**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins



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It’s not as simple for me as “oh well let’s not get caught up in the shoulda woulda coulda......what’s done is done”

I don’t look at it like that. To me, we’ve been great at late first round and second round picks, but not so much with high lottery picks.

Randle - not good enough for us to want him beyond his rookie contract, no extension after year 3

Dlo - not good enough for us to want to keep him longer than 2 years. His youth and potential used in a salary dump. Still TBD how good he’ll be

BI - showed great strides in year 2. Hasn’t gained weight and remains to be seen if he can withstand an 82 game grind and play a full season injury free and not get knocked off balance driving/shooting by physical and stronger defenders

Zo - the mental part of his game, poor shooting mechanics and body are his greatest weakness. Appears he’s gotten stronger this summer. TBD if he can play with confidence and not pass up layups when his shot isn’t falling and hits the side of the backboard.

Meanwhile other teams have budding stars like Tatum, KP, Booker, Mitchell so it’s hard for me not to think about what could have been. I get it, none of this matters what’s done is done
 
It’s not as simple for me as “oh well let’s not get caught up in the shoulda woulda coulda......what’s done is done”

I don’t look at it like that. To me, we’ve been great at late first round and second round picks, but not so much with high lottery picks.

Randle - not good enough for us to want him beyond his rookie contract, no extension after year 3

Dlo - not good enough for us to want to keep him longer than 2 years. His youth and potential used in a salary dump. Still TBD how good he’ll be

BI - showed great strides in year 2. Hasn’t gained weight and remains to be seen if he can withstand an 82 game grind and play a full season injury free and not get knocked off balance driving/shooting by physical and stronger defenders

Zo - the mental part of his game, poor shooting mechanics and body are his greatest weakness. Appears he’s gotten stronger this summer. TBD if he can play with confidence and not pass up layups when his shot isn’t falling and hits the side of the backboard.

Meanwhile other teams have budding stars like Tatum, KP, Booker, Mitchell so it’s hard for me not to think about what could have been. I get it, none of this matters what’s done is done

The only pick out of that group that I regret is Russell, honestly I think we've hit on all the other ones.

Randall was a steal at number 7, he's better than some of the players pick in front of him. We screwed that up because we wanted to retain cap space and wouldn't commit to him long-term but he's a really good young player with a versatile skill-set. I think we're going to miss him

Like I said, I regret the Russell pick in retrospect

Ingram is right where he needs to be on his career progression. I see him being an All-Star in a couple of years, I don't regret the pick at all.

I think Ball is going to be a really good player, with a skill set that we really need. Tatum and Mitchell are both great but that doesn't make me regret taking Ball at #2.
 
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Drive and kick is a fundamental part of the game. When you have a guy like Lebron that commands so much attention on offense from opposing defenses you exploit that and get guys open looks. That's basic fundamental basketball.

But if Luke's plan is to cannibalize Zo and Rondo's passing skills by letting Lebron do all of the heavy lifting and creating on ball, Brian Shaw or Miles Simon will be the head coach by the new year.

I hope they play Bron more off ball and play up tempo. They've got the young horses to run, I don't see why you wouldn't do it.

I think the thinking was similar when the lakers traded for Chris Paul in 2011. Everyone knew Paul was a ball dominant PG and everyone was fine with it because taking Kobe off the ball would extend his career and allow him to conserve energy and pick his spots and not wear himself down throughout the course of the season.

Lebron is at that same juncture Kobe was at in 2011 where age is a factor and it would probably be a good idea to use him more off the ball, keeping the other guys engaged so that by the time March, April and May roll around we're not watching Lebron trying to save the season playing 1 on 5 iso ball while Kuz, Ingram etc stand in the corner and watch.
 
Meanwhile other teams have budding stars like Tatum, KP, Booker, Mitchell so it’s hard for me not to think about what could have been. I get it, none of this matters what’s done is done
hit the nail on its head. We haven't exactly drafted the best out of the bunch, and they're not even the best fit for the team
because there was no team to build around.

2015 coulda been Towns or Porz or Rozier
2017 let's not even talk about that yet.
 
hit the nail on its head. We haven't exactly drafted the best out of the bunch, and they're not even the best fit for the team
because there was no team to build around.

2015 coulda been Towns or Porz or Rozier
2017 let's not even talk about that yet.

How could we have gotten towns in 2015? Towns went #1, and we had the #2 pick? I'll admit that we messed up the Russell pick but don't go making stuff up now LOL.

Maybe it's just me but I still don't regret taking Lonzo. We have wings and we needed a point guard with lonzo's skill set. It's too early to just write him off. Be patient.
 
How could we have gotten towns in 2015? Towns went #1, and we had the #2 pick? I'll admit that we messed up the Russell pick but don't go making stuff up now LOL.

Maybe it's just me but I still don't regret taking Lonzo. We have wings and we needed a point guard with lonzo's skill set. It's too early to just write him off. Be patient.

There's an argument to be made that Magic saw a lot of himself in Zo and locked in on him too early. I could see that.

But I don't think anyone though Tatum would be this good this fast. It looked like he was destined to be an inefficient volume scorer.

Mitchell isn't even worth talking about, no one thought he would be this good.

And yall cant just cherry pick the best players 2 years after the fact. A lot of yall wanted Josh Jackson and D Fox. :lol:
 
There's an argument to be made that Magic saw a lot of himself in Zo and locked in on him too early. I could see that.

But I don't think anyone though Tatum would be this good this fast. It looked like he was destined to be an inefficient volume scorer.

Mitchell isn't even worth talking about, no one thought he would be this good.

And yall cant just cherry pick the best players 2 years after the fact. A lot of yall wanted Josh Jackson and D Fox. :lol:

Exactly . This is some revisionist history stuff. I hate the line of thinking that "if any player drafted after the guy your team got is better then you screwed up the pick. Did all 12 teams that passed on Giannis blow their picks because Giannis ended up being better?

As great of a prospect as Tatum was, there wasn't a single major publication or expert that had Tatum or Mitchell rated higher Lonzo ball or Markelle Fultz. Now after the fact, folks like Kobe and others are saying "why didn't the Lakers get Tatum?"

Like I talked about a couple of days ago, I'm still really happy with Zo pick because by picking a point guard, it allowed us to move Mozgov's contract with Dlo which freed up the max salary spot for LeBron. Also, I'm still really high on Zo
 
How could we have gotten towns in 2015? Towns went #1, and we had the #2 pick? I'll admit that we messed up the Russell pick but don't go making stuff up now LOL.

Maybe it's just me but I still don't regret taking Lonzo. We have wings and we needed a point guard with lonzo's skill set. It's too early to just write him off. Be patient.
my bad, definitely meant to type Book.

I'm taking Zo over Fox any day but not Tatum.

With that said, Zo will play a lot better with Bron. His defense would improve this year which
should put him at the top 10 in his position. His shooting has nowhere to go but up, I expect an astronomical jump from last year. His free throws? Will still be the issue.
I expect Zo to have crisper and more controlled passes this year.

THINK ABOUT THIS:
Zo and Bron gonna battle for triple doubles this year.
 


Looks like Zo is still shooting with that awful jump shot. I was really hoping that we'd see some changes to his mechanics going into next season but I guess he's committed to his form. Lord help us
 


Looks like Zo is still shooting with that awful jump shot. I was really hoping that we'd see some changes to his mechanics going into next season but I guess he's committed to his form. Lord help us


The biggest issue with his shot is his feet and how far he was jumping forward shooting it. Those aspects need to be corrected and it doesn’t look like they have. Damn.
 
Eh, all the lotto picks were good picks at the time. They easily could've been much worse.
 
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Generally you need at least about 3 years to accurately judge a draft

Randle was a serviceable player and solid pick considering the draft pool and players selected immediately after him.

Russell seems like he won’t reach his potential ceiling. In hindsight KP would have been the ideal pick. But I think we were closer to drafting Okafor than KP in either case.

Also if we somehow drafted KP then we probably play better and lose our pick to philly. So basically no Ingram.

Or lose our pick in 2017 so no ball/Tatum etc.

So basically y’all is buggin either way and lets wait a couple more years before we start condemning Zo
 
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