The terribly mediocre Lakers
- Thread starter smastroyin
- Start date
7 of the next 10 on the road (and 14 of next 20), of the home games in first 10, 2 are against teams over .500 (including Boston).
Kuzma and Ball will both hit wall eventually. To say "no chance" seems very premature.
You would think it would be sooner for the chairman of the team to back up his head coach while a news story circles around a players father calling out your coach.
I really wish we could knock it off with the rookie wall myth in this forum absent some actual data to support its existence. Some rookies have better first halves, some have better second halves, and most are inconsistent.
See http://thesportsquotient.com/nba/2016/12/9/modeling-the-nba-rookie-wall
The idea of a "rookie wall" never made much sense to me either. Glad to see a statistical analysis showing as much.
That’s a nice little study. With emphasis on the “little”. Twenty-two subjects is not powerful enough to be the final word on the subject. I suspect that the rookie wall was a real thing historically, when rookies were actual college students who trained during the season and spent a lot of time goofing off. Now, these guys are professional athletes coming out of high school and train year round so the conditioning is much better.
The onus shouldn't be on the person disproving something as nebulous as a rookie wall. It's like having to disprove "clutch" or "calm eyes." One of the main problems with the rookie wall is that there isn't even a real definition of it. If the person citing it wants to be specific about it, e.g. "rookies experience a drop in performance after their 40th game through the end of the season," it could be easily disproven through a statistical analysis. But usually you end up with gobbledygook like "most" rookies go through "a period" of subpar performance "sometime after the 30th game" that lasts "for a while." Of course, you can say such about second year players, or non-superstar players, or bend it to players as a whole.
In general, NBA players don't perform consistently over every 5 or 10 game stretch of an 82 game season, and it should go without saying that neither do rookies. There will be 5, and 10, and sometimes even 20 game stretches when they'll perform better and worse than their overall statistics. But blaming every time the bad stretch happens in the second half of the season on the "rookie wall" is lazy, old-school drivel not worthy of this site.
EDIT: Feel free to take a stroll through the pre and post all-star game splits of rookies who've averaged more than 20 minutes per game over the last several decades. You'll find that a very comfortable majority actually performed better in the second half of the season than they did in the first.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&match=single&type=totals&per_minute_base=36&per_poss_base=100&season_start=1&season_end=1&lg_id=NBA&age_min=0&age_max=99&is_playoffs=N&height_min=0&height_max=99&year_min=1980&birth_country_is=Y&as_comp=gt&as_val=0&pos_is_g=Y&pos_is_gf=Y&pos_is_f=Y&pos_is_fg=Y&pos_is_fc=Y&pos_is_c=Y&pos_is_cf=Y&c1stat=mp_per_g&c1comp=gt&c1val=20&order_by=ws
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And lots of people here were saying "no chance" earlier in the season when the Lakers were hot. Then things changed. It seems to me there is definitely a chance, and we need to see how this plays out.
They definitely want to move Clarkson (I think the price of trading Deng is too rich for their blood), and that’s going to hurt their backcourt. But he isn’t that hard to move since he’s somewhat useful, and there’s a possibility that a talent starved team on the bottom takes a flyer on him without much in the way of sweetener (like say Larry Nance Jr.).
The Danger is that they come to their senses and make a major play to trade for Paul George as a way to lure LeBron and make the trade do double duty as a cap clearer (say something like Ingram and Deng for George).
They're 9-14 at home. Definitely don't look like .500+.
This stretch before the All Star break looks pretty rough. 15 games til the break with 11 of them on the road. They'll be fortunate to go 5-10 in those games.
Teams have little winning streaks, little losing streaks. But based on talent, I wouldn't be surprised if the Nets take a tumble and wind up in the bottom 5 and the Lakers are as good as the 10th worst team. They're both pretty close right now, in terms of won-loss % and point differential, with the Nets having a small edge in both. But one silver lining: if the Lakers don't finish bottom 5, the only way the pick conveys is as a #2 or #3, right? So less chance of getting the pick, but if we get the pick, a better pick.
So long as OKC is on the playoff hint, they are not going to trade George for Deng and Ingram. That Deng contract is so damn terrible I think it would take more than Ingram for someone to take it on.
And I am still on the train that says this LeBron to LAL is pure fantasy. That team is too many pieces away from competing.
The idea would be to fill the rotation with the MLE and some veteran ring chasers as has been done in LeBrons previous stops. Good idea to trade high on Ingram and/or Kuzma as well. It would be weird to see LeBron as the underdog but yes, there would be a significant roster turnover if LeBron were here. He wouldn't be surrounded with the Clarkson's of the world.
It depends on where they are in the standings. The Thunder's chances of re-signing Paul George are dependent on their post-season performance. If they're not confident then a deal to recoup value could well happen.
I've been driving that train for a while, I've been saying since the summer that they over-played their hand when they didn't make a serious offer on Paul George. I always keep coming back to Darryl Morey's remarks after the Harden trade, where he said (paraphrasing) that the hardest part of building a team is getting the first star. But once you have the first all star, others are always looking to sign on.
Pelinka had the pieces necessary to land that first star, but got greedy and didn't want to part with the few upside guys they had to make a deal. Now they're in a position where they have to move a useful roleplayer to create cap room because when all is said and done they're probably going to need to use the stretch provision on Deng this summer to shave another $11 million from their cap. And even that might not be enough.
I should have prefaced that with "when healthy" -- Lonzo is not a great PG yet, but he is miles better at running the team than anyone else they have on the roster (and the on/off numbers bear that out).
Yeah, I'm glad the heat is cooling off on Ball as he seems like a nice kid and learning how to be a professional. His shot is fine, I'll argue it's always been fine he simply needs reps and for the game to slow down, and he IS a good team defender. The best thing to happen to Lonzo right now is that his father is busy with his two brothers in Lithuania.
Caldwell-Pope, Kuzma, and Hart are a combined 12-21 from 3, sort of keeping the Lakers in the game.
The rest of the team is 0-11 from 3.
The rest of the team is 0-11 from 3.
Randle, Clarkson and Nance Jr. - and maybe even Ingram are all likely on their way out of town as has been noted upthread. The Lakers will be a lot less competitive without those some/all of those guys and will likely lose a bunch more games once we are past the trade deadline. There is a pretty good drop off from Randle and Clarkson to Lopez/Zubac/Bryant and Tyler Ennis.
You think they'll move Ingram? I thought he, Ball and Kuzma were basically the only ones they planned to keep.
I don't think they will absolutely move him but they will listen on him. I don't think George is available but if the Lakers offered Ingram plus something for George, OKC needs to listen. George is almost certainly not returning to the Thunder after this season. Getting Ingram etc for him may not do much for the Thunder playoff hopes this season but it would be a great long term move for the team.
Why are the Lakers giving up a young, cheap asset under contract for 2.5 years for a guy they’re going to sign this offseason anyway?
They aren't definitely signing him nor is it definite that they get LeBron either - if George leaves OKC, he is potentially leaving $46mm on the table. That said, LA gets George's Bird rights if they were to trade for him and presumably greases the skids for LeBron to sign there too.
To be clear, I doubt the Lakers trade Ingram regardless but there are scenarios where they might consider moving him. A George acquisition is one such scenario.
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Because there are no guarantees that George will sign the Lakers, especially if they’re still stuck with Deng which would prevent them from signing another max player. So a deal where they turn Deng and Ingram into Paul George makes it possible for them to bring in a second max player.