Magic cost the organization $500k from loud mouth tampering. Yes we dumped contracts and got under the cap, and we drafted well, but my guess is that was primarily Cap Genius Rob Pelinka and our draft team. Magic took credit for the results. The trades? Who we let go? Who we didn't draft and were overruled on, and then traded away (Like Svi) Rob was probably frustrated as heck if he's a grinder. Like Kobe working with fat Shaq. It was never going to have a happy ending because Snaq thought he was the Man. Magic thought he was the man, but if you look at his tenure in its entirety, it's not an overwhelming win at all. He signed Lebron, and presided over good drafting and getting under the cap. The rest: Bombed on some trades, on some drafts not made, on roster assembly, dealing with the press according to league rules, and just being a leader. Besides being a great basketball player, and a business owner capable of hiring people loyal to him, his resume isn't fantastic at all. However, if he had hired his version of Pelinka, maybe this doesn't go down this way. Maybe his own guy doesn't rat him out. But hey Jeanie, let's not learn our lessons quickly. Let's keep doing this stuff, and now let's try it on the new coach lol. Call me when it's over. Geesh.
Rob was actually who got caught tampering. All these things continue to be symptoms of Jeanie's leadership style. He should never have been in that position. At the very least, get someone experienced to work with him. Instead, we hired a couple of amateurs to do really complex jobs. Worse, they didn't even get along apparently. It's no surprise that this experiment failed. At some point we have to quit changing tires on a car with a busted engine. But hey, at least we learned from the Magic thing. Not like we just forced our new coach to hire another coach under him that....oh wait.
LT, where are you getting these percentages? According to Magic, Jeanie knew of his previous commitments and still hired him. If you look at year 1, it sure seemed like there was no news of any sort that suggested any conflict within the ranks and that included Luke at coach. There were no sauces claiming he was absentee...no talks of backstabbing, whispering and admonishment...then we sign Bron and imo that's when it appears that Magic got "fat" from it. I'm not saying all the things said about Magic are false...but I damn sure think they're embellished.... especially when it was really only Oram who reported first in a throw away single line and it was then aggregated and echoed by Woj over the radio waves. Also Brad Turner in the LA Times had some more quotes from Magic and one interesting thing to note is that the First Take interview was scheduled 2 weeks ago, meaning the Lakers knew about it and then scheduled the Vogel presser later that same day. So again, all this talk about Magic spontaneously ambushing the Vogel presser is also false. https://www.latimes.com/sports/lake...y-national-tv-rob-pelinka-20190520-story.html
Add to this his 3yr comment on yesterday's interview, all BS, as someone noted, Magic lite everyone else up so he could look cleaner
Odd that those who wanted him gone the most are now arguing how he didn't honor his commitment. Anyways... http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...-plan-whole-nother-level-lebron-james-arrival
what does this have to do with what he said in his interview yesterday? Says fully commited to the team, would put business aside at time of his hiring, did he NOT say in that Sportsnet interview that he was putting all his business aside to fully commit to the BPO position?...now says exact oppposite, says was only going to be here 3yrs, 3yrs dont equal "fully committed"
Year 1 he did that...did you hear any noise and whispers. Year 2 (post Bron)... he probably got a lil fat off his key signing. Either way, didn't you want dude gone? It's been a month and a half. Your commitment to him is the real story.
I said this awhile back and agree with the thought that Jeanie knew of his commitments when she hired him. Beyond that, I really just think adding LeBron significantly added pressure to win and everyone buckled under it. We started losing and fingers started getting pointed. Since there was no real relationship between them, Rob had no issues throwing Magic under the bus (whether it was truly malicious or not). Magic understood that on some level, but obviously thought he was higher on the pecking order with Jeanie than he actually was. Going from having all power to having to explain himself to Linda Rambis, Tim Harris, and so on without Jeanie ever really having his back or defending him got old. Something happened in that whole discussion of firing Luke that broke the camel's back and Magic straight bailed on all of it. We can all go back and forth debating all the rights and wrongs of it, but things like this don't happen with strong leadership and a true pecking order. That all falls on Jeanie's lap IMO. I hate how Magic quit, questioned his fit for the job, etc etc etc. But this still goes to the top of the food chain. Again, we gotta quit changing tires on a car with a busted engine. Jeanie is the engine. She's got to get things in order and then that will trickle down to everyone else.
Definitely time to move on, but I expect an Instagram post with him, Jeanie and Rob in the next week or so.
I love Magic,our legendary Laker great, best PG ever imo, but he didn't handle this well either. I'm sure there was some backstabbing going on, but no one in the FO, planned or thought any of this out. We got rid of a few young core pieces, I felt like we should have kept Russell, and tried to add a solid player this year. I felt like we were too-too focused on LeBron and forgot about the rest of our team/organization issues. I do commend Magic for getting LeBron though, but we need serious fixing, if we want Lake r glory days again.
They should just bring out the article! Un-squash that thing. Fair is fair. We've heard his version of things, which honestly just sounds like sour grapes to me.
asking around if anyone has seen Magic isn't back stabbing, its passive/aggressive duchness but not backstabbing....backstabbing to me is someone who talks crap behind your back, says you're crappy boss, you do bad things to others, etc. Stating the "obvious" that Magic wasn't around and making sure other knew that was the case is more of an office dysfunction, what magic did in his interviews could easily be considered "backstabbing" as well if we're gona charge Pelinka with that for his "missing in action" comments in regards to Magic presence. You quit on national tv without even a 2nd thought about the media backlash and then continue to add fuel to this dumpster fire with yesterdays interview, how is any of that going to "help" us?
It kind of depends though. And I hate it because I'm somewhat defending Magic, but still. If the role was always supposed to be that Magic was only there a couple of days a week then this is shady to me. It's like if coworkers at any job knew someone leaves at 3:00 but purposely come around looking for them at 3:30 everyday and points it out to everyone. We can read between the lines there. We can debate if it was malicious or not, but overall I think we can all concede that catty workplaces like that are a bad thing. It definitely shows that everyone wasn't on the same page. It comes back to losing. When the plan seemed to be falling into place, no one complained about Magic's schedule. When the reality that we weren't making the playoffs started hitting home, things started going off the rails quickly from rumors to the AD trade debacle. Rob went into CYA mode and also saw a play to increase his own power while not so gently pushing Magic out the door sooner. Well, he's got the crown now. Time to make things happen.
