To be fair, Lebron did want to trade the whole team.

i didn't think anything would be more entertaining than watching the lakers miss the playoffs but watching Barry have a complete mental breakdown on twitter might be even better.

I'm seeing people saying LeBron made wrong decision to go to LAL. I don't really agree w/ that at all.

Year 1 going bad and missing the playoffs was always live to happen.

Given LA as a FA destination and the rookie contracts I still think it was the obvious move when you consider that it isn't like he would really go to boston or philly, it just wasn't going to happen.

One thing I will say is that taking the 4/140 rather than take 5-6 mill a year less was a bad move given he'll get that money back and then some as his brand grows from the Lakers winning. But he's given the owners a discount his entire career and is high up in the PA now so I guess that was difficult to do, still the correct decision tho.

I think people way overrate where players partly reside during a season as being a big force to players making 30 million plus a year. During the season they are on the road the half of the time and working most of the time at home. They have the resources to comfortably navigate and manage most situations.

LeBron primarily made the move to set himself up in Los Angeles after his career is over. He knew where he was going to be when he retired and he hopes to make an impact while there because bringing success to the lakers, his new home town for life. Things get a little muddy when LeBron is a player, an agent to other players and the Lakers GM, though, that definitely gives them a slight edge in some cases. However there are top tier players who want nothing to do with that circus.

I think in the past it might have had bigger sway but now access to nba games is fairly ubiquitous.

I don't think saying LeBron James isn't signing with the 6ers is overrating where players want to reside. It's just a huge longshot he is gonna do that and the bball fit wasn't even great.

Not sure Simmons/Embiid would've wanted it either.

I think he looked at LAL as a good bball situation and saying he didn't is just being results oriented. They had guys young guys on rookie deals and it is LA. And it had no appearance whatsoever of him "latching on" to a team.

The team got rid of Brook Lopez and Julius Randle to sign Rajon Rondo and Lance Stephenson, money wasn't even the issue, the team was just real poorly designed.

They seemed to assume they'd be able to get another star via trade, and then didn't.

Tbf Randle probably wasn't taking the QO with them. Don't think that situation could be resolved unless the Lakers were willing to pay him.

They also didn't have to let DLo go either, but who's counting.

Then pay him. I don't understand why people think it hamstrings a team's cap space when they pay a guy coming off a rookie deal. In all but a few cases not confined to the summer of 2016, second contracts are tradeable over their entirety of their deals.

Randle ended up signing for $9M so you can wait him out and match the offer sheet. They prioritized Caldwell-Pope, Rondo, and Stephenson(those guys combine for $25M!) as a deliberate strategy and that was an atrocious error.

They didn't NEED to get rid of DLo but they did need to ditch Mozgov's contract for Lebron space so that transaction is far down the list of mistakes.

KCP is especially baffling and disappointing, Burks, Ellington, Hood, and Korver all got traded for ~nothing this season and they threw away a real serious chunk of their budget away on a mediocre role player on a one year deal.

dude is probably the biggest reggie jackson stan in the world. very surprising that some of the stars in okc would berate him for being not enough help!

Magic and Pelinka suck as GMs, that's the whole story. They've been total garbage, and deserve no credit for LeBron, he was going to the Lakers anyway.

The Lakers botched things when they chose Phil over Jerry West, and again more recently when they chose Magic over West. This franchise under West for the past couple years would look a lot better.

Pay him with the expectation you can deal him later if you're trying to build a superteam?

What if you can't deal him later?

Paying him like 4/80 would've been a pretty big risk.

I'm more sympathetic to the "He has no leverage, offer him QO and let him wait it out" but if you don't think he is going to be on your team in the future then why not just move on from him?

They didn't have to pay him 4/80. They could have let the restricted free-agency market dictate his salary then matched. With so few teams having max space they could have held onto him, or at worse let him take the QO. Your odds of retaining him beyond this deal are slim, but that's a better option than not having him on your team.

I don't think we've seen any RFAs be on immovable deals during normal times.

And wrt Mosgov, they traded him a year before they had any need to, and we all know that the cost to dispose of his contract goes down the further into the deal you go. They also lost the possibility of him being added as salary-filler in a trade for a superstar.

+500 TZ Points

+500 TZ Points

+500 TZ Points

This is a really good point wrt Mozgov.

Couple of great matchups tonight.

Boston and Toronto has some implications as Boston would probably like to keep pace with Philly and Indiana in the race for the 3 seed and staying out of the MIL side of the bracket. I'm not sure how big it is for either team as I think Boston plays all the top teams similarly, except ofc Philly whom they seem to own.

The OKC/Denver matchup tonight is HUUUUUUUGE for both teams.

- If Denver wins they not only lock up the tiebreaker after having beaten them twice thus far, but they take a commanding 4 game lead over OKC for the 2 seed with less than 20 to play and similarly-difficult schedules.

- If OKC wins, they move to within 2 games of Denver which is probably closer to 1 with Denver playing their final tilt in OKC on a B2B, and they also to within a game and a half on both other tiebreaker scenarios.

The difference between the 2 and 3 seed is massive for the first round, it's the difference between playing Jazz/Rockets and SAS/LAC/LAL/SAC. I think as constructed neither OKC nor Denver are appreciably better than Utah and Houston, but would beat the other teams in 5 or 6.

IMO, an OKC loss puts them at <10% to get the 2 seed, and a win puts them around 40-45%, which is a massive, massive swing for one game.

Some NBA Pros won't play tonight in OKC/Denver.

Are Minny still a shot to playoff?

They now have the same record as the Lakers, with 5 of their next 7 against sub 500 teams.

Kareem being a great person

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2...-rings-auction

Hardaway is really the only true disaster. If Randle gets Larry Nance's deal, that's not a bad thing to have going forward and is also a much better trade piece when you're trying to trade for, I dunno, Anthony Davis. I don't think he gets Capela money so there's just no downside.

This is a good point. Mozgov has been traded twice since the DLo trade, including once for dead salary(Dwight) that Brooklyn immediately waived and could've stretched to only have a ~6M cap hit this year. But they also got Kuzma out of that deal, so I'll stick with it only being in the "kinda bad" column of the ledger.

Very cool.

I'm disappointed there's no "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: BUSTO?" thread. I mean, this is 2+2.

They definitely aren't out of it. They are 25-22 with a +2.4PD since the Butler trade, and that's missing a huge chunk of time from Robert Covington, who's a very good player, and then almost zero PG depth. Roco is due back soon from what I've read, which is a boost if his body is right.

The Lakers were 19-14 with a +1.6PD prior to Lebron's injury, and I'm not even sure who the better team is right now as constructed.

Minny's issue is that they have the tougher schedule than LAL, although not by much. I think they can overcome LAL, but then SAC/LAC/SAS all have some of the easier remaining schedules while still being up a couple games.

How lousy the Lakers lose to Pelicans and Memphis back-to-back in post All-Star push. Horrible. I still think they'll make it but wouldn't bet much.

One thing that I have found misleading is the analysts referring to the pre-legroin Lakers as a #4 seed as if that was how good they were prior to him going down. They were T4 with 3 other teams prior to him going down, and 1.5 games out of 9th... after having played the 26th toughest schedule.

The notion that they were world-beaters or even a top 10 team before Bron went down seems a little off to me.