**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins

Brosizzlew30.23 said:
KAT and AD on the same team with Bron is what Dr. Buss told me in my dream
Click to expand...
Speaking of Dr Buss

Y’all watch the latest Winning Time?

The Kobe scene.

Holy smokes did that make me sad and what an clever way to show him in it.
 
FPg1VfZVcAc8fNE
 


Lakers face long road back

The Lakers’ season is over. Now what?

It’s been obvious for some time to all the passengers onboard that the train is headed this way, but Sunday’s results seemed to remove any lingering doubt about the final destination of the Lakers’ woebegone season. With LeBron James sitting out while nursing a sprained ankle and a one-legged Anthony Davis trying and failing to counteract the league’s reigning MVP, the Lakers were outmatched against the Denver Nuggets. They didn’t play notably badly; in fact, Russell Westbrook might have had his best game of the season. They just weren’t good enough.

The loss, combined with San Antonio’s win later that night over the Portland Tankers, dropped the Lakers two games behind the Spurs in the standings for the final Play-In spot with four contests to play. The Lakers also lose the tiebreaker to San Antonio and thus must make up three games on San Antonio in the next week. The Spurs’ magic number is two; the Lakers could be eliminated as early as Tuesday.

It’s not technically over, then, but … it’s over.

As if to underline how far they’ve fallen, the Lakers were outclassed by the same Denver team that they easily beat in the conference finals two years ago … even though the Nuggets have two max contract players who are out for the season.

Put simply, the 2021-22 Lakers were a paper tiger, a hollowed-out facsimile of the team that dominated the 2020 Bubble. I think it’s easy for people to look at the bold-type names and blame the injuries and the Westbrook trade. LeBron has missed 22 games and Davis has missed 39, and certainly, that hasn’t helped, but the Lakers were not the only team to have an injury this year. (I mean, look at Denver.) The problems went much, much deeper.

The knee-jerk “blame the injuries” analysis glosses over how fraudulent the Lakers’ full-strength roster was as any kind of contender to do anything of consequence. Yes, James and Davis only played 22 games together … but the Lakers went 11-11 in those games and were outscored this year with the two on the court together. In their biggest game of the season, with everyone playing, they lost at home to the 34-43 New Orleans Pelicans.

Wait, it gets better. The Lakers have been outscored this year with James on the court … and with Davis on the court … and with Russell Westbrook on the court. They have been outscored with James and Davis playing together, and when James plays without Davis, and when Davis plays without James. They’ve been outscored with James and Davis playing with Westbrook, and with James and Davis playing without Westbrook. Tell me the scenario, and the Lakers were beaten in it.

I bring all this up because the solutions are not simple for the Lakers’ current malaise, and it’s not nearly as easy as “run it back and hope LeBron and Davis are healthy.” James showed once again that he is a superhuman freak, putting together an All-NBA caliber season at the age of 37, but even he has his limits; he’s played 45 and 56 games the past two seasons. Given the mounting toll of over 63,000 NBA minutes (including playoffs) on his lower extremities, it doesn’t seem realistic in any season going forward to expect more than 65 games from him, especially if said season includes any kind of aspirations of postseason success.

Davis, meanwhile, is a more vexing case. At 29 he should theoretically be in his prime, but he’s played only 73 games over the past two seasons. OK, that’s bad enough, but the side issue that doesn’t get enough conversation is that his level of play has also dropped. Davis posted a PER of 27.4 in 2019-20, one that shot to 29.6 in his dominant playoff run. The past two seasons he’s been at 22.1 and 24.1, respectively – still really good, but not the MVP-candidate level of that season or his final one in New Orleans (30.3).

Of particular note is what’s happened to his shot. Davis was a good enough shooter as a Pelican, and in his first Laker season, to be a plausible stretch 4 and a pick-and-pop threat as a 5. In 2019-20 he shot 33.0 percent from 3 and 84.6 percent from the line.

This year he’s at 19.1 percent from 3 and 70.6 percent from the line. His midrange percentages have theoretically held up, but only because he’s replaced a lot of pick-and-pop 3-point attempts with pick-and-pop 2s because his 3s have become so unreliable; he’s taking half as many 3s as two years ago. In other words, he’s padding his midrange stats with relatively low-hanging fruit at a cost of the shot that actually made him a threat.

And some of the misses … I mean, it’s a little unfair of me to pull a clip from a game where he probably shouldn’t have been playing, but this kind of thing isn’t exactly a rare sight this year:


Of course, we haven’t even discussed the elephant in the room. Even if James and Davis magically revert to their 2019-20 selves, the Lakers are facing a pretty daunting 1-2 dilemma heading into next season:
  1. The roster at spots 3 through 15 is the worst in the league
  2. They have few mechanisms available to improve it
Let’s linger on point No. 1 for a minute. L.A.’s spin through free agency in 2021 yielded a bounty that included Alex Caruso, Kendrick Nunn, Trevor Ariza, Kent Bazemore, Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, Wayne Ellington, DeAndre Jordan and Rajon Rondo. Only Anthony and Monk paid off to any extent, and even then it was more “relative to the other options here” than some kind of rousing success.

Amazingly, every single Laker not named James or Davis had a negative BPM this past season. The Lakers gave over 3,500 minutes to players with single-digit PERs, including 1,388 to Avery Bradley (7.9); throughout the second half of the season leaned heavily on other teams’ discards (Stanley Johnson, D.J. Augustin, Wenyen Gabriel, Bradley) because their own offseason went so badly. Undrafted Austin Reaves felt like a revelation by comparison, but he finished with a 10.4 PER, -2.6 BPM and a 30.7 percent mark from 3.

As a result, the Lakers enter the offseason with two All-Stars … and no other starting-caliber players. Westbrook is the only other player who would crack the top eight on a good team.

So if that’s the case … how do they get better? Pull up some pictures of puppies in your other browser tab, because this is where things get depressing.

Free agency? Ha. The Lakers already are way over the cap, and stand at next year’s projected luxury tax line even with just seven players under contract. They will have the taxpayer midlevel exception available, and minimum exceptions after that.

Realistically, the Lakers can get a halfway decent third guard who falls through the free agency cracks with their taxpayer MLE, much like they did a year ago with Nunn. And then they’re taking fliers on minimum contract guys, hopefully, this time with an average age below 90. Overall, free agency will be a roster Band-Aid at best.

The draft? Ha. Bartered those picks years ago to get Davis. The Lakers’ first-round pick is likely headed to the Pelicans, after Memphis acquired the pick last June with top-10 protection because it seemed unfathomable that the Lakers could finish with one of the league’s 10 worst records. Over the last few weeks, that latter detail became more interesting than the Lakers’ actual basketball team. (L.A’s record is the eighth-worst right now; Memphis will be praying for three teams to hurl the Lakers at the lottery). Oh, their second-round pick is gone, too, although L.A. could buy its way into a pick in the 40s. The Lakers will have a first-round pick in 2023 but can’t trade it; the first one they can put in a deal is not until 2027. Speaking of which …

Trades? Ha. With what? How do you do a trade if you have nobody under contract, no cap space and no draft picks? The only trade “assets” in the Lakers’ quiver are Talen Horton-Tucker, signed to a bloated $10 million-a-year deal with a 2023 player option (in a related story, he is a Klutch client), and the non-guaranteed minimum deal of Reaves.

Sign-and-trades? Ha. Not gonna happen. With the Lakers being at the tax line already, a sign-and-trade for another player will be virtually impossible since it would take the Lakers over the apron.

So how do they get out of this jam?

The prime issue, of course, is Westbrook and his radioactive $47 million cap number for 2022-23, the decaying plutonium left over from a disastrous offseason trade that sent out Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Montrezl Harrell and their 2022 first-round pick. There is exactly one player in the entire NBA that Westbrook can be traded for, realistically, and that is John Wall. We’ve already seen this movie once, but I’m not sure how much a rerun will help change things for L.A. Wall makes an identical $47 million next year after taking a DNP-NotFeelingIt with the Rockets this season and presents many of the same fit issues on the court.

The Lakers do have some pathways to potentially improve the roster next year, but they all involve another churn on the asset treadmill by turning lightly protected future firsts in 2027 and 2029 into a third-best player. For instance, they could trade Horton-Tucker, Kendrick Nunn and at least one first to get enough matching salary to acquire, say, Jerami Grant, or any guard with an active pulse.

More provocatively, they could trade Westbrook if they could convince the Thunder to take him back. Obviously, Oklahoma City’s Sam Presti would only do this if doing so could get his mitts on unprotected Laker firsts in 2027 and 2029, but it’s an option.

Unusually, this trade would have to happen before July 1, since the Thunder’s $31 million in cap room will vanish once Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s max extension kicks in. A deal of Westbrook and the two firsts above for Derrick Favors, Ty Jerome and Kenrich Williams would give the Lakers enough wiggle room to use their full midlevel and biannual exceptions to rebuild the supporting cast, as well as potentially taking on more money in trades involving Nunn and Horton-Tucker. A massive $34 million trade exception from this deal would also be huge; the Lakers could take in some unwanted veteran salaries here to build out the back end of the rotation.

However, look at those draft picks again, and the fact Westbrook only has one year left on his deal. It’s a pretty massive future cost to allow some sunlight in for the 2022-23 season.

More realistic, perhaps, is using the stretch provision to cut Westbrook’s $47 million into bite-sized chunks of $15.7 million each of the next three years. That gets L.A. out of the tax, but cuts into a potential cap room bonanza in 2023. This is one of the few markets where max cap room speaks loudly, obviously, and one would question the long-term benefit of this move when the short-term gain is getting under the tax.

All of which takes us back to perhaps the best alternative of all, even if it’s the least palatable in the short term: Do they need to take their medicine? Try to do better on minimum contracts and cap exceptions, run it back next year, and position themselves for the 2023 free-agent market? It’s depressing to think a team with James and Davis has to go into “keep our powder dry” mode and punt on high aspirations for next season, but that’s the corner into which the Lakers have painted themselves.

There’s also the idea that something better may lie around the corner if the Lakers can exhibit some patience. Westbrook’s expiring deal, for instance, could pair with those two future firsts to bring in the next disgruntled superstar (coughLillardcough) at the 2023 trade deadline; that’s one of the few imaginable scenarios where next season’s team ends up legitimately threatening.

Regardless of which option the Lakers choose, it’s going to be a massive challenge for their beleaguered front office to cobble together even a halfway decent supporting cast around their two tentpole stars. They failed miserably in that challenge in the summer of 2021, and don’t appear positioned to fare much better this time around. Thus, the worst part of the Lakers’ 2021-22 season is not the current misery, it’s the lack of any reason for optimism that 2022-23 will be much different.
 
pmatic said:


Lakers face long road back

The Lakers’ season is over. Now what?

It’s been obvious for some time to all the passengers onboard that the train is headed this way, but Sunday’s results seemed to remove any lingering doubt about the final destination of the Lakers’ woebegone season. With LeBron James sitting out while nursing a sprained ankle and a one-legged Anthony Davis trying and failing to counteract the league’s reigning MVP, the Lakers were outmatched against the Denver Nuggets. They didn’t play notably badly; in fact, Russell Westbrook might have had his best game of the season. They just weren’t good enough.

The loss, combined with San Antonio’s win later that night over the Portland Tankers, dropped the Lakers two games behind the Spurs in the standings for the final Play-In spot with four contests to play. The Lakers also lose the tiebreaker to San Antonio and thus must make up three games on San Antonio in the next week. The Spurs’ magic number is two; the Lakers could be eliminated as early as Tuesday.

It’s not technically over, then, but … it’s over.

As if to underline how far they’ve fallen, the Lakers were outclassed by the same Denver team that they easily beat in the conference finals two years ago … even though the Nuggets have two max contract players who are out for the season.

Put simply, the 2021-22 Lakers were a paper tiger, a hollowed-out facsimile of the team that dominated the 2020 Bubble. I think it’s easy for people to look at the bold-type names and blame the injuries and the Westbrook trade. LeBron has missed 22 games and Davis has missed 39, and certainly, that hasn’t helped, but the Lakers were not the only team to have an injury this year. (I mean, look at Denver.) The problems went much, much deeper.

The knee-jerk “blame the injuries” analysis glosses over how fraudulent the Lakers’ full-strength roster was as any kind of contender to do anything of consequence. Yes, James and Davis only played 22 games together … but the Lakers went 11-11 in those games and were outscored this year with the two on the court together. In their biggest game of the season, with everyone playing, they lost at home to the 34-43 New Orleans Pelicans.

Wait, it gets better. The Lakers have been outscored this year with James on the court … and with Davis on the court … and with Russell Westbrook on the court. They have been outscored with James and Davis playing together, and when James plays without Davis, and when Davis plays without James. They’ve been outscored with James and Davis playing with Westbrook, and with James and Davis playing without Westbrook. Tell me the scenario, and the Lakers were beaten in it.

I bring all this up because the solutions are not simple for the Lakers’ current malaise, and it’s not nearly as easy as “run it back and hope LeBron and Davis are healthy.” James showed once again that he is a superhuman freak, putting together an All-NBA caliber season at the age of 37, but even he has his limits; he’s played 45 and 56 games the past two seasons. Given the mounting toll of over 63,000 NBA minutes (including playoffs) on his lower extremities, it doesn’t seem realistic in any season going forward to expect more than 65 games from him, especially if said season includes any kind of aspirations of postseason success.

Davis, meanwhile, is a more vexing case. At 29 he should theoretically be in his prime, but he’s played only 73 games over the past two seasons. OK, that’s bad enough, but the side issue that doesn’t get enough conversation is that his level of play has also dropped. Davis posted a PER of 27.4 in 2019-20, one that shot to 29.6 in his dominant playoff run. The past two seasons he’s been at 22.1 and 24.1, respectively – still really good, but not the MVP-candidate level of that season or his final one in New Orleans (30.3).

Of particular note is what’s happened to his shot. Davis was a good enough shooter as a Pelican, and in his first Laker season, to be a plausible stretch 4 and a pick-and-pop threat as a 5. In 2019-20 he shot 33.0 percent from 3 and 84.6 percent from the line.

This year he’s at 19.1 percent from 3 and 70.6 percent from the line. His midrange percentages have theoretically held up, but only because he’s replaced a lot of pick-and-pop 3-point attempts with pick-and-pop 2s because his 3s have become so unreliable; he’s taking half as many 3s as two years ago. In other words, he’s padding his midrange stats with relatively low-hanging fruit at a cost of the shot that actually made him a threat.

And some of the misses … I mean, it’s a little unfair of me to pull a clip from a game where he probably shouldn’t have been playing, but this kind of thing isn’t exactly a rare sight this year:


Of course, we haven’t even discussed the elephant in the room. Even if James and Davis magically revert to their 2019-20 selves, the Lakers are facing a pretty daunting 1-2 dilemma heading into next season:
  1. The roster at spots 3 through 15 is the worst in the league
  2. They have few mechanisms available to improve it
Let’s linger on point No. 1 for a minute. L.A.’s spin through free agency in 2021 yielded a bounty that included Alex Caruso, Kendrick Nunn, Trevor Ariza, Kent Bazemore, Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, Wayne Ellington, DeAndre Jordan and Rajon Rondo. Only Anthony and Monk paid off to any extent, and even then it was more “relative to the other options here” than some kind of rousing success.

Amazingly, every single Laker not named James or Davis had a negative BPM this past season. The Lakers gave over 3,500 minutes to players with single-digit PERs, including 1,388 to Avery Bradley (7.9); throughout the second half of the season leaned heavily on other teams’ discards (Stanley Johnson, D.J. Augustin, Wenyen Gabriel, Bradley) because their own offseason went so badly. Undrafted Austin Reaves felt like a revelation by comparison, but he finished with a 10.4 PER, -2.6 BPM and a 30.7 percent mark from 3.

As a result, the Lakers enter the offseason with two All-Stars … and no other starting-caliber players. Westbrook is the only other player who would crack the top eight on a good team.

So if that’s the case … how do they get better? Pull up some pictures of puppies in your other browser tab, because this is where things get depressing.

Free agency? Ha. The Lakers already are way over the cap, and stand at next year’s projected luxury tax line even with just seven players under contract. They will have the taxpayer midlevel exception available, and minimum exceptions after that.

Realistically, the Lakers can get a halfway decent third guard who falls through the free agency cracks with their taxpayer MLE, much like they did a year ago with Nunn. And then they’re taking fliers on minimum contract guys, hopefully, this time with an average age below 90. Overall, free agency will be a roster Band-Aid at best.

The draft? Ha. Bartered those picks years ago to get Davis. The Lakers’ first-round pick is likely headed to the Pelicans, after Memphis acquired the pick last June with top-10 protection because it seemed unfathomable that the Lakers could finish with one of the league’s 10 worst records. Over the last few weeks, that latter detail became more interesting than the Lakers’ actual basketball team. (L.A’s record is the eighth-worst right now; Memphis will be praying for three teams to hurl the Lakers at the lottery). Oh, their second-round pick is gone, too, although L.A. could buy its way into a pick in the 40s. The Lakers will have a first-round pick in 2023 but can’t trade it; the first one they can put in a deal is not until 2027. Speaking of which …

Trades? Ha. With what? How do you do a trade if you have nobody under contract, no cap space and no draft picks? The only trade “assets” in the Lakers’ quiver are Talen Horton-Tucker, signed to a bloated $10 million-a-year deal with a 2023 player option (in a related story, he is a Klutch client), and the non-guaranteed minimum deal of Reaves.

Sign-and-trades? Ha. Not gonna happen. With the Lakers being at the tax line already, a sign-and-trade for another player will be virtually impossible since it would take the Lakers over the apron.

So how do they get out of this jam?

The prime issue, of course, is Westbrook and his radioactive $47 million cap number for 2022-23, the decaying plutonium left over from a disastrous offseason trade that sent out Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Montrezl Harrell and their 2022 first-round pick. There is exactly one player in the entire NBA that Westbrook can be traded for, realistically, and that is John Wall. We’ve already seen this movie once, but I’m not sure how much a rerun will help change things for L.A. Wall makes an identical $47 million next year after taking a DNP-NotFeelingIt with the Rockets this season and presents many of the same fit issues on the court.

The Lakers do have some pathways to potentially improve the roster next year, but they all involve another churn on the asset treadmill by turning lightly protected future firsts in 2027 and 2029 into a third-best player. For instance, they could trade Horton-Tucker, Kendrick Nunn and at least one first to get enough matching salary to acquire, say, Jerami Grant, or any guard with an active pulse.

More provocatively, they could trade Westbrook if they could convince the Thunder to take him back. Obviously, Oklahoma City’s Sam Presti would only do this if doing so could get his mitts on unprotected Laker firsts in 2027 and 2029, but it’s an option.

Unusually, this trade would have to happen before July 1, since the Thunder’s $31 million in cap room will vanish once Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s max extension kicks in. A deal of Westbrook and the two firsts above for Derrick Favors, Ty Jerome and Kenrich Williams would give the Lakers enough wiggle room to use their full midlevel and biannual exceptions to rebuild the supporting cast, as well as potentially taking on more money in trades involving Nunn and Horton-Tucker. A massive $34 million trade exception from this deal would also be huge; the Lakers could take in some unwanted veteran salaries here to build out the back end of the rotation.

However, look at those draft picks again, and the fact Westbrook only has one year left on his deal. It’s a pretty massive future cost to allow some sunlight in for the 2022-23 season.

More realistic, perhaps, is using the stretch provision to cut Westbrook’s $47 million into bite-sized chunks of $15.7 million each of the next three years. That gets L.A. out of the tax, but cuts into a potential cap room bonanza in 2023. This is one of the few markets where max cap room speaks loudly, obviously, and one would question the long-term benefit of this move when the short-term gain is getting under the tax.

All of which takes us back to perhaps the best alternative of all, even if it’s the least palatable in the short term: Do they need to take their medicine? Try to do better on minimum contracts and cap exceptions, run it back next year, and position themselves for the 2023 free-agent market? It’s depressing to think a team with James and Davis has to go into “keep our powder dry” mode and punt on high aspirations for next season, but that’s the corner into which the Lakers have painted themselves.

There’s also the idea that something better may lie around the corner if the Lakers can exhibit some patience. Westbrook’s expiring deal, for instance, could pair with those two future firsts to bring in the next disgruntled superstar (coughLillardcough) at the 2023 trade deadline; that’s one of the few imaginable scenarios where next season’s team ends up legitimately threatening.

Regardless of which option the Lakers choose, it’s going to be a massive challenge for their beleaguered front office to cobble together even a halfway decent supporting cast around their two tentpole stars. They failed miserably in that challenge in the summer of 2021, and don’t appear positioned to fare much better this time around. Thus, the worst part of the Lakers’ 2021-22 season is not the current misery, it’s the lack of any reason for optimism that 2022-23 will be much different.
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I vote for running it back then. No way am I trading both first rounders with Westbrook for a non-superstar or group of average players with longer bad contracts. Wouldn’t stretch either bc all it does is gives you the 10 mill exception to use but ****s with cap in 2023 summer

Prob get better deal at trade deadline. 47 mill expiring ain’t no joke.
 
Last edited:
Obviously teams will initially ask for the 2027 and 2029 picks, but I think it's far fetched they'll get them because Westbrook only has one year left. If it was multiple years, sure, but that's not the case.
 
pmatic said:
Obviously teams will initially ask for the 2027 and 2029 picks, but I think it's far fetched they'll get them because Westbrook only has one year left. If it was multiple years, sure, but that's not the case.
Click to expand...
True

I keep looking at the clippers getting norm and Robert Cov for the expiring corpse of Bledsoe and a few other goofballs
 
Run it back! All I ask is that you please keep that same energy when Russ average a trip-dub in the Finals and him, AD & Bron are so dominant that they all get the first co-co-Finals MVP in history.

-foe
 
Delusionallakerfan said:
True

I keep looking at the clippers getting norm and Robert Cov for the expiring corpse of Bledsoe and a few other goofballs
Click to expand...
I did have a OKC trade in mind:

LA: KCP, Kenrich Williams, Mike Muscala, 2022 second round pick (?)
OKC: Porzingis, 2027 Lakers pick
Washington: Westbrook

Washington would have to think Porzingis is a ticking time bomb and Beal wants Westbrook back/is okay with KCP leaving
OKC would have to still like Porzingis (they liked him in the 2014-15 drafts)

From there, you have a giant trade exception, full MLE, bi-annual exception, THT, Nunn to build out the rest of the roster.
 
  • 100
Reactions: DLF
Quin Snyder or Doc if they're let go maybe




Mike Brown
Steve Clifford


My God :lol:
 
pmatic said:
la.PNG


This org is just so scared to venture outside the Laker circle it's pathetic. :lol:
Click to expand...

It's mind-boggling how poorly run this franchise is. We don't even need good ownership, all we need is barely competent ownership and management and we will be a consistent title contender. Heck, we were able to win a championship despite having a bad gm, bad owner and average coach. Imagine what we would do if we had Utah jazz level management.

Like many poorly run businesses, the Lakers continue to look to the past for answers instead of innovating and looking ahead. Everyone we hire has to be in the Lakers family or have some type of connection to a former player.
 
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