- 22,575
- 16,309
He is. They signed him to the designated player exception worth appx 12 mill.
**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by licensed to ball,
- Start date
MIKE LOWERY
formerly chuck finster
- 7,590
- 4,720
- 3,234
- 1,391
Any chance Jrue just gets bought out?
- 37,530
- 13,030
Almost none.
Wouldn’t be until end of next year if he opts in to his player option that they would consider it.
At this point he’s a trade chip to increase their Dame haul.
- 92,691
- 128,893
Nah, he has another year (player option) on his contract and is still highly valued around the league.
- 82,758
- 118,227
Y'all would hate Jrue 
He got his good moments but y'all think AD is inconsistent Jrue is way worse. Man shot terrible from 3 the last couple post seasons.
He got his good moments but y'all think AD is inconsistent Jrue is way worse. Man shot terrible from 3 the last couple post seasons.
- 16,711
- 17,709
6MOY
MIKE LOWERY
formerly chuck finster
- 7,590
- 4,720
Watch POR flip JRue to PHI and Harden to LAC, where he wanted from the start.
MVP
Supporter
- 83,026
- 85,609
Ready for the Max Christie takeover
- 39,346
- 40,794
- 40,346
- 45,087
No to Jrue IMO.
Let's see what we have then hopefully we can make moves at the deadline if we need to or can improve the roster.
Let's see what we have then hopefully we can make moves at the deadline if we need to or can improve the roster.
- 82,758
- 118,227
BG to OG
- 4,578
- 1,733
Darvin Ham when opposing team goes on a run and doesn’t call time out:
- 7,717
- 10,693
This is where I’m at as well… Rui didn’t slim don’t for no reason
he’s going to be the starting unit’s wing stopper. Vando off the bench but he’ll be competing with Prince for playing time… and I know this will be an unpopular opinion but I don’t have Max as a lock over Cam in the depth chart. Not that Christie won’t be that guy but this is a legit training camp/preseason comp where the better player (better fit) will get that backup guard spot.
- 92,691
- 128,893
Lakers embrace expectations after productive summer: ‘We’ve re-established the competitive gene’
After a summer in which the Los Angeles Lakers were lauded as offseason winners, the opening press conference of the 2023-24 season felt like a coronation.
As Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka and head coach Darvin Ham strolled to the dais at the UCLA Health Training Facility, the two Lakers leaders joyfully smiled and laughed as David Guetta’s “Play Hard” blared through the building’s speakers.
The mood and energy around the Lakers now couldn’t have been more different than at this time the previous season, a truth multiple staffers acknowledged before and after the hour-long event. The vibe was light and upbeat, with Pelinka and Ham openly touting the organization’s confidence in its ability to build on last season’s Western Conference Finals run.
“You don’t have any expectations around you, you’re just existing,” Ham said at a joint press conference with Pelinka ahead of Monday’s players-only media day. “I want to live. I came here for those expectations. … You don’t run from it. You just embrace it.”
For the first time in years, there’s no uncertainty with the Lakers’ roster or coaching staff, nor trade rumors hanging over each media availability. Los Angeles is an inner-circle contender coming off a largely drama-free summer.
The Lakers achieved their oft-repeated goal of running back most of the core group from their playoff run. LeBron James returned, Anthony Davis and Jarred Vanderbilt received contract extensions, and Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura and D’Angelo Russell all re-signed. Meanwhile, the Lakers enhanced their roster along the fringes with better shooting (Gabe Vincent, Taurean Prince and Christian Wood) and more youth and athleticism (Jaxson Hayes and Cam Reddish).
LA prioritized continuity for the first time since James arrived, a lesson Pelinka admits he’s learned via trial and error through his six years in the Lakers’ front office.
“I think any championship executive in any sport has done some things perfectly and has done some things where they’ve taken a risk and it hasn’t worked out,” Pelinka said. “I think your job as an executive or any sports executive, is if you take a risk and it doesn’t work out the way you thought, you’ve got to fix it. And I think thankfully, as a group, collectively as an organization, we obviously took a risk, we changed the way our roster was constructed, and it didn’t work. But we fixed it.”
The franchise’s energetic makeover technically started at last February’s trade deadline, but it picked back up in early August when Lakers players began trickling into the practice facility. Nearly every player has been in the gym on a daily basis. Several often came in twice a day. That list includes the soon-to-be 39-year-old James, who contemplated retirement immediately following the Denver Nuggets’ sweep of the Lakers in the conference finals.
“It’s staggering for a player who has 20 years under the hood already and is preparing for 21 like he’s a rookie,” Pelinka said of James’ work ethic and mentality. “He’s been doing 6 a.m. workouts. Probably been in our building as much as any player this offseason. Been in the weight room as much as any player. Any team LeBron’s played for, it’s been pretty uniform that his work sets the tone.
“There has been nothing but an increase in seeing that here. To me, it’s, ‘Let’s be about it, let’s not talk about it.’ He’s definitely been about it this offseason.”
Last weekend, James hosted the Lakers’ annual players-only minicamp in San Diego, the second consecutive year the team made the trek to the southern tip of California instead of flying out to Las Vegas, where previous iterations were held. All 14 players with guaranteed contracts attended. The group focused on 5-on-0 drills and shooting competitions on the floor, then going to dinner and bonding off of it.
Training camp officially starts Tuesday morning. The buzz around the facility is that Davis, who has progressively shot 3-pointers worse since his career-best shooting performance during the 2019-20 championship season, is in the best shape he’s been in entering a Lakers training camp and is shooting the ball similar to his earlier levels.
Pelinka opened up about the honest conversations that Lakers management, including Pelinka and Ham, had with Davis when they signed him to a three-year, $186 million contract extension in early August, which will keep him with the Lakers through the 2027-28 season.
“The theme was, ‘We want to commit to you, but we want you to commit to us,'” Pelinka said. “And one of the aspects that we addressed with him in that exchange was becoming a leader and being the hardest worker, and he really did that this offseason. … Training more this offseason than I’ve seen with him as a Laker. He’s taken on that leadership mantle and I think he knows that when the franchise invests in him, like we did this summer, he’s gonna return that. That’s just his character.”
“He came back leaner, stronger, quicker, more explosive,” Ham added. “People forget … he’s only 30 years old. So there’s a huge, huge road still ahead of him in how he can lead this franchise and hopefully put some more banners up here.”
The Lakers are expecting to enter training camp with every player healthy and available, according to Ham. That includes James, who dealt with a torn tendon in his right foot during the final few months of last season. James’ health is the most important factor in the Lakers’ championship aspirations. He has missed 111 games due to injury in his five seasons with the Lakers after missing just 71 games over his first 15 seasons in the league.
The Lakers are planning to manage James’ minutes and offensive workload more than in years past, and Pelinka cited the team’s depth as a way to do that. Ham said the franchise is aiming to be more efficient with James’ “game-to-game minutes, the big picture, month-to-month, different sections in the calendar.” He also joked he was happy to see James was “grandfathered in” by the NBA’s new resting policy. (The new provisions restrict when teams are allowed to sit star players, but include exceptions for players who are at least 35 years old, have logged at least 34,000 career minutes or appeared in more than 1,000 career regular-season and playoff games, all thresholds James has cleared).
Additionally, James’ decreased workload could come from added responsibility for the team’s starting backcourt of D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves, which Ham anointed in spite of his typical reluctance to reveal his starters.
The move appeared strategic considering the criticism Russell has faced since his disappointing end to the playoffs. There had been chatter that Russell would be competing for his spot with Vincent, who notably stepped in as the Miami Heat’s starting point guard during their NBA Finals run. But the Lakers loudly reaffirmed their confidence in Russell, who they re-signed on a two-year, $37 million deal with a player option in the final season.
“We want to keep the bigger picture with him of (when he) came here, he impacted our season in a huge way, led us into the playoffs, beat the defending champions in the Warriors,” Pelinka said. “… D’Angelo’s in a really good headspace.”
Ham directly addressed Russell’s disappointing Western Conference finals performance before reasserting Russell’s importance to the team.
“A lot was made about the way things finished against Denver and whatnot,” Ham said. “At the end of the day, we don’t get to where we got to without D’Angelo Russell. He’s our starting point guard. He’s our starting point guard.”
Still, the Lakers view Reaves, who broke out during the second half of last season and was one of the stories of Los Angeles’ summer, as the player most likely to relieve James of his heavy offensive burden. Ham restated his belief in Reaves’ all-star potential, which Ham said could materialize as soon as this season. Pelinka went as far as to compare Reaves’ work ethic and competitiveness to Kobe Bryant’s.
“He uniquely has that sort of Mamba gene, where it’s all about the work, it’s about playing competitive on every play, it’s about being a great teammate, not caring about the personal accolades but just the team winning,” Pelinka said.
With James and Davis also locked in, four of the Lakers’ five starting spots are cemented. The fifth spot is an open competition in training camp and the preseason, according to Ham. A case can be made for each of Hachimura, Vanderbilt and Prince given their varying strengths and skill sets. Hachimura enters camp as the internal favorite to earn the third starting frontcourt spot, according to team sources not authorized to speak publicly.
Perhaps the biggest X factor on the roster is Wood, who joined the team in early September. In Pelinka’s first opportunity to publicly discuss the Wood signing, the executive shared that he spoke to Wood’s agent “every other day for close to two months” and that Ham and Wood “spoke or texted every day or every other day” during the near-two-month recruitment process.
The Lakers are aware of the concerns surrounding Wood — mainly that he’s a subpar defender who sometimes cares too much about his own numbers. But they deemed his courtship as a positive experience that only further confirmed their interest in signing him.
“Chris is a really articulate, very thoughtful kid,” Pelinka said. “He thought deeply about the different opportunities he had. There were several contending teams that wanted to add him just because his skills are undeniable. He’s a 7-footer who can spread the floor. He’s got length. He moves fluidly. … He’s a phenomenal talent.”
Pelinka referenced Dennis Schröder and Malik Monk as past examples of minimum signings who were able to parlay their performance on the Lakers’ platform into bigger contracts the following offseason. The Lakers are optimistic Wood’s tenure will enjoy a similar boost under the tutelage of Ham, James and Davis.
As for Wood’s fit alongside Davis in two-big lineups the coaching staff will likely implement in part due to Davis’ preference to play power forward, Ham said that the team’s base strategy and lineup configurations will be settled during the exploration process of training camp.
“We’re going to tinker and entertain all different sorts of lineups, whether it’s small ball, whether it’s going big,” Ham said. “Whether we have Austin at the point or Taurean at the 2, Rui at the 3. Or Bron at the 3 with Christian and AD. It’s been such a joy to come in and look at this team as it’s currently constructed and just visualize all the different things we can do with it.”
There seem to be infinite possibilities for Ham and the Lakers at this point of the season. That won’t always be the case, and various obstacles and challenges will inevitably arise. But Los Angeles feels it has cultivated the requisite depth, versatility and good vibes to withstand those hurdles.
That’s a new reality Pelinka and Ham believe is worth celebrating.
“It’s been a great summer,” Ham said. “The energy in the building has been great. Everybody’s been working top to bottom, just because they know it’s something special. We’ve re-established the competitive gene that this organization has been known for at a high level.”
After a summer in which the Los Angeles Lakers were lauded as offseason winners, the opening press conference of the 2023-24 season felt like a coronation.
As Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka and head coach Darvin Ham strolled to the dais at the UCLA Health Training Facility, the two Lakers leaders joyfully smiled and laughed as David Guetta’s “Play Hard” blared through the building’s speakers.
The mood and energy around the Lakers now couldn’t have been more different than at this time the previous season, a truth multiple staffers acknowledged before and after the hour-long event. The vibe was light and upbeat, with Pelinka and Ham openly touting the organization’s confidence in its ability to build on last season’s Western Conference Finals run.
“You don’t have any expectations around you, you’re just existing,” Ham said at a joint press conference with Pelinka ahead of Monday’s players-only media day. “I want to live. I came here for those expectations. … You don’t run from it. You just embrace it.”
For the first time in years, there’s no uncertainty with the Lakers’ roster or coaching staff, nor trade rumors hanging over each media availability. Los Angeles is an inner-circle contender coming off a largely drama-free summer.
The Lakers achieved their oft-repeated goal of running back most of the core group from their playoff run. LeBron James returned, Anthony Davis and Jarred Vanderbilt received contract extensions, and Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura and D’Angelo Russell all re-signed. Meanwhile, the Lakers enhanced their roster along the fringes with better shooting (Gabe Vincent, Taurean Prince and Christian Wood) and more youth and athleticism (Jaxson Hayes and Cam Reddish).
LA prioritized continuity for the first time since James arrived, a lesson Pelinka admits he’s learned via trial and error through his six years in the Lakers’ front office.
“I think any championship executive in any sport has done some things perfectly and has done some things where they’ve taken a risk and it hasn’t worked out,” Pelinka said. “I think your job as an executive or any sports executive, is if you take a risk and it doesn’t work out the way you thought, you’ve got to fix it. And I think thankfully, as a group, collectively as an organization, we obviously took a risk, we changed the way our roster was constructed, and it didn’t work. But we fixed it.”
The franchise’s energetic makeover technically started at last February’s trade deadline, but it picked back up in early August when Lakers players began trickling into the practice facility. Nearly every player has been in the gym on a daily basis. Several often came in twice a day. That list includes the soon-to-be 39-year-old James, who contemplated retirement immediately following the Denver Nuggets’ sweep of the Lakers in the conference finals.
“It’s staggering for a player who has 20 years under the hood already and is preparing for 21 like he’s a rookie,” Pelinka said of James’ work ethic and mentality. “He’s been doing 6 a.m. workouts. Probably been in our building as much as any player this offseason. Been in the weight room as much as any player. Any team LeBron’s played for, it’s been pretty uniform that his work sets the tone.
“There has been nothing but an increase in seeing that here. To me, it’s, ‘Let’s be about it, let’s not talk about it.’ He’s definitely been about it this offseason.”
Last weekend, James hosted the Lakers’ annual players-only minicamp in San Diego, the second consecutive year the team made the trek to the southern tip of California instead of flying out to Las Vegas, where previous iterations were held. All 14 players with guaranteed contracts attended. The group focused on 5-on-0 drills and shooting competitions on the floor, then going to dinner and bonding off of it.
Training camp officially starts Tuesday morning. The buzz around the facility is that Davis, who has progressively shot 3-pointers worse since his career-best shooting performance during the 2019-20 championship season, is in the best shape he’s been in entering a Lakers training camp and is shooting the ball similar to his earlier levels.
Pelinka opened up about the honest conversations that Lakers management, including Pelinka and Ham, had with Davis when they signed him to a three-year, $186 million contract extension in early August, which will keep him with the Lakers through the 2027-28 season.
“The theme was, ‘We want to commit to you, but we want you to commit to us,'” Pelinka said. “And one of the aspects that we addressed with him in that exchange was becoming a leader and being the hardest worker, and he really did that this offseason. … Training more this offseason than I’ve seen with him as a Laker. He’s taken on that leadership mantle and I think he knows that when the franchise invests in him, like we did this summer, he’s gonna return that. That’s just his character.”
“He came back leaner, stronger, quicker, more explosive,” Ham added. “People forget … he’s only 30 years old. So there’s a huge, huge road still ahead of him in how he can lead this franchise and hopefully put some more banners up here.”
The Lakers are expecting to enter training camp with every player healthy and available, according to Ham. That includes James, who dealt with a torn tendon in his right foot during the final few months of last season. James’ health is the most important factor in the Lakers’ championship aspirations. He has missed 111 games due to injury in his five seasons with the Lakers after missing just 71 games over his first 15 seasons in the league.
The Lakers are planning to manage James’ minutes and offensive workload more than in years past, and Pelinka cited the team’s depth as a way to do that. Ham said the franchise is aiming to be more efficient with James’ “game-to-game minutes, the big picture, month-to-month, different sections in the calendar.” He also joked he was happy to see James was “grandfathered in” by the NBA’s new resting policy. (The new provisions restrict when teams are allowed to sit star players, but include exceptions for players who are at least 35 years old, have logged at least 34,000 career minutes or appeared in more than 1,000 career regular-season and playoff games, all thresholds James has cleared).
Additionally, James’ decreased workload could come from added responsibility for the team’s starting backcourt of D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves, which Ham anointed in spite of his typical reluctance to reveal his starters.
The move appeared strategic considering the criticism Russell has faced since his disappointing end to the playoffs. There had been chatter that Russell would be competing for his spot with Vincent, who notably stepped in as the Miami Heat’s starting point guard during their NBA Finals run. But the Lakers loudly reaffirmed their confidence in Russell, who they re-signed on a two-year, $37 million deal with a player option in the final season.
“We want to keep the bigger picture with him of (when he) came here, he impacted our season in a huge way, led us into the playoffs, beat the defending champions in the Warriors,” Pelinka said. “… D’Angelo’s in a really good headspace.”
Ham directly addressed Russell’s disappointing Western Conference finals performance before reasserting Russell’s importance to the team.
“A lot was made about the way things finished against Denver and whatnot,” Ham said. “At the end of the day, we don’t get to where we got to without D’Angelo Russell. He’s our starting point guard. He’s our starting point guard.”
Still, the Lakers view Reaves, who broke out during the second half of last season and was one of the stories of Los Angeles’ summer, as the player most likely to relieve James of his heavy offensive burden. Ham restated his belief in Reaves’ all-star potential, which Ham said could materialize as soon as this season. Pelinka went as far as to compare Reaves’ work ethic and competitiveness to Kobe Bryant’s.
“He uniquely has that sort of Mamba gene, where it’s all about the work, it’s about playing competitive on every play, it’s about being a great teammate, not caring about the personal accolades but just the team winning,” Pelinka said.
With James and Davis also locked in, four of the Lakers’ five starting spots are cemented. The fifth spot is an open competition in training camp and the preseason, according to Ham. A case can be made for each of Hachimura, Vanderbilt and Prince given their varying strengths and skill sets. Hachimura enters camp as the internal favorite to earn the third starting frontcourt spot, according to team sources not authorized to speak publicly.
Perhaps the biggest X factor on the roster is Wood, who joined the team in early September. In Pelinka’s first opportunity to publicly discuss the Wood signing, the executive shared that he spoke to Wood’s agent “every other day for close to two months” and that Ham and Wood “spoke or texted every day or every other day” during the near-two-month recruitment process.
The Lakers are aware of the concerns surrounding Wood — mainly that he’s a subpar defender who sometimes cares too much about his own numbers. But they deemed his courtship as a positive experience that only further confirmed their interest in signing him.
“Chris is a really articulate, very thoughtful kid,” Pelinka said. “He thought deeply about the different opportunities he had. There were several contending teams that wanted to add him just because his skills are undeniable. He’s a 7-footer who can spread the floor. He’s got length. He moves fluidly. … He’s a phenomenal talent.”
Pelinka referenced Dennis Schröder and Malik Monk as past examples of minimum signings who were able to parlay their performance on the Lakers’ platform into bigger contracts the following offseason. The Lakers are optimistic Wood’s tenure will enjoy a similar boost under the tutelage of Ham, James and Davis.
As for Wood’s fit alongside Davis in two-big lineups the coaching staff will likely implement in part due to Davis’ preference to play power forward, Ham said that the team’s base strategy and lineup configurations will be settled during the exploration process of training camp.
“We’re going to tinker and entertain all different sorts of lineups, whether it’s small ball, whether it’s going big,” Ham said. “Whether we have Austin at the point or Taurean at the 2, Rui at the 3. Or Bron at the 3 with Christian and AD. It’s been such a joy to come in and look at this team as it’s currently constructed and just visualize all the different things we can do with it.”
There seem to be infinite possibilities for Ham and the Lakers at this point of the season. That won’t always be the case, and various obstacles and challenges will inevitably arise. But Los Angeles feels it has cultivated the requisite depth, versatility and good vibes to withstand those hurdles.
That’s a new reality Pelinka and Ham believe is worth celebrating.
“It’s been a great summer,” Ham said. “The energy in the building has been great. Everybody’s been working top to bottom, just because they know it’s something special. We’ve re-established the competitive gene that this organization has been known for at a high level.”
- 16,711
- 17,709
Darvin Ham when opposing team goes on a run and doesn’t call time out:
- 44,833
- 66,536
Rui should have a big year. Ham and Rob were praising the work he put in with Lebron all summer
- 92,691
- 128,893
- 44,833
- 66,536
Bynum had the internet going nuts that year
dontsteponmyshoes
Supporter
- 13,260
- 16,402
One of my favorite teams ever
- 7,408
- 3,904
As much as I want Jrue, it’s the damn Blazers. They ain’t answering Pelinkas phone call
- 37,530
- 13,030
Guards: Reaves (32) / DLo (30) / Gabe (28 ) / Max ( 8 )
Forwards / Center: AD (34) / Bron (32) / Rui (24) / Vando (22) / Prince (16) / Wood (16)
Forwards / Center: AD (34) / Bron (32) / Rui (24) / Vando (22) / Prince (16) / Wood (16)
- 18,750
- 13,097
Wow Celtics traded all their defenders this summer
- 39,346
- 40,794
F them
- 44,833
- 66,536
Very few of the top teams have bullets left to shoot when the next wave of stars get traded...
