2026-27 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Everybody healthy?No.. I admire the optimism but our top 3, is not better than theirs IMO. Role players..they have more talent.

We have a Luka..that's our advantage, but Young, AD and Sarr closes the gap over Reaves and Kessler.

We aren't top 3, top 6 hopefully..Washington is definitely top 6 or better in the East.

 

Luka has plenty of excuses with this roster IMO. You haven't thought of, just how ugly Luka at PF, next to Kessler is going to look on defense...YET.

Walker aint AD, Gobert, or Gafford for that matter, when it comes to having to move his feet on D, and still be effective. That's the problem with him, and that's why he's been on the trading block, since his sophomore season. He's great at dropping coverage and standing in front of the basket. However if you force him to move laterally in any direction, he's toast. How do we expect him to compensate for Luka, when his guy gets by him? I'm sure every team on our schedule, is licking their chops, thinking about running P&R action against Luka and Kessler.

We don't have the wings, to press the ball strong enough, to limit the penetration, in order to help them out either.

Right now we are all offense with a stop gap at 5. Potential entertaining group, but not a contender. If we had an AD type at 5..that's another story, but we don't.

 

I think Luka is the best player but Washington might have us after that.

Luka > Dybantsa
Reaves >= Trae
Kessler =< AD
Grimes < George
Mamu < Sarr
Sexton = Tre
Carr =< Coulibaly
Jake < Ayton
Hardy < Champagnie
Knecht < Riley
Vando < Middleton
Adou < Whitmore
Bronny < Bub

Don’t sleep on the wizards. They’re starting 5 is tough and they’ve got a lot of guys who will develop on that team.

 

I tend to agree. Some issues I have with this team:

- We don’t have a finishing 5 that works. Sexton is probably too weak defensively? Kessler could get played off the floor - Gobert, Clingan, Allen, iHart do at times too. So we have Reaves, Luka and Grimes, who else right now?

- Everyone needs to play out of their skin to be a contender. Luka needs to be in MVP form and maybe the best player in the world. Reaves needs to become a legit second option and an All Star. Kessler needs to be DPOY level and not get played off the floor. Grimes needs to become a third option and primary POA defender. We need a 5th starter still. And most likely we need one of Carr, Adou or Jake to become a top 8 rotation player. It’s a lot to ask from everyone.

- Defensively, how are we going to be a top 10 defense? We don’t have strong POA or wing defence right now…

- Health: if you lose Kessler, Luka or Reaves for 20+ games we are probabaly in the play in.

Ultimately this looks like a good step forward, but it’ll take time to build everything out and we aren’t a contender yet. If we had more talent like Smart and Lebron with this team, I think we’d be a contender with:

Luka / Sexton / Bronny
Reaves / Smart
Grimes / Carr / Adou
Lebron / Jake / Vando
Kessler / Mamu / Looney

 

We move forward with what we have, and hope it all clicks. JJ doesn't want to play a big period IMO; Which makes giving up soo much for Kessler a head scratcher. He shoots in the 50% at the FT stripe too. Between the hack a Kessler strategy on one end, and the P&R targeting on the other....I don't see him in the closing lineup frequently.

 

I’m not just sleeping on the Wizards, I’m hibernating. If they finish with a better record than the Lakers, I’ll ban myself for the 2027-2028 season.

 

With Memphis getting Post, maybe we can grab Stewart for the 2nds

 

Wait, you think AD, Trey and Sarr is better than Luka, AR and Kessler?

#1 player
Luka is widely considered a Top 3 player in the league.
AD has played 29 games in thr past 2 years. He's probably like Top 15 or 20 to start the season, being generous?

#2 player
AR vs Trey Young
Young got salary dumped. That should tell you all you need to know.

#3 player
Kessler was considered a Top 20 center to start last year.
Sarr is ranked as a Top 25 to 35 center in the league.

What's your argument for preferring the Wizard's 3 players?

 

We have two of the leagues top 5 foul artist. Wizards may struggle with health. I to Thought Dallas was going to be OK but nope. I will say They have the potential to be good if healthy.

 

Did you just compare Luka to a rookie?

I will ban myself as well if they have a better record than us.

 

i agree with AD health but i think Young is better than AR. The one thing you have to keep in mind is AR always played with at least 2 players better than himself. Young never did and is the better floor general.

 

Hmm? The Hawks were always a bad team with Young on their team. In fact, they won 46 games last year, the most games in Young's 8 year stint there. Yes, they became better after he left. Young is not a winning player. He's fool's gold, much like Beal with the Wizards, but even worse imo. At least Beal led the Wizards to 4-5 seasons with a winning record.

I'll give you that Trey is a better playmaker.
Reaves is a much more efficient scorer and a significantly better defender.
More importantly though, AR has a winning record without Lebron, so your argument doesn't really work.

 

someone should be keeping receipts here.

 

I'm ready to admit I'm wrong if we go past round 2 of the playoffs next year, or at least go toe to toe against SAS/OKC.

are you going to admit that Rob has failed if this team finishes below 3rd seed, and doesn't go further than last year's team? Because I think the odds of that happening are much greater.

or are you going to come up with the expected narrative that this is year zero of a small rebuild, we need another off-season, etc (basically kicking the can down the road), or coming up with excuses like last year's guys didn't want to come back (I keep seeing this narrative already out there when it's total speculation)

 

hadn't seen this posted.

this is interesting--we called kuminga immediately when his team option was declined, but we didn't prioritize him with our extra space, instead opting for mamu/grimes. maybe he wanted more money than either in order to commit, which would mean we'd have lost both.

the rest is pretty obvious, with kuminga's agent wanting more money and to keep his bird rights, and the hawks only wanting to participate if it benefits them.

one thing i can't figure is how the lebron chase figures in this for cleveland. the only way it would is if lebron isn't willing to take the minimum to play there. both the hawks and kuminga's agent are probably hoping that cleveland will show up with a big money offer and a better s&t than we can offer.

kind of bothers me that kuminga won't commit to us, though, as i think our offer is superior from a career standpoint--with or without lebron, he'll be further down the pecking order offensively in cleveland than he would be here. if he'd just say that he's coming here, one way or the other, this would probably be done already.

sounds like we've put the full court press on with no success.

 

But at the end of the day he was the best player on his team. In the right system he still will get picked on as a bad defender but I am only looking at him as a scoring pg. Austin Is more of a combo guard. While efficient he had the luxury of playing with two stars. Had I swap him and young on the Hawks your probably seeing him getting Burnt out or injured. Sure in a sample size a player can look great. Luke Kanard is an example. Over time the real player will surface. This has been the situation with Austin dating back to the Olympics to date.

 

I’m all for moving on from LeBron and an older team.
I’m a bit worried that this team doesn’t have much defense other than Kessler nor one that doesn’t have a starting caliber wing, yet.
We are hoping on a star that all of these new additions can be better defensively than previously and that someone will step up and be the vocal leader on that end- we had Smart and LeBron for that.
I never expected this to be a one summer rebuild, so Rob still has time.
I would have preferred to at least to keep Smart and Rui, but I understand why we moved on. I’ve also mentioned that the new contracts given out to Mamu, Sexton, and Grimes were more lengthy, more expensive than what players of similar value were given by other teams AND inexplicably had player options added.

 

AJ Dybantsa is the 1st pick in what’s meant to be an outlier of a draft year. Smarter analysts than us rate him as a generational wing. We’ll see how he goes but he is going to be their first option.

Yes Luka is better than anyone they have - clearly. But AD is better than Reaves and Trae is as good offensively as Kessler is defensively. Then they still got Sarr and George who are better than anything we have.

I don’t think they’ll be better than us this year. But I also think we’ll be a 6th seed. So we aren’t particularly good right now.

 

So if I am the Lakers I am watching both Luka and Austin minutes and usage. Luka is a old 27 and Austin never really displayed great stamina. I predicted both these players to be injured or Burnt out in march and they both did.

 

why? we were nowhere close to going toe-to-toe with those guys last year.

no. i think when you lose a generational superstar, your team gets worse. this year, next year, year after, doesn't matter. you get worse. it's an unrealistic bar.

it's not a small rebuild, tbh. we're going to turn over, like, 75% of the team.

anyway, yes, utah and washington are way better than us.