Luke has been moon lighting with the Minute Men rotation, but with Sasha back from his ankle injury he's the odd man out. He's always been one of PJax's favorites, but he's been outplayed by Ariza and Radman during the preseason and will be scrapping for minutes. One concern I have is PJax forcing him into the rotation and playing him at PF with Odom at C. It's going to be crucial for Mihm to stay on the court and be effective for us. I hate when the Lakers try using an undersized roster because neither Odom or Luke post up well and it ruins the spacing for us on the offensive end. Plus Luke is always overmatched trying to defend an opposing small forward. Watching him trying to box out Paul Milsapp in the Jazz series or trying to out muscle Matt Harpring was painful. Luke is a decent insurance policy in the event one of our main rotation players gets injured, but at his price tag it's an expensive policy for us to hold onto. Lakers need to find a taker for him to clear cap space for re-signing Ariza & Farmar.
Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be much of a market for unathletic, out of shape, poor-shooting, tweener forwards with contracts lasting until 2013.
Well does that mean we force the issue and try to package him with Odom/etc.? I suppose we do need some salary cap relief but I'd be perfectly happy leaving things as they are.
There is no way Odom would play C. Thats just ridiculous. We have Mihm, Mbenga, and even Powell before Odom would even attempt to play C. With our 2nd unit SF I think it is just gonna be Phil's flavor of the month. While Vlad has played great there is no way you could assume he will play at this quality all year. I think Phil will justify giving Luke sparing minutes at the beginning of the year due to his recovery from his surgery. As for trading him...IMO (which I think is sound, lol) he just has too much time left on his contract to trade him this year. He has one of those contracts that is piggybacked onto a trade with a better player leaving. The only way I see him getting traded is if Mitch can somehow put him into a deal with Odom...all of that is unlikely....But we did get Pau for Kwame so miracles can happen.
I think it'll depend on the kind of production Odom gives us. If he puts together a SMOY-type season, then it would make sense to package him and Walton to a team interested in Odom's expiring contract (because we wouldn't be able to afford Odom in that case anyway). We would need to be getting a borderline stud in that case. If Odom ends up being a dud in his new role, I doubt any team would want to include Walton in a potential trade. I'd be content leaving things the way they are, too. I don't think we'd get much value for Luke and like Shape said, he's a good insurance policy.
There's several examples of bad contracts being traded. It would be contigent on what the Lakers are willing to include or take back in return for Luke. Luke hasn't been healthy so maybe he's under performing due to his injuries. He also struggled coping with his dad's foot problems the last couple of seasons and living in his dad's shadow. Look at a guy like Mike Dunleavy Jr. He had a career year last season for the Pacers after the Warriors and their fans wrote him off. He didn't fit in with the Warriors style, but he was a nice fit with Indiana. Maybe Luke would be a better fit on a younger team with low expectations.
If somehow we were able to trade Luke it would be for crap...Maybe a 2nd round pick by a team who is under the cap but I even doubt that. Trading him would make our team worse for this season but could help in the coming years for more cap space...but not much
Yeah, bad contracts do get traded (one Kwame Brown comes to mind), but Luke really doesn't have much going for him at this point. He really doesn't do anything well. Dunleavy at least had legit size, as did Kwame, and in Dunleavy's case, he had always shown more promise than Luke. There really just isn't much to Luke's game. He skates by on his reputation as a heady player (and I think even that is overstated) and makes the occasional nice pass. Guy can barely dunk at this point.
^Any talent (or lack of) had NOTHING to do with Kwame getting traded for Pau and had EVERYTHING to due with his large expiring contract.
Right, which just strengthens the notion that no team would want Luke's unexpiring contract. My point wasn't that Kwame was skilled, my point was that despite his trade-friendly contract, at least he was a big body that a team could conceivably employ. Luke doesn't have much going for him in that regard, AND he has a terrible, Isaih-like contract.
While I dont think his contract is tradeable by itself it is far from Horrible...Brian Cardinals contract...now THAT is horrible. Luke has talent and was hindered by injury all last year. 5 mil a year in the NBA isnt that big of a deal
I'm kinda pleased with Luke's performance in the preseason. Granted, it wasn't great, I'm optimistic. He looks slimmer than last season, so I'm guessing he didn't take the entire offseason off like Lamar. He looks quicker and more fluid out there on the court, which is definitely a positive. Also in the preseason, I've seen some of his fadeaway shots near the paint, which was his go to move a couple of seasons ago against the Suns in the postseason. I dunno if you guys remember it, but it was actually really effective. For whatever reason, he just stopped using it, even in his contract year. I'm glad to see it again. Defensively, he isn't great, but at least so far, I haven't seen anyone flat out kill him out there offensively. He's had a couple of nice passes and alleyoops so far, so that's a plus. My main issue with Luke is his shooting. He has never been a great shooter except his contract year. If I were him, I'd definitely take the time off and just shoot. Shoot shoot shoot, and shoot some more. His three pointers are frustrating to watch because he does the same thing over and over again, he seems to always put too much strength on his long range shots. Hopefully that'll be corrected, but who knows. All in all, he has looked pretty decent out there in preseason. As for his role, I don't think he'll see much time initially, but face it. As much as we all love Ariza, when was the last time he stayed relatively healthy for an entire season? Luke will probably see more playing time mid-way through the season, filling in for the injuries and such. I'm still holding out the belief that he will return to his contract year form, so yes, mock me if you shall, but remember, I was the one who said a couple of years ago that the Lakers would look into Sun Yue.
I totally remember that little 15 foot fade away Luke had down. That thing was deadly. The year they went to the "new" ball he was leading the league in 3 point shooting before they changed the ball back and he then got injured all within the same general time. I still have hope in Luke. He just needs to stay healthy. He was playing injured virtually all year last year. As for Ariza staying healthy, has he had injury problems before last year? I looked at his bio and he missed plenty of games in his first 3 years, but was it due to injury or were they coaches decisions because he was still too raw of a talent? I dont know.
Ariza has foot problems. He's very injury prone, which is why I like him, but I don't really put much faith into him to play out an entire season. I just hope he'll play the majority of the year and be ready for the postseason.
Ok....was he actually injured those years? Have you heard of any foot problems besides last year, if so when?
He's had foot problems all his life. And he's had injury problems in the past. I think that's one of the reasons why he went so low in the draft, because teams were concerned about his health. I read somewhere that the Magic traded him because they thought he was a "physical wreck" waiting to happen. Although I think that is way too drastic, I certainly wouldn't expect him to be healthy for the entire season. Hopefully we'll have some luck though. No more freak accidents. I want Ariza to play 70 games next year
Dude....tell me ONE instance...anything! Stop being vauge. Are you talking out of your ass? Its ok, I forgive you if you are
I found this from Hoopsworld in an interview when he was traded here So I guess in this he admits he foot is built differently but still no problems of any kind. People with a perfectly healthy foot can still hurt it like he did. .Ill keep searching Here is that quote you were saying from NY daily news: So have there been no actual injuries before he joined the Lakers, just concerns?
