2018-2019 NBA Regular Season Thread

[raptorlife4]

LMFAO AT THE LAKERS

 

[DJ]

Magic has stepped down.....man of his word.

 

[raptorlife4]

 

[ericd7633]

Charlotte due to either better conference or division record

So if Charlotte wins tonight are the heat eliminated?

 

[raptorlife4]

I actually think this is a great thing for the Lakers moving forward. This and trading LeBron

 

[Bolts]

Vlade Divac > Magic Johnson

 

[Shanemansj13]

Magic has stepped down.....man of his word.

What a horrible job he did

 

[Shanemansj13]

I actually think this is a great thing for the Lakers moving forward. This and trading LeBron

Cavs get Zion and back to CLE goes Lebron lol

 

[Sir Robin Of Camelot]

Just so you know... we are here.

 

[Shanemansj13]

Great moment for Channing Frye

 

[bksballer89]

So if Charlotte wins tonight are the heat eliminated?

Only if detroit also win.

They need Detroit to lose their final games and Charlotte to lose tomorrow

 

[WiggyRuss]

How the Lakers won the LeBron sweepstakes but ended up back...

Great article on The Athletic about the Lakers and LeBron published today. Some excerpts that are just un fucking believable:

James had reached the Finals eight straight years with teams that surrounded him with shooters. The Lakers intentionally did not do this.

They had a different vision. Johnson laid it out during a lengthy appearance on ESPN during a Lakers summer league Las Vegas game. He credited the fact he “watched every series” in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

“You’re not going to out-Golden State Golden State,” Johnson said during an interview that lasted nearly 20 minutes. “Everybody is talking about, ‘The Lakers don’t have shooting.’ Oh, we’ve got shooting. (HAHAHAHAHA) But we saw all the teams in the playoffs that had shooting, (and) they got beat.” The Lakers should have anticipated the flaws in that logic.

What could be missed by failing to make those calls? For one, the idea that LeBron would somehow play off the ball was preposterous, even if he signed off on it in the summer.

(where are all the people that told me LeBron would welcome playing off the ball when I told them that was some of the stupid shit I ever heard last summer?)

-------Johnson is seen as an absentee executive, a label best illustrated by one moment last season. At the end of a week the Lakers were criticized for not backing Walton in the wake of LaVar Ball’s allegations that the coach had lost control of the locker room, Johnson turned up in Hawaii, on lockdown in a fallout shelter following the false missile alert.

----This season, Pelinka, the general manager, took a proactive role in sitting in on coaches’ meetings and even requested the Lakers change the way their scouting reports were packaged for players, according to multiple sources. While a GM collaborating with a coaching staff on how to present information may not be without precedent, this was seen by those on the ground as another example of Pelinka unnecessarily meddling in low-level affairs.

-------But the way Johnson described this Lakers plan, in an interview with SiriusXM NBA Radio, caught LeBron off guard. Magic said the Lakers wanted to watch LeBron’s minutes and get the ball out of his hands some, because otherwise “now it is Cleveland all over again and we don’t want that.”

“I didn’t like that when I heard it, because, I mean, four straight Finals,” James told The Athletic earlier this season.


-----A schism developed in the locker room. Sources around the team said it was apparent that the young players no longer trusted James, believing he was operating behind the scenes to get them traded to New Orleans.

---At one point, some in Walton’s circles feared Paul was trying to use the Davis situation to leverage a coaching change, with the premise being that his arrival would require a higher-caliber coach. (unreal- Rich Paul trying to maneuver to get Walton fired-- an AGENT)

---Kuzma and his people came away from their chat feeling reassured, a source close to the situation told The Athletic. Pelinka told the second-year forward that he was key to the Lakers’ future and that, unless it was a trade for one of the game’s three best players, he wasn’t trading him.

A year earlier, Larry Nance Jr. approached Pelinka with a similar question.

Nance Jr. and his fiancée, his college girlfriend, were interested in buying a house. He wanted to get a sense of whether the Lakers planned on keeping him around, and Pelinka told him that the Lakers would only trade him if it meant landing one of the game’s three best players. He told him to buy the house, multiple sources confirmed. (Nance should never have trusted a guy, Pelinka, who swindled a blind man)

--When Buss railed against the media at the Sloan Conference on March 2, blaming the “fake news” relating to the Davis trade situation for hurting the morale among the team’s younger players, it was about more than that one story. Her frustration, according to a Lakers source with knowledge of her thinking, extended to another report that she didn’t mention.

In early February, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said on his radio show that Buss had been the driving force behind the decision to draft Ball second overall out of UCLA in 2017. According to Smith, Magic had wanted to draft De’Aaron Fox out of Kentucky but, in essence, succumbed because of the business possibilities that came with pairing the Bruins star with the Lakers brand. While the source adamantly denies the veracity of the report, and Johnson is known to have told Buss that he had nothing to do with this message being spread, these are the types of fires that kept flaring up in the media throughout the course of a chaotic campaign.

Last week, Buss appeared on a live taping of the Sports Business Radio Road Show, and described one story that made her doubt the front office she had put in place.

“There was a story that came out this season — and we’ve had our challenges this season — and it kind of made me doubt for a second some of the people that I was working with,” Buss said. (Jeanie basically saying she thinks Magic threw her under the bus (no punt intended) for the Ball pick- thats pretty fucked up)

--With the season drawing to a close, finger pointing has begun within the walls of Lakers headquarters, primarily over the moves Johnson and Pelinka made once James committed. The roster construction has generally been viewed as a failure. (everyone knew this at the time but Magic and Pelinka)

The Lakers are once again next-to-last in 3-point percentage and James’ usage rate (30.9 percent, about as high as it ever was with the Cavs) indicate additional playmakers didn’t help reduce his workload. (eat my ass Magic)

 

[Gman]

Magic has stepped down.....man of his word.

I'd have more respect for him if he went out harakiri style.

 

[DJ]

LOL at Cavs fans that want LeBron's corpse after his contract with the Lakers is over.

 

[Bolts]

 

[bksballer89]

As i said in my other thread, they're the laughingstock until further notice

 

[WiggyRuss]

I actually think this is a great thing for the Lakers moving forward. This and trading LeBron

oh its amazing for the Lakers

Magic never had the work ethic or the brains to do this job.

 

[Hornsstampede2.0]

It doesnt matter.

Players matter

If they get Anthony Davis (seem like almost a lock) and Kawhi Leonard (??), this is all just chatter.

Magic Johnson + Mitch Kupchak + Jerry Buss + Jerry West combined would have zero bearing on those decisions.

They will come because of Lebron or not come because of Lebron.

The Lakers GM would be the last thing AD/Kawhi care about.

 

[Heatles84]

So if Charlotte wins tonight are the heat eliminated?

Just about.

 

[WiggyRuss]

absolutely humiliating

that The Athletic article today paints the picture of a franchise that is absolutely clueless and this just confirms it.