Timofey Mozgov Discussion: Shut Down For Season (66)

Nobody making 16mill gets benched and no pt if the coaches likes him...thats a ridiculous notion

 

That is horse bleep when you have the young talent in Zu they want to develop now and the playoffs are out of the picture. He's doing well and not in over his head, just like Ingram. You got nothing as far as the 12:01 viable alternative solution to which Luke would have listened. Why offense when we had problems too on defense? Gee no idea. Phil was never that way.

 

Luke isnt phil....luke hasnt dont jacksquat....hes as lost as the team. So youre ok with our 2nd highest paid player riding the pine and not playing at all? Theres nothing to develop with black, he is what he is at his age, the fact that hes starting and moz isnt playing at all should speak volume bout the regret luke/shaw have now with both deng and moz. Whats horse s*** is we have someone making 16mill doing nothing now

 

I forgot. You like absolutely nothing about this team. Luke sucks now too. Glass always empty guy.


"Theres nothing to develop with black, he is what he is at his age"

Oh yeah .... love it when someone just looks at a young player and ignores intelligence, drive, heart, work ethic and caps his career potential, especially a big man, at a young age.

 

You don't get letting Zu get experience and minutes when he's doing pretty well, especially for a 19 year old big man and playoffs aren't in the picture?

 

@Weezy Benching Moz now means more playing time for Zu and Black. Zu needs the minutes to develop, and Black's trade value could increase with a starting role. Moz has already shown that he's healthy, and the league already knows what he can do so benching him won't affect his trade value very much.

 

They're not making the playoffs and the kids need minutes. Minutes that Moz, Black, Randle, Nance all were splitting are now being given to Black and Zu. It's a good thing and they're doing well with it. They can all compete or Zu just start next year and Moz come off the bench. Cheap stud rookie Zu balances out the necessary spot on the roster to give Luke some reason to believe he could have a reasonably skilled starting Big man to come as close to Bogut as possible. We still have him. Great depth. And some are going to keep bringing up Moz sucks ad nauseum. We get it. No one is siting here painting him nearly as good as many paint him as being an absolutely useless player.

 

There was also some low cost scraps like Justin Hamilton, Cole Aldrich, Zaza Pachulia, Roy Hibbert, Nene, Dewayne Dedmon, Marreese Speights, Jared Sullinger, Kris Humphries, Luis Scola, Chris Andersen, Anderon Varejao, David Lee and Kevin Seraphin. Not the most appealing bunch obviously.

The way I saw it was the Lakers were linked, via rumors, to Whiteside and Noah. I said leading into free agency I didn't think the Lakers would get Whiteside and I certainly didn't want Noah.

The guy I often suggested in my hypothetical offseason plans was Ezeli. He ended up signing a 2 year 15.2 million dollar deal with Portland and is probably going to miss this whole season due to knee issues. While signing an imminently injured player may not sound ideal, it'd probably have been a better result because it'd be Black/Zubac from the get-go and the contract sitting on the bench is vastly cheaper.

Oh well. It is what it is.

 

Referencing my Free Agency wish list the centers I wanted were....

Whiteside @ max
Mahinmi / Biyombo / Noah @ ~ 2 years/25 million w/ team option 2nd year
Hill @ 2 years / 14 million TO
Varejao @ 1 year / 6 million
Bass @ 2 years / 12 million TO
Boban @ 3 years / 15 million TO
Black @ 3 years / 15 million TO

Whiteside, Mahinmi, Biyombo, Noah would have all been out and only Whiteside has lived up to the huge deals that were given out of the 4. I would have been perfectly fine with any of the remaining options at those prices. Since before free agency started, I was all in on the only guy living up to his deal and was only committing short term, lower money figures to the 3 guys that haven't really done anything. In no way was I prepared to give anyone (Sans Whiteside) 4 year deals and big money and was ok with fill ins.

That's what I would have done and I'm sticking with it and my Moz position.

Side note - I would have given/offered Deng the same 2 year / 24-25 million dollar deal, based on age, production and the fact that he's a role player, and ignoring the market.

We've tried waiting on STAR players and it's bitten us in the a**. We've let the cheaper, more affordable 2nd tier players walk on by and this is something I've been harping on since the CL days. The FO knew no big time names were coming so in a panic they just flung money out to whoever would bite. In doing so they overpaid in money and years on two 30 years olds that have taken away financial flexibility. That is not smart and that's a terrible reflection on the FO in terms of being current with the market compared to player production. They did not do their homework and it shows.

If Luke wanted Bogut he could of had Bogut in a dump, again panic at that 12:00 hour overtook reasoning. Moz plays nothing like Bogut. Bogut can pass, facilitate, screen, etc in a wide open offense, has Moz even passed once when he got the ball in the post? Moz cannot pass, he is a black hole on offense, that is the opposite of Bogut. Bogut blocks shots on defense, Moz jumps straight up and does nothing, again not the same. The similarities stop after the 7 foot. Moz in the Finals was such a fluke as was frickin' Delly. Luke was sold on a small sample size where Moz played well above his head and ignored the fact that Moz has been a roller coaster of mediocrity his entire career. He wanted an average role player who has some great games, some terrible games and the rest mehh and here we are 64 million dollars later.

 

Seriously. The rationalization of this guy is what's keeping this thread going. If everyone just agreed that he sucked donkey nuts from the beginning, now, and future, and stopped with the PERs and the 36's and all the moneyball BS, Mosgov would be in the perverbrial end of the bench like Luke has put him and we can go to more pressing issues like why DAR isn't averaging 40 points a game and why Randle isn't putting enough effort.

 

" Luke was sold on a small sample size where Moz played well above his head and ignored the fact that Moz has been a roller coaster of mediocrity his entire career. He wanted an average role player who has some great games, some terrible games and the rest mehh and here we are 64 million dollars later."

Exactly. But it was Luke's call from what he had seen up on the floor and personal in the biggest games in the world that year. Maybe it would be mean to beat Luke up for the call rather than FO. The FO did what it needed for all to be happy with (hopefully) .... to lock Luke up.

 

I rationalize it like this though: The Lakers knew they needed a starting C. The options out there that could fill that legitimately fill that role were limited. Moz did start more than half of his games prior to this season and 158 games the three seasons prior. So it's understandable they didn't settle on low-cost options that were considered back-up quality. We've beaten the drum that Shaw was familiar with Moz when he was the HC....and that Walton pushed for Moz because he saw him fitting his system.... and the articles about how the Lakers feared losing Moz because there was interest in him from other teams and thus felt the need to act swiftly are out there. If you really break it down, you can see the Lakers' line of thinking that led to this outcome.

In the end though, try as I might to rationalize it, it all comes down to one sticking point for me: I didn't want the guy.

The discussion over what to do with the C spot was quite extensive over at Scout. Started around April because obviously when your team isn't winning the offseason talk starts early. The most oft-mentioned name was Whiteside because, ya know, aim high. It's also why DeRozan was the most mentioned among the SF options. We had the list of FAs. We discussed many names. From the elite options in Whiteside/Horford to guys like Biyombo/Ezeli/Mahinmi and then even further down to Jason Smith/Speights/Seraphin. Not once did Mozgov come up. Not even exaggerating, he seriously never came up for discussion. We knew he was out there. No one cared. No one wanted him. His name did not come up until that fateful night/morning when the contract agreement broke out in the twittersphere. No one saw it coming. No one wanted it to come. Heck, I think had Mozgov signed the 2 year 15 million dollar deal that Ezeli got, there'd still be grumbling. The contract is obviously a huge part of the negative backlash but so was the player himself. How low has the great Laker franchise gone when THIS is your big first move of the offseason.