Kurt Helin @basketballtalk Report: Lakers, Wizards will not get meeting with Kevin Durant. Knicks still hoping. Kamenetzky Brothers @KamBrothers The upside to no Durant meeting is the Lakers won’t miss out on more realistic targets while sitting on their cap room for a 1% shot. AK LAL grabs the headline here, but the Wiz are supposed to be ahead of LAL in regards to their direction, plus DC is his hometown to boot. Lol DC should be embarrassed. Kamenetzky spits the truth about LAL's part tho, would be just a waste of time Get on Whiteside ASAP [some homo] if need be
I was asking for this to happen early on. That the Lakers forget about wasting their time on LeBron or Durant, skip on the marginal stars on mediocre teams like DeRozan who is a bad shooter or Batum who i like as a role player but not a max player and not someone we need. Instead that they focus razor sharp on guys who are truly great at their job and play a position we need. That is Whiteside who should be our first priority. Our starting PF is not a good defender and specially not at the rim. Whiteside cleans that right up and has superstar C potential. And now that we have Zubac who is a good FT shooter we would have a nice C tandem to play with in case teams get foul with Whiteside. We have a lot of depth at PF as well, specially if MWP and Brandon Bass come back. Plus Ingram could probably play there if needed too in a small ball setting. Well if he puts on some muscle. And our second priority should be Mike Conley. Just because he is the best PG out there and just such a solid professional. He can play off the ball, defend, shoot, penetrate, rebound, etc... he can do everything you ask him and is incredibly coachable. We can start 3 guards and have Ingram come off the bench as a rookie with Clarkson starting at SF. Or have Clarkson backup both guard spots. Either way the ball handling on this team would be epic with 3 guys with PG skills getting heavy minutes. Plus you still have Lou Williams who came in as a PG too. That would be one of the best 4 guard rotations in the league and would keep the bad turnovers down and lead to many easy opportunities for our bigs.
I love pau, but hes 35, probably looking for a ring, and the last time he played with us in an up tempo offense it didn't work out so well. Whiteside or biyombo + noah @ C FTW
No thanks, doesn't finish inside and in the post well enough anymore and all he wants to do is post up and get touches down there or else he cries about it
yeah we've been down that road before i like pau but his best days are behind him and his skills are only going to decline more
Eh fuck that, even though are chances our slim to none, we sure as hell ain't bowing out like that when he is letting the fucking Celtics, Knicks, and Clippers meet with him
Lots of dough to spend. Big guys aren't coming. Time to overspend with some established vets that are just productive and let the young guys learn how to play in the nba.
Nope, his numbers around the rim were at an all time low as a Bull and he moaned about his role in Chicago too, not just with LAL. He's older and can't explode in the paint and in the post on a consistent basis anymore, but still demands to be a big part of the offense. His crying with the LAL stemmed from D'antoni not believing in posting up in general + D'antoni didn't believe he could defend PFs anymore and he was right, Earl Clark was much better at it. Kobe was only ever good for Pau..Pau had an 0-12 playoff record before joining Kobe.
Whiteside has been my number 1 target all along. Exactly what we need on this team, and he is still young enough to build a team around. I'm just hoping we don't blow all of our money on other FA's who are good and/or older, but will not put us over the top. We need to be patient, IMO. Adding someone else like Derozan/Parsons/Batum/Barnes/Beal is nice and we will be a good to very good team, but ultimately that is not a championship caliber team. If you can bring LeBron or Durant over, that's a different story but lets be realistic here.
Russell Ingram Batum Randle Whiteside OR Conley Russell Ingram Randle Whiteside I'd be pleased with either one
With KD, the Lakers have just a late round, desperate knock out, punchers chance, and that is just about it. It would only make sense for him if for some reason, he was letting go the chance of winning a championship now for some larger dream of helping to rebuild a team in his image. But that doesn't make sense when you think about where he is in his career and what maybe left. Is it worth a try? But only if he was sending out strong feelers to the Lakers about his interest, and the initial list suggests nope....not in the first tier. Whiteside is a practical get, but I do worry about giving max money to him. Would he be that much of a game changer? If we really don't have a choice, the. I guess yes. In the long run, it might work out for the best. Get Whiteside, gel with the team, then work on the FA coming out in the next couple of years to make a real push for a chip. And please, no Barnes. He was a complete flameout in the playoffs and wasn't even the 4th option on the team. His career kinda faded with the rise of the big three.
Put it in context I was responding to a statement that Pau wanted the ball thus my comment about Kobe.
The Bulls had Rose and Butler and 2 different coaches. Not saying he's the be all end all but IMO he's not done. The Olympics will be a good test. WE were in the bottom of the league in FG efficiency.