LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

this conversation is going on in multiple threads, but my take is: you're a max superstar or you're not. if i'm paying you 40% of the salary cap, i expect i can play you 40 minutes when i need a win. if i can't do the latter, why am i doing the former?

and again: HE'S THE ONE WHO WANTED WESTBROOK. so if you want to get the pitchforks for the front office, i've got more bad news for you.

they did a great job digging out from lebron and AD's amateur managing, then lebron's health failed. how this is painted as a failure of management is beyond me, tbh.

 

you can blame both

i blame lebron for wanting westbrick but he also didn't need to be run into the ground when he's been injury prone the last few seasons

 

Year 3 in the row of the" injuries ending any ambition you had for the season" with both Lebron and AD .

There will be a year 4 and maybe a fifth one .. as Lakers won't trade any of them to attract the next superstar ( the " we treat our stars very well no matter what happens" pitch )

 

i agree that lebron and AD will keep getting hurt, but as we've discussed quite a bit--you probably take 60 games of each of them more than 82 games of most guys you'd get in trade.

lebron and AD both have just next year and then player options on their contracts. i think we've got the pieces to start next year in the right position to give them one last crack at contending. after next year, my guess is lebron is gone, and AD might be, too. but it will be on their terms, not ours.

and again, many of our competitors have similar issues. the clips rely on leonard and george, who both miss a ton of time. phx now relies on cp3 and durant, who both miss a lot of time. gs relies on thompson and curry, etc.

honestly, the only contenders whose stars aren't injury risks at this point are denver, milwaukee, and boston. pretty much everyone else is kind of always holding their breath, imo.

 

Stars usually have to be saved from themselves. In the past, Lebron saved himself and took off all the time he wanted for injuries and didn't play through anything including cramps.

But with the record at stake, and dings to his legacy of multiple years with superstar teammates not even making the playoffs, he played heavy minutes in his 20th season at the age of 38, and his coach didn't overrule because he didn't have a roster that fit his skill set for coaching. Lebron was his safety blanket, and he rode him.

Now we pay the price for LeGM's poor decisions, hiring a rookie head coach, and a front office that WAS unwilling to overrule the superstars and build an adequate roster.

It could end in disaster, or LeGM could just end up rested for the playoffs and be a terror. But either way, no parties are blameless in this.

 

Anyways ,the load management strategy used by the franchises around the league isn't working .

Maybe there are too many precautions taken and players bodies are not ready/tested enough when they have to play

Strange to have more and more data to prevent the risks of getting
injured , organizations forcing players to sit ... to have more and more injuries at the end

 

Bucks have the best record in the league with Kris missing 40 games and Giannis 12 ... Health is their only question mark imo

 

i feel like teams don't employ it as strategically as the spurs used to. but maybe i'm wrong about that.

and i do agree that it's not just sitting games, it's reducing minutes. i repeatedly harped that i'd rather lebron sitting than settling for the multi dribble pull up three as a means to conserve energy.

i meant giannis, and i just don't see him as an injury risk at this point. i mean, obviously, everyone's an injury risk. but you don't count on him missing even the 12 games he's missed.

i guess middleton is at this point, given his age and the fact that he had to have a pretty major surgery.

 

I think this team if the trade happened at the begining of the season would have been capable of someone similar.

Not saying the trade was available but the roster just makes a lot more sense now.

 

Giannis is getting there though, his knee is becoming a problem.

 

Guys sit out all these games and don't practice much, and when they do practice, it's a lot of minimal contact. Throw them out there in a real game, and they start failing like rain. Load management is part of the problem. A lot of these guys aren't even hooping much during the off-season. Trying to avoid injuries.
I blame Kawhi

 

I think this seems pretty realistic.

 

Very valid point.

 

That's good news

 

if AD plays the rest of the year as basically expected, he'll be near 60 games. lebron may end up close, too, assuming he only misses three more weeks.

it's not ideal. though i think you pretty much have to expect any player to miss about 10 games a year these days (yes, there are exceptions, but...they're exceptions).

so you're losing an extra 10 games now for a huge talent gap.

age doesn't matter to me in these things. salary does. we pay lebron even more than we pay AD, so i expect more out of him. when AD becomes our highest paid player, i will expect more out of him.

anyway, this is about whether their latest missed games should tip the needle to trading them both. i say no.

 

Here's the full update

 

if this is AD, he's "charmin", right?

btw, i agree. despite the recent rhetoric, this isn't the end of the world. finishing 9th instead of 11th isn't that big a deal, so let's not ruin our two stars in this pursuit a la kobe.