His agent is THE problem...no doubt about it. But Dlo, Jules and Paula empowered dude, so imo they lames as well.
the psychological literature is littered with examples of people knowing their goals and acting in discordance with said goals. we get buffeted about by current concerns and current comfort/discomfort. george would not be unique in this sense at all. in fact, i'm sure most of us can point to examples of this in our own lives, probably recent ones. a simple one: i would like to get back in better shape, but i really wanted that second beer the other night. we do this on large scale stuff, perhaps as often. lol, that's on us, 100%. i've said since last summer that i thought the FO botched the george situation, and i'm more convinced now than ever. they were overconfident. i said the same when they traded nance for cap space. turns out we didn't make very good use of that space (as i warned might happen). the only point that i'll definitely grant against george is that the documentary was in poor taste. for that, he deserves some laker fan backlash, imo. he/his agent was pandering to the okc fanbase and the (generally laker-hating) press in making a spectacle of the process. also, he had to do something to raise his profile, as he's going to be off the nba star radar as westbrook's caddy in tumbleweedsville. anyway, i don't hate george. i think most of the hate stems from our own misguided expectations. good news is lebron came here. if that didn't happen, i'm not sure what kind of shape this place would be in right now.
I agree with the fact that he chose against his own best interest in the name of current life flow events, but that more than anything is what makes MIntz a bad agent. An agent isn't just there to get you the best deal you could get (which he didn't), they're there to make you happy and comfortable with your life. They did the dog and pony show with Mintz telling him all the different figures he could make in different spots. They went over the pros and cons of each situation. They made Dwayne Wade confused by suggesting OKC was a better opportunity to win than the Lakers. And yet here Paul George doesn't even take a phone call... It's one thing to pass on the opportunity he keeps saying he's dreamt about his entire life, but to blow off the opportunity altogether takes another level of either spite, stupidity, or self-destructiveness. And by the way, I believe at this point wholeheartedly that the Lakers DID tamper, they DID have a deal with Paul George and Mintz, and in the end Mintz and George (probably mostly George who took the OKC bait) bailed on them late in the season. I'd say they bailed somewhere at or near the trade deadline, but the Lakers cleared the space just in case anyway as a show of good faith (plus their offer was a great one). Then over the next few months it became clearer and clearer that George was serious about staying and the narrative changed completely, but I believe now that as long as Mintz is involved with Paul and as long as Magic/Rob are in charge of the FO, Paul George has no future with the Lakers. To make a public spectacle of our franchise is something I honestly don't think the new powers will sit with at all. I can't imagine Dr. Buss would have loved it either. Paul George would have had to come meet with him personally and apologize before talks even started at any point.
@abeer3 Lakers may have been overconfident, but where did it come from? Was it a gut punch or was it this whole "hellbent on LA" narrative that Mintz helped paint? We had a tampering charge that stuck...so dialogue was exchanged and as a result of that dialogue we acted (clearing 2max). It cost us Nance all while oh girl was ear to ear embracing our "recruitment" efforts. I can't fault the FO for that, since the narrative was never diffused and only encouraged, even leading to the ESPN docu-series. Also this b**** can't seem to get over us... She is giving Toronto a chance with Kawhi...she is making some of our fans look at our FO like we shoulda went and got him from Indy with either BI or Zo....and now she's trying to act like free agents don't want to play with LABron, when it's her own insecurities that she needs to address. Stop talking on us ho...
My problem is simply the fact that he used the Lakers to promote himself and his own brand. Along the way risking the Lakers maybe forfeiting their future to put themselves in a position to sign him. Thats my gripe.
I can’t really frame it as overconfidence. As others have said, they were being led to believe we were his dream team and he was coming. I’m not sure if there is a way we could have tampered harder. I was one of a handful who were fine with trading for George but i understood the Pacers were trying to fleece us.
Honestly, he just needs to stop. He made his choice. Roll with it. Still making these types of comments just annoys everyone and makes him look even worse.
Actually 0-4... And they were up 16 on Boston...up 9 in the 4th quarter... And Paula stood by as westbrick kept chucking away... They struggling cuz no Roberson tho... At least that's what Paula would have us believe.
They'll still win plenty of games and do fine... But the pettiness in me is happy right now. Good thing OKC gives them such a better chance to win games.
Question is...would you trade BI, Kuz or Lonzo, and a couple firsts? Because that's what it might've taken from us, even though OKC's package was much less. If we had known that us trading for him was a sign of respect, we might have tried to make things work. But between Indiana's spite for our "tampering" and Aaron Mintz trying to work out both of his clients for us, it just wasn't in the cards without us sacrificing too many assets. The fact that he didn't even give us a chance was even more telling from his agent's perspective. At the end of the day, we're still in a better situation with Lebron here. Look at the free agents we got with the money we had, people laugh, but despite our injuries and our team learning how to play with and without LBJ, we're still in the mix beating teams like Golden State and OKC. This year was always going to be a wash anyways because of how stacked Golden State was, I think that's a given with anyone, although I doesn't seem like it now. Whatever happens this year, is gravy for now. If we happen to land another star, anything can happen with Lebron, we all know that. But, next year we're going to be PRIMED to make a strong run with a year under our belt and another superstar.
