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

And Wambyana is not behold to San Antonio. He’s going to want his free agency just like LeBron. These new players don’t want the NBA to decide where they go or where there legacies will be. Wambyana is the carbon copy of that.

 

How do you "know" what's going to be his motivation when they have a "really" good team in a year or two and the money is so much larger contract wise to stay where he is?

 

Luka looks amazing. I can’t wait for this euro tournament to be over. Don’t need him playing in that. Can’t wait to have him in purple and gold.

 

Wambyana motivation simple.

Winning. You can say how good the team is and deep but winning is winning. If he ain’t winning he’s bouncing. And sure he can make a lot of money staying there. But he’s a world brand. And money can be made up being here in L.A. it’s San Antonio. He’s not Tim Duncan he’s a Nike guy. As much as you guys want to say it. He’s not Tim Duncan.


A guy like that is L.A. just like Kareem when he was in Milwaukee. He is Muslim.

and being in L.A. he will be able to do all he wants to do here. The kid wants to win.

Shaq had a pretty deep team in Orlando. Had Penny his boy Dennis Scott. Comfortable Orlando. Oh yeah that Kid Kobe was coming here.

and we have a kid Luka who is pretty good.

 

yeah, i guess we learned from the luka trade that you just never know what could go down

i expected the lakers to court luka 4-5 years from now at the earliest and instead, look what happened. it's never too early to start speculating

 

Luka is great. People forget. But this guy is a superstar.

honestly in the league right now. With the talent. I’m going.

1. Luka

2. Shai

3. Edwards.

we have one of those top 3 dogs Booker isn’t even in that tier..

So when you look at Bigs. This is just how the NBA goes Bigs want to play with perimeter dogs.

Jokic

Gianiss

Wembyana.

having Luka after that extension exposes the Lakers to the best bigs. It’s why Ayton wanted to come here. So all those guys are looking at us like this is the team. It was huge.

 

the culture is different, but it's also why you don't see these guys switching teams like the americans, imo.

i believe luka when he said he didn't plan on leaving dallas. jokic doesn't plan on leaving denver. giannis doesn't plan on leaving milwaukee.

i thought luka was our target and posted about it here on several occasions. i thought we'd trade AD for him, but i thought it would be because dallas was rebuilding and luka was a flight threat. i was wrong about the circumstances and timing.

i don't see the same with wemby. or jokic or giannis.

we got our guy, and what we do going forward is about how we build from there.

the complications are solely about lebron wanting to both contend and get supermax type money. we've navigated that about as well as you can so far, imo. it will be a tough trick the next couple years, but i like the approach so far.

 

Luka was going to sign here.

the Jokic thing is tricky because I think those two really want to play together.

Gianiss is tight with Luka. I do think Gianiss will do an AD hey we tried he tried to win there especially if they don’t win next season.

I’m not a hold out hope guy. But players talk and they have ambitions for greatness.

I know for fact Luka is a guy a lot of players want to play with. You add L.A. to the equation.

We start winning one of those players will want to come here.

I’m just saying Wembyana can get Kevin Garnett were he just wants to win.

you gotta remember Minnesota had Stephon Marburry Tom Gugliotta Kevin Garnett and still couldn’t win.

So players even on contending teams want to win championships.

 

After the trade of course. Before …. if you believe him and no reason not to he was planning on being a Maverick for his career.

And this was Jeanie on radio over in Poland a day or so ago.

Quote:
Jeanie Buss on Slovenian Radio: “Nobody knew the trade was going to happen. I knew but Luka didn't know. I've never had a player come to the Lakers & be as sad as he was because the trade was a huge surprise to him, so he had to process it. I think now he's embraced the Lakers and he's all about LA”

 

No I wasn’t referring to before the trade. I’m talking about after the trade. I knew he was resigning here. I wasn’t one of those people saying oh he’s Bolting and he’s gonna hit free agency.

 

my friend's dad loved googs. mostly for the obvious reasons.

yeah, that was just people trying to find reasons to process the trade, i think (internally for rob haters, externally for laker haters).

 

i really don't think luka was going to leave dallas until the mavs decided to move on. he loved it there

 

There won't be another "Luka's case" in the next 50 years. He loved it there and was forced out, dumbest/strangest thing i have seen in my 37 years of following the NBA.

 

Unless you are part of Wemby’s inner circle, or have been friends with the kid for awhile, you have no clue whether or not he’s pining to live in LA or play with Luka.
As I said before, the Spurs will be a top tier team in the West in a couple of short seasons, once they mature a bit. Not every “star” feels the need to build his brand in a Large Market City. It’s not even necessary in today’s world.
Could Wemby want to move on in a few seasons if things don’t work out? Sure, but the Spurs aren’t the Sacramento Queens. They have a very solid organization, with Championship Pedigree, who treat their players well.
I too don’t think we will ever see a Franchise throw away a top 5 player, entering his PRIME, in the NBA ever again, no matter who they are promised in the following draft- it’s only happened ONCE.
If I were a betting man, Wemby’s going to stay there for at least his first seven seasons in the NBA.

 

Yeah Wemby’s not going anywhere soon, if ever. Nobody’s ever doing a Luka again.

 

The Spurs were popular in France because of Parker and Parker has been a mentor to a lot of these younger French guys coming into the league, including Wemby. He’s not going anywhere. If Steph retires or decides to play somewhere besides Golden State, I could easily see Kerr coming in to coach the Spurs too. Him or Will Hardy.

 

Let’s look at all of this. Mitch Johnson is a tremendous coach. Stanford guy. Kerr aint coaching them. That’s Mitch’s team.

stop with this spurs way b*******.

cause it wasn’t the Spurs way for Kawaii Leonard. And he was supposed to be there.


My factors are Wemby is a generational talent.

A LeBron James a Kobe Bryant a Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

I’m sure they have many Muslim Mosques in San Antonio.

But Maybe his community will want him on a bigger stage. Maybe his sneakers will want him on a bigger stage.

I’m not starting a hope Wemby Campaign for Him to come to the Lakers. I’m just saying how these things start.

Wemby is obsessed with winning. He wants to win multiple championships. He always talks about winning. He wants to win. I watched the Olympics. He has an obsession with winning.

that team does not win. As great as he is. The team does not win. Yes they’ve had great drafts. But if they don’t win. I can see him coming to L.A.


I do believe we will win. And I think we will win multiple championships. I think Kobe Bryant was obsessed with winning championships. Lebron James was obsessed with winning championships. Jordan was obsessed with winning championships.

nobody expected Lebron to go to leave Cleveland. And I know Tim Duncan won and won a lot there. But I assure you Victor Wembyana is not Tim Duncan.

 

So your point is: every generational talent wants to come and play for the Lakers?
That’s just an extremely untruthful statement right there. I’m not going to make a long list of the greats over the past 35 years who never chose to play in LA, but I could.
I guess you have forgotten the many years we couldn’t pair Kobe with a decent sidekick, or the awful seasons after Kobe retired and before LeBron came where we were hoping one of our draft picks would turn into the next cornerstone. We couldn’t even get Aldridge to even meet with our FO and that dude was a second tier “star.”

 

Yeah Kl99 .... you're entitled to your opinion but you do a heck of a lot of mind reading and state it as facts. That's kind of laughable. Plus what would a gutted Lakers team when Pop got through with us even look like with just mainly Luka and Wemby then having to rebuild after 2 or 3 years from now when it would have to happen before his max next contract .... with Luka now being 30 ish and having to build it all back anew to cover all the bases and DEPTH with real talent like we are struggling to do now?

 

First of all. This was down the line in free agency. This wasn’t a trade.

I’m not dumb. Popovich isn’t going to trade with the Lakers. Refused to trade kawaii to the Lakers when he wanted to come here.

I know every generational talent doesn’t want to come to the Lakers. But if you think not playing in L.A. on that stage doesn’t frustrate players come on.

if you don’t think it’s appealing to players playing on that la stage your crazy.


Generational Generational means truly one of the greats.

the end up being Lakers.


Kobe Magic Kareem West Baylor Luka Shaq Davis LeBron

they all find their way here or play here.

so I’m not a fool to think that Wemby won’t be here. Or Edwards.


This is a Legacy team.

I’m not talking about second tier guys who didn’t want to come here after Kobe’s Achilles.

you do remember Aldridge is from Texas.

Howard wanted to come here when he left Orlando.

We got LeBron after he won a championship in Cleveland and yes talk about all the off the court stuff.

We got Shaq in 96.