Do not agree at all. If he performs and shows he is as Kobe, who knows preparation and grinding and putting the work in, says he is ..... whip smart .... and successfully gets us back to being a feared and hated jugglerknot this season, then he has earned his stripes. Screw all the rest of it which undoubtedly is to a great extent anti Lakers Media driven.
First time poster here... I've been guilty of believing the media for how Rob has been portrayed. But it really does seem he knew what he was doing from the get-go when it came to preparing and executing the trade for AD with the Pelicans. Whether we pick up a 3rd star or use the money to attain some 2-tier players, I'm of the belief that Rob has done a great job so far as our GM.
Welcome! The jury is still out, but it's already a step ahead from last year. It feels good to at least be in this conversation than last.
The press has been having a field day with us for a minute...not just for this AD thing. So I'm not even tripping over the press. There's faulty narratives all over the place when it comes to the "news" they're spewing. What we do know is that AD/Klutch made us have all the leverage. They shut out Boston and they created a short list of us and the Knicks for a reason. Bron was on our team already, while the Knicks really only had the 3rd pick. Combine that with no major leaked packages by other teams to the Pels while we put it out there that Zo, BI and the 4th were available while Kuz wasn't. An August trade based off those 3 assets alone pulls off an AD trade. Kuz, Hart, Moe, Bonga and JJ all stay to round out our roster. So the 2 additional future picks plus the pick swap was something I believed that would buy us that window to keep at least some of our assets. Instead we're forced to give up everybody except Kuz add possibly JJ or Bonga to grease this deal through now. That's my beef with Rob. We had the leverage via our Klutch konnection, yet seem to be forced to give up more than we really needed to. With the original leaked deal of Zo/BI/Hart/4th/2 future picks/1 pick swap, showed to me that the salary wasnt enough, so that original package was most likely meant for an August deal completion so that the signed 4th pick could be aggregated. But now we know, that doesn't appear to be the case. And I know what you're thinking...why the stink over Moe, Bonga and JJ? They're cheap assets that when aggregated with vet mins at next season's trade deadline could give us up to 11m in incoming salary. Technically that is a lower tier guy like P.Bev that signs this summer to 10m+ deal... and that type of deal could further fortify our title chances for next season's playoff stretch. At the very least, those dudes are cheap labor so that we don't have to exhaust further assets to replace them in this current construct of the AD deal. Also a deal done in August with Zo,Bi, Hart, signed 4th allows us to bring back 4.3m in additional salary (which could be used to give AD his entire trade kicker or be used to get up to 3 min. contracts). Rob could have finessed this trade and our adjoining cap space with the position of leverage he was in. But as of right now, that doesn't appear to be the case. That's my biggest issue with this. This cap game is real for me. Bumbling extra cap potential and assets when it isn't necessary to do so, doesn't sit well with me. But bringing in Kawhi, Ky or Butler will make me rest a little more easier. I'm happy with a Bron-AD pairing...but if the potential of domination via that 3rd max is still out there, you can't rest on your laurels just yet.
Agreed mostly. I think the Lakers have a good idea they can nab somebody so the sacrifices are worth it. If you have three of the top 6-7 players in the league, sell the whole damn farm. Who cares? That being said, in the end I don't care too much either way about the pieces we gave up to get here provided that Rob fills out the roster appropriately. We need shooters. We need a secondary ball handler. We need some good veteran minimum signings that can provide depth. I don't know who was to blame for the experimental roster of last year, but this is Rob's chance to rectify those mistakes (Beasley? Oof). In the end, we're a contender right now today and that doesn't happen unless we make some sacrifices. Could we have held on to some more stuff? Maybe, but we weren't really in a position to be stingy. Stingy is what f***ed over Boston. And at the end of the day, if we're sitting on Kawhi, Davis, LeBron I hope we all as fans can support the f*** out of Rob and Jeanie for turning this ship around. It was looking bleak and three max stars, two of whom would be just entering their primes, would be an otherworldly turnabout that the media wont give us proper credit for. Hopefully we as fans can.
Good points all around, Real. I'd like to point out tho that without last year's 1yr stopgap deals, no near max this summer which means no chance at Kawhi. The roster construction last summer doesn't really bother me in that there wasn't really anybody realistically worth throwing a long term deal at, at the expense of a Kawhi, Butler, Ky type this summer. When you cast your net on 1yr deals only, you won't catch many shooters and smashball defenders willing to take that type of bag. Btw, the mid tier free agency class is a whole lot more stronger this summer anyways.
Agreed completely there. It didn't bother me either, but it was clearly flawed. This summer we simply aren't going to go that route. Either we get a max guy by FA or trade OR we get some real 2nd tier guys to build around our Big Two. This year we cannot go for that 1-year deal tier player, we need real guys who we can build with.
NoMo Shelburne on espn radio in L.A. trying to smooth out her criticism of Rob. She’s a slick salesman, but I don’t like her.
She was fine tuning what she meant by saying “priority” in terms of the Lakers didn’t make the deal timing a priority. Separating her meaning from Woj’s use of the term “scrambling” as in Pelinka was scrambling to find ways to increase cap space that he should considered as part of the N.O. deal. But my view is the way she was running around telling anyone who would listen about the lack of priority, she was essentially saying the same thing as Woj with the same level of criticism. I would be afraid to give her inside access.
She was heavily insinuating he was incompetent and has been on the forefront of making him (and our FO in general) look bad. She is the one who said Rob had to "call back" on the timing of the trade which was 100% false. For her to pretend like she was doing anything other than calling Rob incompetent is a joke. She should just own up to the fact that the Lakers aren't talking to her and therefore she doesn't know what the f*** is going on in the offices. She and Woj found a negative assumption and then ran with it without any actual fact checking. I think she's been completely cut out and it's affecting the way she covers the team. I don't think it's a personal thing against her, but the Lakers have just shut all leaks. It's working against them as the media (vindictively in my opinion) are choosing the negative narratives in order to try to force the Lakers into providing more information.
I for one am still happy that Jeanie was not forced by Magic's s*** show leaving the way he did and then trashing all the workings of the front office .... into having a big press conference to answer an even bigger s*** show of questions coming from all sorts of reporters with all sorts of agendas. I love that they hunkered down and have been silent.
i tried to listen to Ramona during that interview but her tryin to weasel out of what she said was just pathetic...own it, Ramona i truly hope she gets frozen out
I listened for a bit today to Mason and Sedano yucking it up about “Pelinka’s incompetence”. Ramona was on with them and laughing along. The ironic thing is that all three were displaying their own incompetence.
I hope you're right. We may learn they were right in a few weeks if we're left with 24 million in cap space that's spent on dudes with no shooting ability.
I would have preferred to have some communication from the front office. It shows leadership in messaging and that there is some control with the direction of the organization. They could have kept it narrowly focused and express that Magic and the organization had different ideas for moving forward and left it at that.
