make it out, team was ballin' till 12/5 when LBJ went down and the whole thing came down like a house of cards with the injuries. Because everyone is on one year contracts Mag/Rob could afford to be experimental and take some chances this year. We have signed no one (besides draftees) to multi-year deals. We were supposed to see our core youth play a full season, Guys like Rondo were supposed to be off the bench only. Hell fully healthy we could have Kuz or Ingram off the bench along with Hart. We were one of the deeper teams in the league at full strength. Luke overplayed Chandler and he broke down. Mistakes were made across the board but it was a learning year. This summer the rubber meets the road. All of the Maj/Rob theory about hoarding cap space is put to a practical test. They cannot afford to be experimental or test new unproven ideas about what kind of team to put around LBJ this summer like they were last summer. I think they are aware of this. As far playing Rondo a lot to appease him, ok, that's fine at this point, it's natural to keep relations in with players. Bring him back on a vet min and give him scrub mins. He's been good in our locker room. He organized the player meeting with LBJ about his body language and from all accounts LBJ was cool with it and it was productive. We are tanking let Rondo play now. Win over Clips wasn't needed but the Hornets and T-Wolves are cooperating by winning and we're sitting nicely @ the 10th seed for lotto purposes. Getting the 10th pick (.659 chance @ 10th place) as opposed to the 11th is a bigger deal than say the 12th or the 13th. The stigma of a "top 10 pick" just sounds like a better asset. And if we keep it, hey, Bynum was a 10th pick (tyvm Ronnie Lester and screw you Jim Buss for taking the credit as well as letting Ronnie go).
@Savory Griddles perfectly put, I was behind Maginka even with their off season headscratchers but the Zu trade was the realization and confirmation that they are dumb asf
Everything else is just excuses. Championship organizations don’t make excuses. I really admire how San Antonio has continued to be solid despite missing key people, losing stars to retirement, injuries, etc. not a peep. Just ballin.
Well HoF coach and their two best players being healthy helps in that regard. But they do keep ticking over.
You can't develop Lonzo the correct way with Rondo on the team. They both need to run the offense and they both can't shoot. Except Lonzo has ALL NBA defense skills and is 20 years old. So, if Magic and Rob know basketball as much as they should, they should know what they have to do next year. I understand why they got Rondo last season with Lonzo's knee being what it was and not knowing if he was gonna play bust like game. But Lonzo played well when he played this year and he is the real deal if the Lakers just f***ing wait for him to develop.
I do agree this year that the experiment failed, injuries to that extent point to several possible existing problems in the organization including coaching. But it wasn't a one year plan with LBJ so the "end results" have not been determined. If, in some people's mind's it has, then it's a premature evaluation imo. Pun intended. Maj/Rob had an escape in case this didn't work with 1 year deals. They know they don't have that anymore.
Thieved from the Luke thread. Sources? Disturbing? Hell yeah. From Oram, "I have been told by multiple sources that Magic Johnson is doing that job the way that I thought Magic Johnson was going to do that job. Sort of whisking in and out of the office. ‘Yeah fire everyone. Trade everyone. You’re doing a bad job. I’m going to run my movie empire.’ Is he still doing that? The details, the specifics of the doing of that job. Magic Johnson has been given all of the power and isn’t doing any of the work that usually gets done. He’s doing the job the way Phil Jackson did the job." He’s pretty mad at (Rob) Pelinka from what I’ve heard." And here .... we .... go! https://www.yahoo.com/sports/report-lakers-president-magic-johnson-193202238.html
That wasn’t from Oram, just to be clear, don’t want people thinking someone so close to the team made those strong comments. Oram said he’s heard Magic described as an absentee executive. That quote I posted was from Dan LeBatard from January 2018, well over a year ago. It’s still concerning, because if he’s STILL running the team that way, we’ll you see the results on the floor. https://lakersoutsiders.com/2018/01...ers-the-way-phil-jackson-did-with-the-knicks/