We have a bunch of young, athletic, talented players that want to be here. To this point we have not overpaid for FA that are over the hill or past their prime. We are all looking at a very exciting up and coming team and hopefully we can all get behind it.
But Jim is an analytics guru!!! He makes his own. Can't replace that with just ANY horse trainer or bartender y'know
He can take Jeanie with him at this point. Neither are doing a good job of leading this franchise. Mitch for ownership!
Read a tweet yesterday (and posted it somewhere as well) that said last season was year one of his 3 year plan. So no, not soon, 2 seasons more IF he continues to fail. And yeah, I'm not super high on Jeanie right now either, she seems as clueless about how important our franchise name and brand are as Jim is. I'm not rooting against Jim though, because that'd be rooting for us to continue to suck. I'd love for he and Mitch to turn things around. The Buss kids taking over for their father and succeeding in the end would be the best scenario, still hope its possible as bad as we look right now. The one thing we have done is draft pretty dang well, we've gotten a lot of use out of 2nd round picks. Also picked up some nice players kinda tossed out by other teams like Black and Davis, and found some talent in the D-League in Brown. But then there's always tweets like this from guys like Lazenby to bring you down
My greatest fear is Jim/Mitch doing something stupid like trading the young guys for a guys like Boogie and be like "see we told you, 3 year plan" and then having that screw us over for the future.
Even during the old CBA, Jerry West as our GM, and the Laker brand at it's most polished, it took Van Exel, Jones, Ceballos and Campbell...with West telling him about a young prodigy from Lower Merion...to get Shaq to sign here. I mean, the expectations to steal a superstar are waaaay too high. If Russell and Randle come out of the gates like gangbusters and play like we are all hoping they play, and we can't land anyone next offseason, then I will look at all this, "The Lakers are dead." with a bit more concern.
Julius Randle Jordan Clarkson D'Angelo Russell Tarik Black Jabari Brown 5 reasons why I'm optimistic.
Well first of all- I'm not sure a lot of us thought honestly we were getting these guys until Aldridge said we were his second option. Even then most of us were skeptical. Secondly, the shine is definitely off the apple right now. People are picking other places in similar situations based on faith. DJ has faith the Mavs will build around him more readily than LA will. If Aldridge picks Phoenix it's because he has more faith in them to build a championship contender. I think he met with us thinking we had a route already planned and I'm not sure that's how Mitch operates. There's no one jumping in here on blind faith. Now obviously that's a rare player who is willing to do that, but the Lakers had pretty much sold us on the fact that they were getting something of value in FA. So far it's nothing. Frustration is totally fair right now.
I'm not a big Jim fan but he is getting way too much blame for our moves/lack of moves. Mitch is still firmly at the helm of bb operations and Jim follows his lead. We are dealing with the after effects of a force majeure that was the last CBA which was designed to hurt us and us in particular. We lucked out in retaining our 1rst round pick this year and getting the 2nd pick so we are also seeing some of the benefits of being on the other end of the stick. Had Kobe and Nash not got injured we would likely have thrown some money and contracts at people that may not have been good long-term decisions just to keep us mildly competitive and also lost the Russell and Randle picks as a result of that subsequent competitiveness. As it stands now, yes we likely have another year of nothing good (other than developing young players and Kobe's farewell hurah) but we are clean in terms of nasty contracts or commitments. Next summer if our young'ins pan out we have an OBSCENE amount of building power at our disposal. Both for FAs and young, cheap talent. If Kobe isn't out of the picture then as I'm sure he would be he'd probably play wing for much cheaper (and more humble role). A guy like Durant can easily see the possibilities of a move here.
Definitely a strong, young core.. Maybe there is no quick route to relevance.. The Franchise took a major blow & we've got to build a foundation before we can even think about contending again... I'm totally fine with the young guns... Let's just get them a few vets to help them mature faster
So I'm not sure if it's optimism, but I'm now 100% sure that the Lakers have a trade in mind. I don't know who, but I can't imagine they'd be sitting around idly by while all the FAs were snatched up that meant anything. Mitch just HAS to have a trade under construction right now. I don't know who and I don't know why and I don't know if I'll be happy with the acquisition, but I am now convinced that is the game plan. How else do you justify sitting on your hands while all the players who can make a strong impact are snatched up? There absolutely MUST be a trade in the works. I can't believe how fall the Lakers have fallen in terms of perception. They made this fantastic, splashy move with Russell. They captured everyone's attention. We all figured the Lakers just MUST have a plan and MUST have a big name FA big man ready to go, but now we're looking at the best big available... Koufos. I LIKE Koufos, but he was my fall-back option in case we maxed out another position. Now we're talking about HIM being the big FA? I don't see it. I think Mitch has a trade in place. I hope he does. Hibbert has his flaws, but he's better than Koufos and frankly he's better than any FA out there we can get right now. I'd be utterly completely demoralized if we went in the season with just keeping Hill and not getting another addition. There just isn't a reason for that anymore. Not many teams can work right now as salary dump-zones. We work the best. My first thought is Hibbert because he's the only 2nd Tier big man available... But that still leaves depth needed at PG and SF that we don't have right now.
