[::WORLD CHAMPION LAKERS OFF-SEASON THREAD: 2 Weeks Away From Pre-Season::]

[nimo007]

in other news


"The Chicago Bulls are unlikely to sign Tracy McGrady after all, according to ESPN.com"


T Mac > Shannon... Do it Mitch.

 

[mr kuter]

Supposedly TMac was hobbling around. Hes done.

 

[nimo007]

Yea T Mac is done I was just hoping to get a Laker tmac jersey. Guess itaint happening

 

[k2theablam]

Originally Posted by ACBboyz84

Luke Walton is still with the Lakers because of his dad nobody wants his overpriced contract.

He got the contract in the first place because of his dad.

 

[frenchblue23]

Originally Posted by Mikkol109

no 1 wants sashas contract.. hes only worth it for those last 2 free throws he made

And we should all be very grateful for that 

 

[xsalvioutlawx]

Alot of Luke haters in here...He is over paid, of course. But he is an excellent passer and played very well in the playoffs for us. Remember all those times Artest was trash out there? Phil put Luke in and he played very well, but instead of letting Luke play Phil would take him out and put on Artest in. Not that it matters, he's still over paid, but you guys act like he didn't do anything in the playoffs.

Hell even Sasha played well for us with the exception of game 7 vs the Suns.

I think our roster is good to go, whether or not we get Shannon Brown back.

His Pros are..

He can dunk...

His cons..

He can't finish a damn fast break unless he's wide open. If there's one damn guy he'll completely miss because he can only finish by dunking. Not to mention he can't dribble worth a damn.


His shot has improved though, and now that the idiot Farmar is gone the recipie for disaster AKA Brown/Farmar in at the same time wont happen.

Shannon Brown usualy plays well when that bum farmar isn't in at the same time with him.

 

[frenchblue23]

Does anyone follow "Lakernation" on twitter or facebook?

Dude who runs that thing is such a homer, it was too much for me. It almost made me sick.  

 

[westcoastsfinest]

did anyone cop the Lakers dvd?

 

[enrique23]

I'm gonna go get a copy of the dvd today
does anyone know if any players will be autographing dvds like Fish did last year?

 

[CP1708]

Originally Posted by westcoastsfinest

did anyone cop the Lakers dvd?

I will soon as I see it hit the shelves, but I doubt I'll order it online. 

The review on it wasn't all that great, but I don't care. 

I am however recording a bunch of the playoff playbacks this week that are on NBATV. 

  Not to mention the special that ESPN ran on them during the regular season, I'll get that as well. 

  

 

[kookcle]

 

[nimo007]

Is the Lakers DVD Bluray, or did we get screwed again?

 

[jiffyl00b]

^ They did us dirty again. No Bluray. I don't understand why we haven't gotten a Bluray yet, Boston got one back in 08, and so did the teams that won NCAA basketball past couple years. smh.

 

[dustblaaze]

double post: YUKU is CRAP. NT ADMINS...please switch to Vbulletin!!!

 

[dustblaaze]

I heard that Boston Blu Ray sales were so low the NBA decided to cut costs and just make DVDs. NBA don't understand that Laker Nation will buy a S**Tload of Blu Rays

 

[nimo007]

Dammit

Laker DVD is sold out at my Best Buy

 

[nimo007]

Dammit

Laker DVD is sold out at my Best Buy

 

[misterp0315]

 

[kb8sandiego]

I was so pissed off that we didn't get a bluray last season that I decided to just download a dvdrip.

Looks like I'll be doing the same for this championship dvd.

 

[leroythegreat38]

Can somebody tell me why the Lakers were chosen as losers in that ESPN Insider article?

 

[lamarownsem]

They were chosen as losers because they're no longer the clear favorites to win it all since Miami is now a co-favorite. Makes no sense how another team's improvement makes us losers, especially since we improved too.

 

[kookcle]

Originally Posted by LeroyTheGreat38

Can somebody tell me why the Lakers were chosen as losers in that ESPN Insider article?

what did it say?

 

[nimo007]

Does anyone have ESPN insider? John Hollinger is the biggest Laker hater (besides NobleKane

jk).


On his article he lists The Lakers next to the cave a thr biggest losers this off season. He said (I'm paraphrasing here) we didn't do enough to match Miami's championship team. He goes on to mock our off season pick ups.


This guy

 

[2g00d4u]

In the NBA offseason, for every winner there must also be a loser.

I wrote Monday about the six teams that improved themselves the most so far this summer, but now it's time to look at the seamy underside: the teams that find themselves in a tougher position. In several cases, this isn't necessarily of their own doing, but rather from circumstances that were either somewhat or entirely out of their control.

Nonetheless, they're worse off for it, starting with our biggest loser from the summer:


Cleveland Cavaliers

Does anyone else want to hug a Cleveland fan "Good Will Hunting" style and remind them that it's not their fault? LeBron James' impossibly painful exit was made worse by the Cavs' inability to give anyone their money. Houston matched a generous offer sheet to Kyle Lowry, Matt Barnes took half the money to play for the Lakers, and they can't even find a workable sign-and-trade for Shaquille O'Neal.

The only major change so far has been a swap of Delonte West for Ramon Sessions, which means the Cavs are basically the same team that won 61 games a year ago … albeit with one glaring omission. Cleveland still has a huge trade exception and may be able to get something done before opening day, but at best this looks like a borderline playoff team.



Los Angeles Lakers

What, you ask, did the Lakers do wrong? Nothing -- in fact, they shored up the point guard spot with Steve Blake and got a tough gamer for peanuts in Matt Barnes. And, of course, they coaxed Phil Jackson to stay on the bench for one more season.

All that would have made the Lakers overwhelming favorites to repeat as champions next season, except for a little thing that went down in Miami. With the Heat looking like a super team, the Lakers find themselves downgraded to co-favorites at best, through no fault of their own.

Had James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh aligned themselves in any other combination with any other team, that wouldn't be the case. Thus, L.A. lost ground this summer, even though, in narrower terms, it won with the additions of Barnes and Blake.


Los Angeles Clippers

Not a great summer for basketball teams in SoCal. While the Lakers' misfortunes were entirely external, in the case of the Clippers, the offseason has been a full-on disaster. L.A. created enough salary-cap room to sign a big-fish free agent to a maximum contract, and walked away with Ryan Gomes and Randy Foye.

Yeesh. While I appreciate the Clippers' efforts to reconstruct the 2008 Minnesota Timberwolves (they also re-signed Craig Smith; can Greg Buckner and Mark Madsen be far behind?), those two additions do little or nothing to improve their prospects for this season.

L.A. added to its woes with a puzzling coaching hire, selecting the barely adequate Vinny Del Negro over the vastly more qualified Dwane Casey. The Clips have some talent, and if Blake Griffin delivers, they might contend for a playoff spot anyway, but they missed out on a glorious opportunity to rise among the elite in the Western Conference.


Toronto Raptors

Losing Bosh was bad enough, but that wasn't the only thing in Toronto that left us scratching our heads. The whole Matt Barnes saga was jaw-dropping: It appears both Barnes' agent and the Raptors' front office leaked to the media that Barnes would sign a two-year, $9 million deal with the Raptors in a sign-and-trade -- in fact, every major outlet reported it.

Only one problem: The deal wasn't even remotely legal under the salary-cap rules, revealing a shocking ignorance of a very important piece of the business on the part of NBA professionals.

Look, this is pretty basic stuff. I've seen stories suggesting this was some inscrutable piece of salary-cap arcana, and it's just not true. For starters, a sign-and-trade deal has to be at least three years. Has to. That's not a difficult rule to understand. I'm pretty sure all of you got it immediately. That's why every single sign-and-trade deal that any of these guys has ever done has been for at least three years. You'd think they'd at least know from experience. But right there, much energy was spent negotiating a deal that couldn't happen.

Second, Orlando couldn't sign-and-trade Barnes under those terms. He had no Bird rights because he had played only one year on his current contract; the most he could be offered by the Magic this season was about $1.9 million. Again, this isn't some obscure footnote; it comes up every single year because so much of the league's rank and file are on one-year deals.

Finally, Orlando could have re-signed Barnes using its midlevel exception, except that (A) the Magic had already used it, and (B) you can't do a sign-and-trade using the midlevel exception. Toronto couldn't use its midlevel on Barnes either, since it had already been bestowed on Linas Kleiza.

In a nutshell, the deal had to be a sign-and-trade for at least three years, starting at no more than $1.9 million a year, or it couldn't happen. This was obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the salary-cap rules. That it wasn't to the two parties involved is disturbing.

When the Raptors weren't trying to use imaginary exceptions to sign players they couldn't get, they were giving Amir Johnson a five-year, $34 million deal that's among the summer's most questionable. They used their midlevel exception on Kleiza, adding another bad defender to the league's worst defensive team.

Toronto did salvage a Hedo Turkoglu-Leandro Barbosa trade that dumps last year's big mistake, albeit for another guy who can't guard anybody. Unfortunately, an offseason-saving steal of a deal with Charlotte fell through, and they're left with a star-less team that still is the worst defensive squad in basketball.



New Jersey Nets

The Nets had all that cap space, and the new Russian oligarch owner, and they were coming to Brooklyn to make a big splash. Everybody was talking about them. Two months later, they have Billy King as their GM, Travis Outlaw as their big free-agent score and a lot of questions about whether new coach Avery Johnson is really the one calling the shots.

Outgoing GM Rod Thorn called it quits and almost immediately hinted he wouldn't mind working someplace else, a sure sign that Mikhail Prokhorov's regime isn't engendering great morale. It's equally puzzling why Prokhorov didn't push for a change; instead, he allowed the architect of a 12-win team to execute the Nets' draft and free-agent strategy before heading out.

New Jersey did one thing right: All its free-agent dollars went on players age 25 or younger, an admirable piece of restraint from a franchise that realistically is a couple of years away from doing anything noteworthy. In one case in particular (sharpshooter Anthony Morrow), the Nets got unbelievable value. Unfortunately, the deals for Outlaw ($35 million for five years) and Johan Petro (three years, $10 million) are ridiculous.

As a result, there will be no quick fix in New Jersey. The Nets have a decent foundation with Devin Harris, Brook Lopez and rookie Derrick Favors, and they'll at least double their win total, but Prokhorov's arrival as a power player appears to have been wildly overstated.




Minnesota Timberwolves

KAAHHHHNNNN!!! OK, had to get that one out. No, nobody is quite sure what the strategy is under Timberwolves general manager David Kahn.

I'd say they're rebuilding, but their big free-agent pickup was a 30-year-old point guard, and they traded their first-round pick for Martell Webster.

I'd say they're focusing on value contracts, but they just gave Darko Milicic a four-year, $20 million deal.

I'd say they're trying to corner the market on point guards, but the league has about 70 of them and the Wolves can hoard only 15 at any one time.

I'd say they're acquiring players who can thrive in coach Kurt Rambis' triangle system, except they're not -- they keep acquiring small pick-and-roll point guards with iffy outside shots.

I'd say they're building around character and discipline, but they traded for Michael Beasley and Milicic.

I'd say they're focused on opportunistic trades, except that they unloaded their best player for 50 cents on the dollar and repeated the exercise with Ramon Sessions.

The only thing I can confidently say is that they'll be terrible again this year, and probably for several years afterward. The Wolves have a rising star in Kevin Love and a couple of other interesting pieces (keep an eye on Euro import Nikola Pekovic), but it's not clear whether they're coming or going right now. I'm not sure they know, either.

 

[i nasmatic i]

@PDcavsinsider Sources said Lakers are trying to trade Sasha Vujacic wfirst round pick to get his salary off books.

@PDcavsinsider Brown wants to play for the Lakers and the Lakers want him back. He'll likely eventually sign there, this is all about haggling over $.