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

yep I think we're probably not winning with AR, but Trae may be the last guy I would choose to trade him for. Black hole on defense, high usage, horrible shot selection.

 

Luka to me does things I don’t get.

I’m weird like that. I have NBA grudges. I don’t like Donnie Nelson. It’s the Dallas thing. He has a team with him. That’s business do your buisness.

I wouldn’t feel good about it if I was Rob. But the push for MVP bothered me. Dude you got nothing to prove. You’re a top 3 player. I do think that led to his injury. The weight on his hammys calf.

He’s gotta really figure out a program. We went through it with Shaq. Everybody’s not Kobe. The problem isn’t his weight. It’s the availability. The best thing I heard was the lab. We need that at the facility for Luka have to take care of him.

Why did Dallas not want to pay him? His availability has to be paramount.

Here’s my thing with Luka he was having arguably the best season of his career. If he doesn’t do that late MVP push we might have a championship on Figueroa.

Ima get it from everybody but I’m gonna talk my s***. What I saw out of San Antonio we could’ve beat OKC with Luka. I truly believe that.

He’s gotta put team first over individual. There’s ways you can play with staying on the court. Not saying he made the injury. But it had the same feel as the Kobe Achilles when Kobe was beasting. 40 minutes 42 minutes just to get us in the playoffs.

it’s like driving your Porsche down to Orange County with no oil in it and no oil change after 10 months.

I blame JJ more than Luka. It’s a boarderline fireable offense. You don’t run your players into the ground. Tibeadue s***.

I hate wasting seasons. We had a great season damn good season. I feel it was wasted when Luka got hurt.

the taste is still bad in my mouth how the season ended.

f*** the debate I’m paying Austin. But the most important question of the off season. How do we make sure Luka stays on the court?

 

This is true unless you just get raw top tier talent. Ex Pau/kobe LeBron/davis Wade/Shaq etc building with less talent takes time because the other players fitment becomes more critical. This helps when the stars plays both sides of the ball. Right now we have 3 players we are trying to hide so it puts a ton of pressure on offense.

 

We had a damn good team. A damn good team. We were deep. I wouldn’t tear it up. Look at what we did against San Antonio at the Beginning of the Season. Or New York. It pisses me off. It really does. If you really know basketball. Look at that team top to bottom and tell me we shouldn’t be in the finals. With Luka playing. This team would’ve blitzed everybody as hot as we were they had no answer for Luka. Luka would’ve went crazy.

see what yall are missing Luka makes Ayton better puts him in better places. And I just think Luka on the court OKC can’t do what they did. We run the table.

 

Two things:

Waiting or not for LeBron is a no brainer, you don’t wait for him. You just can’t afford too. We need to make our moves and include him, but if he chooses to wait till August, it just is what it is.

Second thing, for the past few years we have had a solitary pick to trade and the Luka year we had two. But we were reluctant to trade those picks because the front office didn’t believe in the team. Now we have our franchise player to build around, 3 picks and a good chunk of expiring salary. This should be a different outcome because we’ll be willing to move the picks. (Which have also become more valuable in recent weeks)

 

The Anthony Davis stuff is just wrong. His window we would’ve had two championships. The statue is debatable.

if you look at Shaq like stuff. His finals run was incredible. What he did to Jokic. The bubble takes away the significance of how big that series was. That was one of the best big man matchups in playoffs history. Mchale Jabar level.

people forget that bubble team was special. Let me ask you. Why doesn’t San Antonio get an asterisk for “99”???

we had a f***ing pandemic and we get an asterisk. Why cause no fans???? Are you kidding me??? We did the best we could do. That was our championship and a legit championship.

and the fact that silver rushed us and made AD play a season two weeks later ruined his career.

Anthony Davis here was our Laker he chose the Lakers and gave us his prime years. We f***ed him. Deangelo Russell had no defense.

The Golden State series against Curry and Klay Anthony Davis won that for us. The offense and the defense. Guarding curry. He was doing Wemby things.

you traded Baby Wemby for Luka yes you did.

the Warriors window was still open. We helped close it because what gave us the advantage they had no answer for Anthony Davis. Ad guards 1-5 his defense always makes teams championship contenders. Dallas logic was good smart. Davis Kyrie Christie defense and offense that team would’ve won if they stayed healthy,
Davis had injuries you can’t plan on an eye and and hand. And now groin he had that against Phoenix.

surely I would bring him back. I do think he’s a championship player. He gets a bad rap. But he absolutely is one of the best and most important big men in Lakers history.


If you’re gonna talk about Chamberlain and Jabbar and Shaq and Miken and Gasol you gotta talk about Davis and have him there.

the 2020 Lakers were NBAs best team. Jeanie Buss ruined that. And Anthony Davis was the best player in the world. We played great defense.

 

Manu was a 6th man that could also be your best or second best player.

Reaves can certainly be a 6th man but contribute to winning.

Also, the max max is 60-65m when Austin should be getting paid 35-40m next season. That’s a great contract.

 

Yeaahhhhhh!!!

 

pointed out last week that reaves’s salary will be very similar to manu’s, adjusted for inflation.

 

Read the meanness and absolute nonsense said about AR in the s***hole of social media comments and one “might” think it runs the other way. Like the nonsense that persists here that with all aspects aside from quickest of twitch muscles and relegated to a “lowly” 35” vertical …. that AR is NOT an above average athlete. His scores in the combine in straight line speed, the shuttle and one other one were Elite to go with the body control and coordination he has attacking defenders. White men can’t jump way of parroting the narrative about him. Better times and scores than a couple can’t miss dudes going at the top of this year’s draft. Even today idawg pining for freaking midget no D Trey Young running the floor on breaks when AR is absolutely excellent with his speed with the ball doing it or being on the finishing end of it. So yeah I do think there is a lot of “that” in reverse.

 

Every year there is upgrades to how a team should build based on who won. I think it’s easier to surround Luka and Austin with defensive guys than it is to surround defensive guys with elite scorers. I’ve listed various players that I think we could get that would make a considerable difference to our team defense.

Spencer Jones
Thybulle
Ellis
Claxton

All these guys are available and we can also stagger Luka and Reaves if we have too. As an example having a lineup of Luka, Smart, Spencer, Lebron and Claxton is defensively sound and a bench of Kennard, Reaves, Thybulle, Rui, Hayes is a nice offensive punch to be able to stagger through the starting unit.

We may not have the profile of 10 two way players but as long as we have enough defensive guys that can hit a 3, we can cobble together a top 10 defense.

 

Why do you keep bringing up the max? The max is 55-60m. Reaves is not getting the max, he is getting 35… that’s another very good role player on top of Reaves before the max. It’s basically a bigger discount from the max than Brunson.

 

Let say you had Davis/lebron you had an option between Austin and Young which one?

 

Luka and Kyrie just don't work": NBA fans diss Dallas Mavericks' star duo after 37-point blowout loss to lowly Jazz.... it's crazy how some things plays out. A few years back no way I would trade Austin for Kyrie. For some reason fans had Davis/lebron/Austin being better than with Kyrie. It's just one of those things.

 

35mil is ok nothing wrong with that. But it got people out there saying he can get more than that and that's when I said I will rather let him walk than create a bad contract

 

This is a really great take. And it’s one of the reasons why we should be open to moving Reaves if there is a better player available. Like if brown becomes available in an Giannis trade, and we can get him, you try to do that trade.