OFFICIAL AROUND THE NBA THREAD - July 2021

Who else is joining the Lakers?

 

How many ball-dominating FAs are out there north of 35?

 

if he's going to do that, why doesn't he forgo higher salary playing with his good friend Dame. The 6M tax-MLE is a decent chunk of change

yeah, that was rhetorical

 

Crazy how many coattail riders there is in the NBA. I’d assume it would be much more gratifying winning a championship the natural way rather than joining some kind of super team. You’ll still make plenty of money in the league either way.

Plus unless you’re elite no one cares about your legacy of winning a ring or not. It’s not like people look back at some middle tier players legacy and say look he got a ring! On that loaded ring chasing team….

 

Just read there’s a good chance Lonzo Ball signs with the Bulls

 

If this is the direction the Lakers want to go, I'm all for it.

Basically bucking the current trend in the NBA of going smaller and quicker and putting an emphasis on shooting and drive and pitch to go big and iso-oriented. It's actually getting away from what worked for them the last couple of years on the defensive end. It looks like they're trying to build a 2010 all-star team. It could work ... if everything goes right ... but I wouldn't bet my paycheck on it.

It'll be interesting to see how that works, how all these guys who are used to pounding the air out of the basketball to get their rhythm mesh, how they guard the perimeter and transition and stay healthy, how they operate with their best perimeter shooter being their 6-11 PF-C. It's almost like they painted themselves into a corner. I might have been inclined to fill out the roster with young, spot-up shooters who'll exert their energy flying around on defense, but LeBron doesn't trust those guys, so this was the only other option, to put together the Over The Hill Gang.

 

Sure…for the Lakers.

 

This is how you do it. Get as much money in the beginning then sign for less money just to win a ring.

 

The Lakers are tripling down on the Lebron/AD era

yeah, there's probably 3 chances that adding Westbrook will fail for every chance it succeeds. But it's definitely a case that this is the best shot the Lakers have before the window closes. And it's pretty obvious they will be able to fill out their roster with ring-chasers

if somehow the Lebron-AD-Westbrook troika can develop some decent synergy, they are going to be a really tough out

 

They also have bird rights on Schroder... so if they can work a sign and trade sending him out I think they'd could get a piece that's a lot better than a ring chaser and probably provide some floor spacing they so desperately need.

 

Trade CJ for Siakam and re-sign Powell. Anyone agree?

 

Everyone would be over the fucking moon with that outcome. We would be so much more balanced on offense. We would be really solid defensively. We would need a backup PG unless Ant has made leaps and bounds as a facilitator.

 

Doesn't that hard cap them, though?

 

No, because signing your own free agent that you have bird rights to doesn't hard cap you, the team facilitating the sign and trade doesn't get the hard cap, the team receiving the signed and traded player gets hard capped. If I'm reading the CBA correctly... which it's pretty explicit. The thing is that you don't get equal value in return for the player you're sending out in a sign and trade but it will be much better value than they will get with the taxpayer MLE and vet mins.

 

detroit is upto something. Trying very hard to clear capspace.



this after giving up assets to dump Plumlee's contract on draft day.

Keep an eye on them.

They don't make sense as a Powell team, but you never know. Maybe they just want to clear the way for their young guys. That might make Grant available?

 

I’d take Cory Joseph as a backup PG. great defender. Solid player

 

Joseph had only 2.4 million guaranteed out of a 12M contract. No way he was worth keeping at that number.

 

absolutely but I would think he'd get more than the minimum and we can't use our TP MLE on a position where we have other ball handlers/lead guards.

 

CoJo as the backup PG would be great. Him, Norm and Siakam would make us Raps 2.0.

 

and Ibaka lmao