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

I choose what Luka prefers.

 

yeah, now we can't be sure capela is even going to be available at tpmle, but i'd still prefer that route myself. i can see the merits of the other, though.

makes sense; he's from north carolina, too.

can't do it without a third team to eat landale's salary, as we'd be over the apron.

 

slick's gonna get mad at me, but...i'm not sure luka wants to be consulted at this level. like, when he got here, they said what would help, and he said "a center who can catch lobs", right? further, i don't think he wants to choose between his friend and a guy who shares his agency. i wouldn't, lol. that's YOUR job!

 

@abeer3 feel like if we did a S&T for Cam and Landale, we would be in position to ask for at least 1 future 2nd. Whatever value Whitmore has - if any - is negated by us taking on Landale with 2 years on his contract. If they want DFS so badly to win now, we should extract 1-2 2nds to help flip Landale and get under the apron.

 

If I am talking through it myself, I think I would rather Ayton. We a log jam of players who are more PFs on defense, DFS might be on the lighter side of it but I think the front office needs to get more players who can guard 1-3. It takes a lot more action from the front office, but with Luka & Bron they need to make trades to retool this roster.

 

but they can just waive landale. he has zero guaranteed money this year and next. they pushed his date out to 7/7 from yesterday for reasons i'm not sure about. i'm having trouble finding up to the moment salary numbers for them, but i think waiving landale gets them to just under what they'd need to sign DFS outright. this explains the "just under the mle" thing.

iow, i'm just not really sure why they'd bother with a s&t. both moves hard cap them at the first apron with very little wiggle room.

edit: fwiw, rockets fans aren't that jazzed about DFS, and i also don't quite understand their level of interest here.

 

Yeah, I like DFS, but if it's him or Ayton in a vacuum plus the 3 second round picks we included in the transaction, I'll pick Ayton.

*** If *** he signs, he's going to piss us off, though. He's aloof, disappears for stretches, turnover prone, too jumpshot heavy, etc. There's also some good in there; solid rebounding, has some post moves, and he's 7'1".

By far, he's the best available option. Make it happen, Rob.

 

It’s a no brainer but that hasn’t stopped Rob before

 

Ayton provides great rebounding and good offense, just not great rim-protection. With that said, he is still a better defender than Mark Williams, whom we already traded for. Ayton is also just going into his age 27 season. His dunks per 36 minutes and dunk rate have been down, but it was probably much hire when he played with a CP3. Luka will throw him plenty of lobs and he could easily dunk the ball, no problem. I would be willing to pay him the full MLE, but I could also see us splitting the full MLE with another player.

 

If Ayton is coming, he's taking he full $14.1 million. There's no splitting, IMO. They'll have to trade for a wing.

 

They lost their "defensive" vet when they moved Brooks. DFS is the best gettable defensive wing/forward on the market. I'm sure KD said he doesn't want to should much defensively.

 

Ayton is great. He’s the Center we need.

let’s stop acting like DFS is a prime Ron Artest. At times he played like that. We traded for that. But down the stretch there were games he just didn’t show up. In particular in the playoffs when we couldn’t stop anybody and I know he had the injury.


But Anthony Edwards NAW and Mcadniels all had big games and series.

so if you gotta get a perimeter guy who’s gonna play defense and give you about 7 points. Sign Ben Simmons at least he can handle the ball. Give you some assists. And you’ll get the guy who can guard 1-5.

add the rookie Aou and we can fill that in by committee.

between Knect Hachiumura we’ll fill the void of the outside shooting.

bring Ayton we need that Center lob threat.

 

I assume we've checked on every potentially available center, but the list officially includes Nick Richards

 

I find it so rich and odd and hilarious lol. No pun intended.

Rich Paul’s statement

Teammates didn’t know his statement was coming or are surprised by Lebrons statement.

Hello your son is on the team!!!!! His sons on the team????

so how’s that conversation go at the dinner table. Baby!!!! I can’t win with these players they gotta get me up outa there. I’m opting in. Hopefully they can trade my a**. But yeah I ain’t gonna play there.

Really dad it’s like that?????


lol I just don’t see LeBron leaving the Lakers.

 

Dang they let us down slowly but surely with DFS walking. He’s gone to Houston…

 

Latest from Woike

Please don't chase Lopez with the NTPMLE. For one, you're going to outrun him. Second, I don't want to pay him half of that. If he can come for the BAE or the equivalent from leftover MLE money, cool.

 

Using the full 14 million on Brook would be a disaster.

Also saw this quote in that article and just sighed.

Same old, we aren't really going for it this year to maintain future flexibility.

 

the luka timeline is longer. we can afford to be patient, and we really can't afford to empty all assets for one year of maybe lebron's groin makes it through four rounds of playoffs, imo.

gotta say that the scariest part of woike's bit is that he leads with lopez and capela...

capela AND DFS. not OR!

 

But you currently have Luka and another superstar (Bron). Why not try and make that work instead of saving assets and hoping you land another superstar in the future.

 

I mean, the Lakers aren't far off.

A competent big, get rid of Vanderbilt and Gabe for some 3/D, and the Lakers are back in business.

Luka+LeBron+Reaves is amazing to build around.

And a full training camp, hopefully, to hash out what has to be done in terms of lineup changes, etc.,

Luka didn't play the best in the playoffs but it had more to do with not having a competent big who could screen, roll, and get wide open lobs. Adding that one facet to the team would open up Luka's game.