Random Other NBA Teams Discussion

this was upsetting on several levels, and i think it's important that people understand that he was a 5th overall pick that his team is just glad to move on from. remember when gnashing teeth about our failed 17th picks.

 

Huge fight, Pistons vs Hornets, Isaiah Stewart doing Isaiah Stewart things.

 

Donovan Mitchell had enough of the Nutcracker's ****, plus the biased announcers somehow missed the shove to the back of the head that wasn't called a foul.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AzWfhfiVKw0

 

the shove by green is just b******* there. and i don't want to hear this "well in the old school" crap, either. you do that at the gym and you get busted. mitchell held back on what i'd have done, size difference be damned. and i can say that, because i'm small and have done it. you don't get to cheap shot me just because the ref missed it. you're going to end up on your a** very soon, friend.

 

Mitchell should have given him the Andre Miller no likee Blake Griffin BULLET.

 

The ever-delightful Dillon Brooks has already reached his 16 technicals and will miss a game. Too lazy to look it up, but it has to be one of the earliest in the season to 16. Did Sheed Wallace get 16 before the All Star break?

Meanwhile, I see Screamin' A. Smith is asking if the All Star game has lost its luster. For me, it did, like 20 years ago when the West beat the East 212-198 or whatever the hell that was. And it was building up to that atrocity of no-D. It's just boring as hell to me, and now they'd really have to do something drastic to win me back. I will watch the dunk contest. That's always amusing. But the game? It's all about no-D and not getting injured. Shirts vs. Skins down at the playground is more innarestin' to me.

I always want all my guys (Lakers) to beg off or be "injured" and take the week off the relax and recover for the real games.

After the break...We into the stretch!

 

tuned in for a few minutes of wolves/mavs and man that beringer guy looks REALLY good. i think slick was the first one on that bandwagon around here. if he wasn't behind gobert and naz reid, i think he'd be on a lot more radars.

we argue front offices a lot, but i still think tim connelly has been killing it for years. and he does it in smaller markets while being forced to make tough choices, imo.

 

Dunn is a great get by the Clippers. He was lost in the Bulls and is a legitimate contender rotation piece. We gotta find these guys across the league in the next couple years, like we tried already with LaRavia

Drives me crazy Boston winning games for fun with Queta, Scheiermam, Gonzalez, Walsh, Garza playing meaningful minutes at different points of the season

 

key point here is the pressure, imo. nobody expected anything out of boston this year, so it's easier to perform. kinda like how the clips became world beaters once their season was effectively over.

 

That surely helps but teams like OKC, Denver, etc are getting great minutes from this end of bench guys. It's becoming a theme in the league for the most successful teams

Also makes me wonder if we won't have plans for our pick this year. We certainly need budget contracts in our team moving forward and rookies are the best way. I think if we find a wing in the mid 20s, we may keep it.

Btw, saw a bit of Ware yesterday and oh boy. He got 15 rebs in 18 minutes, was basically getting every rebound when he was in the game. He's super vertical, great rim protector, looks like the ideal pairing with Luka.
Riley will never trade with us but that's my pipe dream center for the next years with Luka. Spo is not able to find ways to play him and Bam together, so I'm not sure what they will do with him

 

Lakers to Riles: No Ware No Statue? Keep the wraps on that sucker until he caves.

 

yes and no...okc had tanking years in which to play many of their role players and figure out who were keepers, and denver had years developing these guys before they cracked the rotation. the difference is...they developed them...instead of just throwing hands up and saying they sucked. christian braun was a HUGE net negative his first two years, but he still played 76 and 82 games at 15 and 20mpg. we bailed on knecht mid-season his rookie year, lol.

julian strawther was EPICALLY TERRIBLE his first two years (way worse than knecht). still played more than our youth and is playing more in his third year despite not being a whole lot better.

our hopeful acquisition peyton watson was statistically just as bad or worse than knecht his first three years. interestingly, advanced stats still don't love him as much as we (including me) do. anyway, he still played 19 and 24mpg in his second and third year in 80 and 68 games.

and i'm using knecht here because everyone agrees he sucks. and he may. but those guys all looked as bad at the same stage.

part of it is coaching, part of it is on management to find better players (though lots of our guys look good elsewhere), and part of it is just organizational culture of WE MUST ALWAYS BEEN WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP, which sounds nice but is sort of at odds with developing players. like, of course you're going to play gabe over nick smith or bufkin if you want to beat sacramento by 7 in a january game.

we just have no patience, and that extends to the fans 100%.

 

Well the difference between Dalton and those guys is Dalton came into the league at least a couple of years older than each of them. You compare Year 2 of a 20 year old rookie to Year 2 of a 23 year old rookie. The book on him as a draft prospect was that he might have a limited ceiling due to age and would struggle defensively at the NBA level, but he could contribute offensively Day 1 as he’d spent more time in college and was more savvy because of it. So far we’ve seen every weakness in his draft profile proven true with none of the strengths manifesting outside of some hot shooting to start his rookie year. He’s going to turn 25 before the playoffs, not sure I’d even consider him a young player anymore.

 

eh, strawther was 21 his rookie year, knecht was 23. age is always a proxy variable. in the nba, it's usually a proxy for either physical development or experience. knecht was definitely physically developed (but so are some 18 year olds--like, cameron boozer isn't going to develop physically, for example). on the other hand, he had only played one year of real college competition, so he was kind of a like a one-and-done in that respect, imo.

whatever, not here to fight about knecht, but i am here to say that if christian braun were on our roster, there's a good chance we'd have sold low in trade (probably him and three firsts for like, chris middleton after a major injury or something, with the fans all excited about it) after his second year.

we need to recommit to the draft and development. don't sign ANY veterans that can serve as coach's security blankets. no gabes, no princes. tell your coach he better develop his own gabe or taurean.

this year's draft is deep. there WILL be a good nba player where we're picking (likely low 20s). get them and commit to developing them.

 

Yeah, this is so true.

For example this year we know we don't have it to win the championship. We'll be good enough to be in the playoffs and maybe win a round.

Isn't that an ideal scenario to develop young guys? A competitive group that will win more than loses, looks like a good setting for young guys to grow.
Especially with a head coach that signed for multiple years and is expected to build the Lakers of the next 5 years.

Like Adou could have played more. He had injuries and plays in a position we have Bron, Rui, Vando. But surely you can find a way.

I know the West is tough and every win counts, but if we're not a true contender, we must find a balance between being competitive and growing guys that will help in a couple years when we are truly contending. Instead the coach is trying to save his job and reputation by playing our stars heavy minutes

 

The Dodgers under Walter built the best farm system in the Majors. No reason to not expect him to want the same with Lakers, which has to mean developing our young talent I would think.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Do+...8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#lfId=ChxjMe

 

Boston is in the Finals for sure. They'll be there before OKC.

 

https://www.theringer.com/2026/03/0...tory-of-the-sloan-sports-analytics-conference

probably doesn't deserve its own thread, but it's an awkward fit here.

a lot of this is already known, but it's interesting to hear the insiders talk about it.

some highlights:

shane battier on the famous ny times piece (funny):

morey on three point shooting:

the other parts that were interesting to me concerned what is and isn't available to the public.

this jibes with the story today about how kenny atkinson said derrick white is a top-5 nba player, and joe mazulla's response was basically that the public doesn't have access to the stats he does, and that kenny's not crazy.

there are some arguments that there are no analytic advantages anymore, and i can see that to some extent. ironically, i think it's returning to having human intuitions that others don't. specifically: you need to be able to see who's underperforming statistically but could look great in a different context. that's where the "market inefficiencies" lie now, imo. because stats rely on what's happened to make inferences about the future. you need to be able to see what could happen.

and maybe there are ways to do that statistically, like--did derrick jones jr. shoot 10% better when he had .3 extra seconds to gather before a three point attempt? if so, you could foresee that playing with luka (or kawhi) would make him look much better than he did (and that if someone didn't benefit from more time, they may not).

but there are still limitations to that--the scheme and role really influence the analytics in ways that i think must be hard to capture. i'm sure folks think they have it, but i have a hard time seeing how, tbh. maybe i'm dumb, but it's also possible that people are kind of deluding themselves that they have an insight nobody else does. it certainly doesn't seem like anyone's gaming the system these days.