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

The internet keeps receipts. February 7, 2023. But please go on and question my reading comprehension again…

 

Yeah context matters..and that particular conversation, was about not pursuing Kyrie for Russ, if I remember correctly. For a minute Tinkerbell looked like that disgruntled " star" lurking in the shadows. The one thing I did have wrong, was that we could use his cap space to sign other players and still bring him back. Abeer and SVTR straightened me out on that.

 

Nope. You also said he couldn’t be traded pages earlier with zero discussion of Kyrie. Face it, you’re full of it. Pretending like you said all along that his expiring could be traded. Pathetic.

 

Nah..I probably said that he couldn't be traded for someone in thier prime. You aren't posting the entire conversation. That wouldn't make sense, but he did end up getting traded for someone, who's team wanted to dump him (Tinkerbell)..along with some contracts Minnesota didn't want. Isn't that what happened?

 

You said it, just look at all those bums... truly staggering how bad Rob is at his job, and how people keep making excuses for him

even the Westbrook trade is thought of by a large part of the fanbase as Bron and AD's fault, not Rob's.

And now this is supposed to be year zero again after, so I'm sure a lot of people will be here in a few months saying we need another offseason, and the cycle continues.

 

Nothing was taken out of context. Page 350+\- a few pages of the Russ thread. By all means, go browse. Receipts are there.

 

Post the entire conversation then..nothing else going on at the moment. There were about a thousand Westbrook related posts.

 

Anyone who claims that the Westbrick trade wasn’t one of the worst in Laker history is just looking to argue the contrary.
By all measureables, the eye test, AND how long it took to repair the damage, it was an awful decision.

 

i know it's the offseason, but i'd rather argue about kuminga than westbrook. i'd rather just fully memory-hole westbrook. dark days all.

 

The Westbrook problem was Westbrook was standing in the corner. He’s not a spot up shooter.

as bad as Russell was you saw his first game here home game against the Rockets. It was completely different.

a floor spacer with LeBron with the ball in his hands. Russell was a little dimensioned from all star days but we got the last best of him until the playoffs when he forgot to play basketball. It was a frustrating season. Because Russell was so good against Memphis and Golden State specifically in the close out game against Golden state in staples.

honestly we should’ve won the championship that year. Russell against Denver just went into hiding wide open shots weren’t even close. The problem was those shots were shots that could’ve put us up 5 or 8 that led to comebacks. And runs. He wasn’t making the shots you need. You needed. He was a trash can. It ruined his career here.

Westbrook wasn’t doing that. It was such a problem until Luka came here. Perimeter shooting.

The Lakers had the spacing with Russell. He just couldn’t make the shots.

Westbrook to be effective has to have shooters all over him. It’s the opposite of Luka. Luka can have defenders shooters help. But he’s such a shooter scorer.

so when Westbrook doesn’t have a Durant to find he gets in trouble. It worked at the Clippers because he had Kawhi and Paul George the Nuggets Jokic and Murray.

Kawhi and Paul George aren’t primary ball handlers they can do it. But they need somebody to get them the ball. So that worked. Here with LeBron before he was in any head space to not do it he was the primary ball handler. LeBron is so ball dominant even though all of us saw it and said he’s playing a role. He hated it and couldn’t do it with Luka and Reaves because Luka had to have the ball running the offense. That’s just the way it is.

 

You didn't quote any posts. I reposted your post in the exact context it was in. However, I'll gladly post links to the pages I'm referencing. Including your posts again to avoid any confusion.

Russell Westbrook thread p. 348
The previous posts were largely about the sample size of Russ, Lebron, and AD playing together when another poster suggests finding a sucker to take his contract, Slick:

Remember, you just said in the last hour that you had been the one suggesting the pragmatic approach and that we could trade his expiring.

Russell Westbrook thread p.355
No mention of Kyrie within the previous page. Just posters pointing out how bad he had been, when you chime in to say how ridiculous the idea of anybody trading for his expiring would be.

 

How long did it take to repair the damage again? We went to the Conference Finals a year later. How is that to be construed as the worst trade ever? What did we lose. Trez who was out the league 2 years later..Kuz whose still mediocre. Kcp was decent..I liked him..but what exactly was all this damage you referred to?

 

I think slick those guys contributed to our championship engine. Kuzma when we had him 3-D. KCP POA they were huge for us. We lost our depth. Trading all that for Westbrook is what made it a bad trade we didn’t need it and basketball wise it didn’t make sense.

all those guys played a role here and knew there role. We f***ed that up trading for a guy who didn’t know what his role was. I remember Russ and AD and LeBron saying we’ll figure it out. The super team era was about done. It was about depth and we didn’t figure that out. How Milwaukee just won.

so it’s like buying bell bottoms in 1985.

If you look how Jeanie and Rob destroyed that team that off-season. That was the Rukus.

Caruso Kuzma KCP and now Russ THT it didn’t add up.

as bad as the team with him was the other depth would’ve helped. I think after that we value role players. And honestly is why you see Rob constructing this team the way he is now. Learning from his mistakes.

 

must...resist...

 

Shrug....Yeah..I said it would be ridiculous at that point, we were close to the trade deadline. and we got back what I said we'd get.

Kyrie was already in Dallas when Russ got traded. I was after Kyrie the first offseason after getting Westbrook, I thought we could get him with Westbrook's salary...

Now..I was confused about the cap hold stuff..I thought we could use that money on other people and keep Russ. That made more sense than trying to trade him and giving out draft picks.

 

I don't care, you just said this on the previous page:

Lying through your teeth about taking the "pragmatic approach." Then when confronted with the receipts, claim that it was out of context. Now the context is provided and as I've said many times, moving the goalposts.

So there's only one thing left to say...

 

Caruso had nothing to do with Westbrook tho. Trez was in Vogel's dog house for whatever reason. Rob had tried to trade Kuz and Kcp for the entire previous season. He was already looking to get rid of them. What made Westbrook an option was not having a PG. We traded a FRP for Dennis and let him walk for nothing. We were already over the cap, so a S&T was out of the question, for the multiple PG on the free agent market. Rob also passed on a trade for the Toronto PG..can't remember the name at the moment, for Shroeder, and THT, with a FRP coming back to us. So IMO..Pelinka put himself in that predicament. Lebron and AD asked for Dame or Derozan too. Westbrook made more sense to Rob IMO.

The breakup of the Championship team started immediately after the bubble. That was the 1st mistake. I have to say tho...Caruso, KCP and Kuz..all shooting 30% from the field, and 20% from 3 against Phoenix..had a little something to do, with Rob not being pressed about not bringing them back.

 

Westbrook was here for two seasons. You pick one coment I made, right before he got traded. You skipped over a whole bunch of s*** in the process. Ironically after exactly what I said, actually happened.

Keep scrolling..you'll run across it eventually.

 

yeah that point guard was Kyle Lowry. And Derozan thought he was coming here and was a little slighted at the guys Lebron and AD that they didn’t pick him. A mistake on all fronts.

 

Kyle Lowry yeah that's the guy. Now I think Demar was of the impression that AD and Lebron wanted him, but we went in a different direction. I still think Russ was AD's preference, Russ wasn't the type of guard Lebron liked. He wants a shooter at PG, that can play off him when he wants to control the ball. AD wanted a guy that would get him the ball..like Rondo in New Orleans. Here too..You notice that AD always stood up for Russ, even after he got traded?