5 THINGS

OK, here it is. Funny in that I had started this prior to the podcast where Marc Stein floated the same theory. Scary because that means there is more than a kernel of truth. Sad because this is the current state of Laker Nation. We have reached the Waiting on Kyrie Zone.

1. Don’t get it wrong, this ain’t no miracle for the Lakers or their fans. This is, in my opinion, bringing a player less reliable than Russell is. Oh, it’s Thursday before a lobster boil in Kansas? Sorry guys, can’t make the game. Random social justice cause that I can Tweet about but actually do very little? Gonna need a week of personal time with full pay to get through it. The Earth is flat, nah just kidding I know it’s round I just use my platform for bullshyte. That is the maturity and character of the person the Lakers now seem to be focusing far too much attention on. Give me Russ over Kyrie all day, every day from now until the end of time. Kyrie is a joke, not a serious basketball player.
2. Ok, ok, got that outta my system…kinda. On the court Irving is a far superior fit alongside AD and LeBron than Russ is. Kyrie can shoot, is as able a distributor and has maybe the best handle in the game today. It’s the baggage…so very much baggage. It threatens to suck anything that comes into it’s orbit into an absurdist pit of wackiness without end. You want to challenge your new coach? Throw that mess on his plate and walk away.
3. Ok, ok…ok. Now I really have gotten that out of my system. There aren’t many paths for Irving to become a Laker. The first is the least likely which is straight trade with the Nets. Russ at $47,063,478 and Kyrie at $36,503,300 means there is too large a gap and the Nets have to send another player or few. Seth Curry at $8,496,653 just about does it and certainly does if you throw in Kessler (who?) Edwards at $1,563,518. There are other permutations that can be juggled but the real issue is the Nets have signaled they do not want anything to do with Westbrook. This route feels DOA.
4. Multi team trade. What this really should read is three team trade with OKC, Brooklyn and LA. No other team has the cap space or the inclination to hoard draft picks like the Thunder do. Are there other teams with the requisite cap space, or clearable cap space? Sure, but those aren’t realistic options, IMO. Real hard for me seeing OKC doing the Lakers a favor, of course the cost would be the last two tradeable draft picks in our stockpile, maybe Reaves to boot. The one thing this path would do is open up the door to adding THT and Nunn into the deal and getting below the tax apron thus opening up better spending tools. Still, hard for me to see this one happening in so short of time.
5. Everyone’s dream team. Irving opts out and signs with LA for the MLE. Big 4 of Russ, Kyrie, LeBron and AD. The stuff nightmares are made of. For Laker fans. Who would get the ball? Who would be the worst defender? How often would Kyrie play when paid so little? Still, in all reality, this path seems the most likely to me for Irving to wind up in the purple and gold. The fit would be…interesting. Certainly would give the Lakers another ball handler and some shooting to maybe open up the floor a little but it really just looks and feels like too many cooks in the kitchen. Unless it’s a race to see who plays in fewer games: Davis or Irving (Irving would get my bet).

All in all, it’s a small chance but a real one. No GM is likely to want to do either Kyrie or the Lakers any favors. The Lakers would be insane if they gave Kyrie a multi-year extension since it’s all but guaranteed he’ll miss large portions of every season (currently averaging 55 games/season and at 30 years old he won’t be getting any healthier), at least without a trial season on the MLE…where he will likely miss a boatload of games to pout about how little he is being paid. The talent is undeniable, and so is the petulant attitude and lack of seriousness when it comes to being a pro athlete. He should come with a warning: buyer beware, player likely to throw a pique and be out of contact for stretches of the season. But it is the Lakers so anything is possible.

The NBA is entering the home stretch of the 2021-22 season and Laker fans have all but tuned out the games as they had been riveted first by a coaching search (now complete and welcome to the dumpster fire Coach Ham!) and now by the ponderous and burdensome search for a palatable trade for one Russell Westbrook. What tastes good to fans seemingly isn’t acceptable to Rob Pelinka and the Laker ownership cabal. With the news coming from the internet that the Lakers are unwilling to attach future draft considerations to a Westbrook trade, Russ signaling his enthusiasm for Ham’s hiring, and the tepid market for Westbrook in general it would seem the Lakers are headed towards a second season of our version of a Big Three. So, while this writer has long been of the opinion there was a decent to good chance that Russ would continue his career in the purple and gold, I wanted to look at some things that just might change the equation for trading Russ.

1. The Lakers move off their current and alleged stance of no future draft considerations attached in a deal for Westbrook. While this may seem the obvious choice to some it’s not a reach to understand where Rob is coming from in publicly declaring such a stance. First off, the term “news flash” does not apply to anything related to the Lakers wanting to move off the Westbrook contract and improve the roster or at least make a decent lateral move. File that one under “No Doy, Man”. So Rob could be deploying an absurd stratagem of “Nuh-Uh, Dude, we WANT to keep Russ, like, fer sure, man!!!!” because like any desperate gambler you have to at least try a bluff when you’re down in chips, short on assets and daylight is creeping into the room signaling that tomorrow has arrived. I actually think Rob is serious when he says he’d rather ride it out. There are quite a few benefits the most obvious being that if the three core players can play more the team will perform better. Russell will be an unrestricted free agent next season and could either be retained on a team-friendly extension or seek employment elsewhere thus freeing up a plethora of cap space to rebuild the roster. Again. For the third time since winning a title.
2. Damien Lillard demands a trade. This is one of the things that I could see severely altering the NBA landscape. If Dame Time decides he wants no part of a Portland rebuild it’s easy to see a plethora of teams looking to get in on that action. While I don’t think the Lakers have an attractive trade package to offer Portland they could potentially get in on a multiteam deal that facilitates Russ being moved elsewhere. Trading for Dame would probably take better draft assets than we currently have. Could the Lakers up the ante and look to include THT, Nunn, Reaves, Johnson, Gabriel both draft picks and bring back Lillard and Bledsoe? Honestly…I’m not sure I would make that deal…but that is the kind of thing that could potentially alter the equation for a Westbrook trade.
3. Donovan Mitchell demands a trade. With the news that Quinn Snyder has walked away from his coaching gig in Utah came the not really surprising news that Donovan Mitchell is uneasy with the direction of the franchise and is seeking some form of re-assurement. If he doesn’t get that it’s possible he could demand a trade. Like Damien this has the potential to shift the NBA landscape. While it would make a lot more sense for the Jazz to try and move Gobert let’s assume for the sake of this article that Spida is adamant about changing teams. If so the Lakers could be in the position of trading Russ, the draft picks and Nunn (should he opt in) for Spida, Clarkson and Gay which would be the kind of cap space that would allow Utah to revamp the roster. Again, the issue with that kind of trade is that Utah isn’t really a destination franchise, especially with a star player asking out, a coach walking away, and, well, Utah. So it’s hard for one to imagine a bevy of free agents going there but you never know. Ainge could be in a place where he’s excited about a total rebuild and while this trade is short on draft assets it does get three large money players off the book and give Utah a ton of flexibility to either tear it down more by trading Rudy.
4. Utah looks to appease Spida by trading Rudy Gobert and Rudy Gay. Had Coach Snyder stayed in Utah I really wouldn’t see this happening. Donovan and Rudy have had their differences, ironed them out, and more differences came up. While adding Russell to Utah’s roster without moving Mike Conley doesn’t make a ton of sense they could pursue a separate Conley trade elsewhere. Russ for Rudy squared works in the trade machine and, in theory, Utah might not ask for a pick to get it done in order to keep Mitchell happy. There are few centers with the defensive acumen that Gobert has. While assuredly not a stretch five does it really matter? You allow AD to play the 4 for the next 4 years left on Gobert’s deal, you have the lob threat LeBron loves to work with and as elite a defender as you can find in the NBA. You can bench him in the playoffs and go small without worry because you have Davis on the roster. While not the NBA altering deal the above are this one is a little easier to imagine going through given the news out of Utah.
5. Zach LaVine pulls an AD. This one, in my opinion, is dream fodder. LaVine isn’t the talent AD was, Chicago ain’t the Pelicans in terms of calling a bluff, and LaVine will find a dry market when it comes to major franchises. Cap space is low across the league and the pool of talent is small. So, unless Zach has an itch for max money in OKC his best shot is to stay right where he is. But, again, for the sake of the article if Zach and Klutch did try and maneuver him to LA in a S&T that’s really the last option I see the Lakers having in terms of a realistic Russ trade that also opens the door back to contention.

In my opinion it will take a superstar demanding to move that represents a clear improvement to the team for Rob to move off his draft pick stance. I can still see them trading for John Wall straight up or even maybe Gordon Hayward and some junk but neither of those gets the team to the NBA Finals again. Who knows what Wall has left and Hayward is the small forward version of Davis: solid when healthy but can’t be counted on to be available when they’re needed most, or at all. For my part I’d rather keep Russ than trade for a broken player or one like Wall who’s skillset largely mirrors Westbrook’s but hasn’t played in what will be just under two years when next season rolls around. You don’t get better that way, you just get older. After that I doubt there’s much interest from team’s that made the playoffs this season or had down years like Atlanta and New York. A Russ trade is one that signals a full rebuild, or as close as you get to one, and neither of those teams are i that position. They’re looking for improvements on the margin, little tweaks to the roster not wholesale tear-downs. That is the issue with the size of Russ’s deal: there just aren’t many teams looking for that level of restructuring this summer. The playin and lottery tweaks have made the league tilt towards wanting to be competitive all season long since your draft odds don’t dramatically shift with losing. We’ve already seen how teams in the playin one season can ascend to really competitive the following one in Memphis, how chemistry builds a winner in Milwaukee, and the fact is Russ isn’t the kind of player that alters your trajectory at this point. So my advice to you is invest in trade hopes and dreams but you should also buckle up and prepare yourself to ride this out with Russ on the roster.

I am remembering the entertaining and informative ESPN docuseries, The Last Dance. A poignant reminder to Laker fans as to how quickly and utterly things can deteriorate internally when the blame game starts, or front office executives think they know what a coach needs or which players are worth more than others. As far as the game today is concerned, for me it’s a non-event as I’ll be going to a friends wedding so enjoy. There wasn’t anything left worth paying attention to in this season a couple games after the All Star Break. This team does not, and never did, have the goods.

1. The Blame Game. This is where all parties involved need to tread more carefully than any of them seem to acknowledge. LeBron James is not a robot and if you actually want him to play here beyond next season then they should start acting like that. Great NBA players are people, too. They have wrinkles, bad days, and personality issues of their own. In LeBron’s case it’s that he demands the front office surround him with star power enough to compete for championships and is willing to say or do just about anything to make sure that happens. The fallout from Scottie Pippin not checking back into a game has lasted decades. The fallout from the front office throwing LeBron under the bus while seemingly taking almost zero onus on themselves for the Westbrook trade can do as much damage over the course of this summer. There is never, ever a winner in the Blame Game. So stop playing it.
2. The Health Issue. It’s no secret our two best players have missed a grip of games over the last two seasons, benefitted from a three month break in the season when they did win a banner, and are, indeed, aging as we speak. Barring an unlikely as hell trade for either AD or LeBron they are who we will be building around this summer and so keeping them on the floor for 3/4’s of the season moves to the second highest priority after fixing the team. We said it last season, this summer, during the season and still today: we are going as far as James and Davis take us. It will be true until they depart. THT is not taking us to the highest level. Matt McClung, Wenyan and Stanley are window dressing at the mall, they will not alter the direction of the franchise in a meaningful way. We NEED James and Davis to play and they need to play at a fairly high level. Putting the injuries aside, LeBron turned in a historic campaign and played his rear end off all season long. Davis…well, he was pretty good on D but otherwise continued his regression from three and his jumper continues to become a secondary weapon. This won’t help our spacing issues. We need Davis to be the perimeter threat he once was.
3. The Westbrook Dilemma. The fit of Russel is poor, that is no longer debatable. The ability to move Westbrook for players of true impact is also poor and, frankly, unlikely. When the best you can do is John Wall, Gordon Hayward or a player exception for your $47 million dollar PG you’re backed into a corner. That’s putting it nicely. Russ’s best ability is his availability, he’s not an elite scorer and his elite passing comes with equally elite turnover capacity. His price tag, while expiring, is enormous and will make smaller market teams who are constantly wary of going into the luxury tax zone more wary to deal for him. Large market franchises have signaled through the same channels the Lakers use to troll their superstars that they aren’t all that interested in bailing us out. That leaves us with some fairly unpalatable choices. At least that’s how it looks now. You never know what can change over the course of a playoff series or what other costly player will demand this summer (I’m looking at you Dame…). But, regardless of what LeBron says in his interviews about Steph Curry or other elite shooters, the return for Russ will likely be, at best, a break even affair. At worst we’ll trade our two draft picks for John Wall or Gordon Hayward who play for less than half of a season and don’t impact our winning chances all that much.
4. The Young Dudes. Look…it’s really great that Stanley has a team option and got back into the NBA, that Wenyan found a team that could use his athletic ability and Matt McClung will get some run today. These are not needle moving players. They are roster spots 12, 13, and 14 on a championship team. They are DNP-CD during the playoffs, maybe Johnson sees some consistent minutes of the three in a specific match up. There’s a reason why these guys were in the G-League, 6th team in 3 seasons and waiver wire fodder. It’s because they’re just not that good but play really hard. Now I will be the first one to embrace a player or two on a roster like that, they are a necessary component to the recipe that constitutes a successful NBA team and we don’t need three of them. But they do not make us contenders in any way. Depending on the coach we bring in they might not even play just because they lack touch from the outside.
5. Farewell Frank…? The funny thing about all the blame game chatter is how it predicts Frank as being the fall guy while being short on reasons why. The scuttlebutt is more focused on the front office, James, Davis and Westbrook. While whomever is leaking this BS (Kurt) out of the Lakers (Rambis) is likely congratulating themselves on shielding themselves (Kurt and Linda) from Jeannie’s wrath it also has the duplicate effect of shielding Frank from some of the blame. For every “Westbrook didn’t respect Frank guys!!!” article someone leaks to Silver Screen and Roll or to the Kamentzky Bros. there is also a ready-made excuse for Jeannie to ultimately retain the coach they are certainly going to be paying for next season. Given the ownership groups issues with spending, Frank’s recent banner he helped hang, and the fact he’s under contract next season it’s not outside the realm of reality that Frank mans the sidelines once again next season. I won’t go so far as to predict that will happen, feels like somebody other than Russ needs to take the fall, but it could happen.

Anyhow, that’s the last Fiver for this season. There’s nothing else to say that I haven’t said since training camp and the horse is well-flogged. If you were to put a gun to my head I would predict Frank gets fired, we trade Russ and our picks for Wall and we have a season a lot like this one next year. I don’t have any faith left in Rob or ownership to make smart decisions and our assets aren’t going to bring back great talent. Wall and Hayward are awful options, our coaching search last time didn’t inspire any confidence, and LeBron can’t keep this up forever. At some point he will begin to age and it could simply take the form of impressive stats in losing efforts and games missed. One way or another Rob has to thread quite the needle this summer and he doesn’t have any more mulligans to spare. The Lakers have their proverbial back against the proverbial wall.

Here’s hoping he can. Go Lakers.

Done. If you saw what I saw I thought we were done the first game back from the ASB but kept coming back out of a stubborn belief in the purple and gold. Not so much the players currently wearing it but the spirit of what the Lakers are, to me anyway. In the end, like many things in life, faith wasn’t enough for this team to actually accomplish great things on the court. You need luck and, more than that, young players with skills and talent. We ain’t gone none of that. We got problems. Epic problems.

1. LeBron should shut it down right now. There really is no conceivable reason that he should push it. San Antonio is just as likely to overtake us with or without him playing on one leg and a bad ankle. But if he blows out a knee or an Achilles compensating for his injuries we’re in trouble next season and that’s an avoidable situation now.
2. No need to activate AD. Same as the above. Why risk anything now that will have an impact on next season? Makes no sense. Take the hit on the chin, realize whatever you did wasn’t enough, stop with the excuses and show up ready to ball in October when camp breaks.
3. What to do with Russ. Frankly, at this point, I think that all depends on Monk. If we can keep Malik without having to move Russ I think the Lakers run this back again. They’ll have ample excuses as to why it will work now. They’ll have fired Frank, Russ and LeBron have already figured out how to co-exist on a basketball court together, and injuries/bad luck/COVID/blah blah blah/ hampered us this season and lightning can’t strike the same team/players three times…can it? The options seem few and far between. W&Sing him sounds like it’s pretty much off the table based on reports coming out of Laker Land. Trading with the Knicks seems off the table at this point as well which is a bummer as that was a team I thought just might want to actually add Russell. That basically leaves two options:
   -trade Russ and either Reaves or a pick or two for Houston to turn around and buy him out for John Wall (I don’t see them sending us players who can actually contribute)
   -Dame asks to be moved specifically to the Lakers and reminds ownership how much he’s given to the franchise.
   The Wall option to me is a no-go. Watching Klay Thompson play like a shell of himself save for a game or two here and there is all I need but I could easily cobble together a length list of speedy guards who never came close to re-capturing the impact they had prior to an injury like John Wall suffered. We don’t need more old, hobbled or slow. Toss in that we’d be starting all over, again, trying to incorporate three ball-dominant players after the ones we have basically just figured out how to kind of play together and I just don’t see the logic. I can even see letting Monk walk rather than go down the Wall path, honestly. I’d have to give that some serious thought as to which side of the fence I’d want land, though.
4. Fire Frank? Again, there are a plethora of excuses why they might keep him on. Injuries, bad luck, he started playing the way the analytics told him, he listened to Kurt and also played Dwight more, he won us a banner, and so on. I think his time here has come to an end…but I also didn’t expect the Lakers to cheap out on this season like they have. So now another factor gets introduced: is there such a liquidity problem amongst the Buss kids/Laker ownership that they don’t want to pay 2 coaches? Remember they low-balled 4 other candidates prior to landing on Frank. My gut tells me they’ll still let him go…but I’m far from 100% certain of it at this point. Too many odd, terrible choices have been made in the name of saving some money to be ignored.
5. The rest of the team. Maybe keep Carmelo? Maybe, maybe keep Dwight? After that burn it down. Trade Nunn, if you can, maybe package him with THT for a player’s exception we can turn around and sign Monk and a real center with. No offense to the player who has the Bone Bruise That Will Not Heal but you need to go. I don’t honestly care what a 2 year old highlight reel shows you used to be able to do, I don’t believe you have heart anymore, that you’re willing to do the work needed to be a winner. So see the door Kendrick, if he opts in. I think he will based on how terribly this has all gone and how little money will be out there. Wenyan…not gonna lie, he shouldn’t be playing on a championship team. Has it been a fuzzy and warm story for this dismal campaign? Sure, and I always root for the under dogs. But we’re not trying to film the NBA version of The Mighty Ducks we’re trying to win. Does anyone really believe that WG is a rotational player on a winning team? I don’t see it. Since we’re likely keeping Stanley Johnson we have already checked the “plays with a high motor but can’t shoot well” box. We should learn from our mistakes of this season, that you need players who can do something other than take up space in order to compete in the NBA. All the aged vet minimums after anyone listed above should not be re-signed, I don’t care how chipper they are in the locker room.

Bonus point, for me, would be to fire Rob Pelinka who basically orchestrated this poorly run garage sale of an NBA team. I hold him to the fire more than anyone because it’s his job to evaluate and sign the best talent available and we didn’t do that. It’s his job to let the superstars know whey we’re not just going to do whatever they want and we didn’t do that. It’s his job to convince ownership that spending a little more on a player like Alex Caruso, who to be sure would not have been enough to make this season drastically different but when it comes down to a game or two he does swing that needle your way, is totally worth it. Rob failed every test presented to a GM of an elite sport franchise this season and should pay the exact same price Frank Vogel will. He won’t, and he should go to every mural of Kobe and Gigi in Los Angeles and the world beyond and thank them personally. I’m not sure anything other than his relationship with Kobe is saving him, to be honest.