2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

I'm not striking out at you specifically, it's the advanced stats craze in general.

 

I'll just say this...I find it puzzling that a 30 year old vet, is now all of a sudden.. semi-washed or something. Have we already forgot that we got AD from New Orleans, at 26 years of age? Folks keep yapping like Luka is 19 or something, and we have this 5-6 year contender window, because he's still "young".


That's not garunteed by any means, look at all the young guys that have gotten hurt recently. You take nothing for granted in this League IMO. I continue to point out that nobody has repeated in the NBA since Golden State with KD. I don't think OKC will win the Championship this season either.

If you have a generational talent, you should be trying to maximize your team in every season, until you hit paydirt. Small, fringe moves matter too. Every move matters, the coach you hire, the draft picks you make, the role players you sign, the opportunity to accumulate 2nd rd picks..it all adds up.

God forbid if Luka strains an Achilles or something, we can end up in the lottery next season, we have to make better decisions on a lot of things moving forward.

I'm not feeling this, we have time, let's just put all our marbles, into the upcoming summer free agency. I totally understand that we are where we are, because of some decisions that were made. However that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence ,that the same people that made those decisions, are the ones that should continue to be making them moving forward.

If we don't advance in the playoffs this season, I'm all for giving someone else the opportunity, to use that cap space and draft capital we'll have, to build and coach a contender.

It's not Thursday night at midnight yet, so hopefully Rob can get something useful for us heading unto the post season. We shall see soon.

 

Not a single move yet we could have made that I wished we did.

 

Is that mediocrity mentality rubbing off on you?

 

We don't really know what moves we could have made that we passed on either. What we do know tho, is the moves that we have made leading up to today. That's all we can really judge, that and the results. We can have different opinions on the path. I'm all about the pursuit of the chip, not everyone feels the same, just being entertaining and somewhat competitive are enough. I 'm speaking strictly from my perspective.

 

I get you both on this. I tend to look at all that has happened. I love that we got Luka, big time move, without him, we are in WAY WORSE shape. And I like some of the fringe moves that brought us Jake, Ayton and Smart. They are not overwhelmingly great but they are solid roll players. All that is nice but at some point we have to look at the bottom line results and ask where are we as a franchise!?!? The Dodgers do not win every year but danged if they are not in contention every year. Magic did not win every year but he was in contention every year. That is what I want for the Lakers, to be in contention every year. Look at Boston, even this year, losing their best player and trading off of some guys, they are still in contention. More than us. We need to be better and someone needs to be accountable. Not sure who, not sure when but those discussions need to be had from Walter down the line. IMHO, if things don't start getting better, the first head on the block should be Rob's, the second should be either JJ or Jeanie. We need to right this ship somehow. It is up to Walter.

 

Lol..you already know that if we do absolutely nothing, I'm going to still be right there, expecting to win regardless. That's the external optimist in me(Top 3 in the West, as currently constructed? )

However the pragmatic part of me, says that we are the Lakers damn it, you don't get an unlimited leash in order to get s*** right. Win or get fired, thanks for the past success though, but we move on.That's exactly how we dealt with Frank. Rob deserves the same treatment.

 

i'm fine with rob staying pat instead of making a move just to make a move

 

we made the greatest trade in history a year ago.

 

I don’t think anyone disagrees with wanting to take a real shot every year. Many of us felt that way when we had AD and probably feel it even more now.


But we’ve done this little dance with the front office multiple times so no one will really be shocked if we don’t make a move now.


I’ll also just say there won’t be many sad faces when the current regime is finally gone. We should have the best of the best running our team and that’s just not the case right now.

 

A few issues with this:

• Everyone wanted to trade for Westbrook. LeBron, AD, Rob, Jeanie, everyone. They all get the same portion of blame pie from me. I think the only reason that the perception is that Rob was forced into it was because of the spin he's put out there since then. He and LeBron have each tried to distance themselves from it.

• We traded for DFS on 12/29/24, a little over a month before the Luka trade. I know the Luka discussions with Nico were happening for a while, but I don't think Rob knew we were getting Luka yet. So you can't frame that one as trading for a guy Luka wanted. I also don't really care about this one because DFS is dead apparently, but it would be nice to have those extra seconds right now.

• This is the one I take the most issue with. The options were not lose Goodwin or waive Bronny. There was a third option - consolidation trade to open up a roster spot. Likely would have cost an asset (second round pick, a swap or two, or some combination of those) to turn Gabe and Maxi's expirings into one player. We could also have just dumped Dalton into someone's space with an asset attached. We would 100% be in a better position right now if we had done either of those and it was pretty clear even at the time that Goodwin was a more useful player than Dalton or Maxi for sure, maybe even Gabe.

 

That's a fair take, but not trying to start an argument here, there are always two sides to the coin. We can still push this Westbrook stuff off on Lebron, but nobody complained about Lebron pushing us into going after AD either. We got a chip from it too.
Rob was going to trade Kuz and Trez for Buddy Hield, he paused and listened to his stars, just like he's doing for Luka now. The mystery remains to me, who decided on Westbrook specifically? They asked for 3 different guys..Derozan still claims that he went to bed thinking that he was a Laker, but woke up and saw that we traded for Westbrook. Lebron never seemed to embrace Westbrook here from day 1 IMO, AD seemed to be the one excited, maybe he viewed Russ as another Rondo? Either way the GM ultimately is responsible for the moves they make. Caruso was also a choice, we just picked Tucker over him, I didn't disagree about not taking the tax hit, and H-Town hustle is a local kid. It's business . At the end of the day we flipped Westbrook and went to the Conference Finals, and then promptly squandered some of the assets we accumulated.


So..If Luka makes a request are we to automatically roll over for it? What if it doesn't work out? Is he the blame for that? He made a suggestion not a demand, the GM's job is to make the right call..that's not always easy, but that’s why he gets paid millions of dollars too, to make the right decisions.

I could on and on with this topic; but I won't. I will say that I never heard Jerry West, blaming the players for any moves he made. Hell.. he threatened to quit when Dr. Buss tried to make a trade that he didn't agree with! He was built differently.

 

The AD trade was one of the greatest trade in Lakers history before it. It brought home a Championship.

Take nothing for granted brother. Luka hasn't won a single ring to date.

 

This is false - teams have used second rounder to dump an expiring to open a roster spot for example. I get it half this forum hates Lebron but this was a clear failure. If you look at Godwin's play and Caruso those are big errors. One can argue the expiring had value well but if the plan all along which is being hinted on to let them expire, then they made a choice to let Godwin go for cap space.

 

No, it didn’t. Like I said, they could have easily dumped Dalton’s $4 million somewhere to open up a spot. And as for consolidation trades, remember the Wiggins trade talks? Miami wanted Rui, an expiring and a 1st. Probably an overpay for just Wiggins, but if that cleared up a spot to keep Goodwin as well? I’d take Wiggins/Goodwin over Rui/expiring/1st.