The terribly mediocre Lakers

LondonSox

Robert the Deuce
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He's going to be fantastic in transition and at a fast pace, not ideal for Lopez btw.
I'm not sure anything changed about him struggling in the half court. But he's going to be a fun player.
KCP signing might be a favour to help land LeBron but he's actually a good defensive fit.

Lakers are going to be a train wreck defensively and if they play at the high pace which Lonzo will thrive at the scores are going to be high.

He sure made them more interesting. I prefer fultz and I can't abide lavar but I would have loved to see the passing of a Simmons ball (and saric) lineup. Esp with a great off ball movement guy like redick
 

BigSoxFan

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He's going to be fantastic in transition and at a fast pace, not ideal for Lopez btw.
I'm not sure anything changed about him struggling in the half court. But he's going to be a fun player.
KCP signing might be a favour to help land LeBron but he's actually a good defensive fit.

Lakers are going to be a train wreck defensively and if they play at the high pace which Lonzo will thrive at the scores are going to be high.

He sure made them more interesting. I prefer fultz and I can't abide lavar but I would have loved to see the passing of a Simmons ball (and saric) lineup. Esp with a great off ball movement guy like redick
Imagine the passing of a lineup with LeBron and Lonzo. That would be insane.
 

smastroyin

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I hope ball is as amazing in the NBA as summer league superstar Jahlil Okafor.
 

Sam Ray Not

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Don't forget can't miss Superstar Anthony Randolph's world-beating 2009 Summer League, highlighted by his record-tying 42 point night:

“I’ll give him two years,” said one NBA Western Conference executive, who said it was team policy not to comment on other teams’ players. “In two years, he’ll be making people say ‘Wow.’ If he’s not an All-Star, people will be asking, ‘How didn’t he make it?’ ”

Randolph has been perhaps the most dominant player in this year’s summer league. He put together his best performance Tuesday as the Warriors defeated the Chicago Bulls 95-83 at UNLV’s Cox Pavilion. Randolph scored 42 points, tying the record for a Las Vegas summer league game. (Marcus Banks and Von Wafer each scored 42 in 2007.) Randolph also had four steals, three blocked shots and no turnovers.

Another fun fact about that game: the Warriors' skinny rookie combo guard out of Davidson clanged his way to a 3-15 night, and had fans in the Golden State of Mind game thread wishing Jonny Flynn had fallen to them in the draft.
 

smastroyin

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I'll also state at this point that I hope James Dolan owns the Knicks until Manhattan falls into the ocean.
 

Grin&MartyBarret

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I'll say this--you have been ON POINT ever since the draft in making sure Celtics fans don't get excited about their team. Well done.
Somebody's gotta do it.

But hey, if you'd prefer the quality of conversation around here to be "Marcus Morris solves all of the Celtics rebounding issues" that's okay, too.
 

DJnVa

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Somebody's gotta do it.

But hey, if you'd prefer the quality of conversation around here to be "Marcus Morris solves all of the Celtics rebounding issues" that's okay, too.
Not what I said. It's amusing.

You've equated the Celtics fans expectations of Tatum to Lakers fans expectations of Ball. I've been bullish on Tatum and my prediction was he might have 3 games all season where he goes for 25 points, whereas the Lakers fans think Ball is Magic 2.0.
 

Grin&MartyBarret

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Not what I said. It's amusing.

You've equated the Celtics fans expectations of Tatum to Lakers fans expectations of Ball. I've been bullish on Tatum and my prediction was he might have 3 games all season where he goes for 25 points, whereas the Lakers fans think Ball is Magic 2.0.
You're welcome to engage on any of the points I make in my ongoing quest to keep you from getting excited about the Celtics.

But I definitely didn't make the equation you think I did. Rest assured, I've yet to draw any firm conclusions on whose fanbase is smarter between the Celtics (who are represented in full by your view on Tatum) and the Lakers (who are represented in full by your view of their views on Ball). I'll let you know as soon as I do.
 

Tony C

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:) that's pretty amusing.

In reference to an earlier post

You've equated the Celtics fans expectations of Tatum to Lakers fans expectations of Ball. I've been bullish on Tatum and my prediction was he might have 3 games all season where he goes for 25 points, whereas the Lakers fans think Ball is Magic 2.0.
In case this is a reference to myself (as I used Magic as a Lonzo comp at some point, though I'm not a Lakers fan), I should say that the comps I'd make with Lonzo as a type of player are to Rubio and/or Magic, not so much to Jason Kidd. That isn't to say he's Magic (or Rubio) 2.0 in terms of quality of player -- always the danger in these comps to conflate type/quality.

edit: here's the argument from people who know a helluva lot more than me about b-ball that the proper comp is Kidd -- http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/20091978/nba-learned-lonzo-ball-summer-league
 
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LondonSox

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Kids could defend so we shall see.

I don't think SL changed my opinion on anyone.
JJ had almost the same line as Tatum and gets slammed. Tatum put up the same line as college roughly and he's great. It's insanity everyone is who we thought they were if you paid attention

DSJ did exactly what he should have and suddenly he's taking a huge leap. It's bizarre.

All the under rated sleepers Mitchell, hart, brown, bolden, Evans etc did well
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Just for fun, here's the list of SL MVPs. The most recent are: The most recent Summer League MVPs have been Tyus Jones, Kyle Anderson, Glen Rice Jr., Jonas Valanciunas and Josh Selby.

Kyle Anderson had pretty good court vision too.

 

edoug

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You would expect good players to perform well in the summer league, but the converse is not necessarily true.
Maybe the teams don't want their future stars to dominate but just get a taste of what, even to a small degree, they'll be facing in the NBA. There is no reason to overexert themselves.
 

nighthob

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You know what would be really hilarious? If the punishment was LA being barred from signing George for a few years, which would basically blow their rebuilding plan to hell. That would guarantee that George teams up with Westbrook in OKC and that LeBron probably writes them off his meeting list next summer.
 

ifmanis5

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Tampering in the NBA is about as common as a cold and everyone does it. Will this be the time Adam tries to make a point and stop it? I tend to doubt he wants to make an example of Magic and the Lakers. Sounds more like sour grapes from the Pacers than anything else.
 

LondonSox

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I think the feeling is that the Lakers went too far, eg magic winking while talking about it live on a talk show.
I wonder also if owners are not super pleased to see an agent in the position and want to send a message early to play it straight. Not that anyone else does.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Agreed---and given how blatant Magic was in public, it also is not hard to imagine that there were some calls/communications in private that went further.
 

BigSoxFan

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I found it interesting that in their statement, the Lakers said that there's no proof of tampering and didn't explicitly deny it. Sure nothing comes of this unless they were incredibly reckless.
 

moondog80

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You know what would be really hilarious? If the punishment was LA being barred from signing George for a few years, which would basically blow their rebuilding plan to hell. That would guarantee that George teams up with Westbrook in OKC and that LeBron probably writes them off his meeting list next summer.

Wouldn't PG would have grounds for a lawsuit if they barred him from singing at a particular place?
 

HomeRunBaker

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Wouldn't PG would have grounds for a lawsuit if they barred him from singing at a particular place?
This goes back to Silver not being that dumb. There are easy ways around this such as banning the Lakers from signing impending FA's who played in the NBA the previous season for one year (one FA period) or in limiting the amount they can spend on a FA for one year. Silver could limit them to only the exceptions for the 2018 FA window which would effectively close the door on George signing with the Lakers while protecting the league from litigation.

MLB applied similar bans/restrictions to the Red Sox last year in signing International players due to skirting the rules in signing Moncada. It is also a fairly typical practice in penalizing Premier League teams who breach protocol. All it would take is a little creativity on Silver's part.
 

PedroKsBambino

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I think in all probabilty the player has waived the right to sue over that as part of the collective bargaining process---PG is (I assume, based on some form of commissoner's right to issue penalties clause that I assume is in CBA) likely not really situated in that scenario any differently than any college player who is drafted and might prefer to sign somewhere else instead. Someone could tell me otherwise, I'm not at all expert in NBA CBA>

The litigation would be about following the collectively-bargained for process---which, as we saw in NFL, might be its own adventure. There's a 'blow it up' theory that you could bring an antitrust claim about union and league, but impacts of that would be significant and I doubt PG actually would want to try going there (and he'd be doing it alone, as union wouldn't go along)

Also agree with HRB there's a bunch of ways to structure the punishment, with the most likely being the Lakers agree not to pursue him as part of a settlement.

I think this probably comes down to whether the Pacers did this because they are butthurt or because they feel there is evidence. I am, of course, hoping it is the latter.
 

nighthob

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Wouldn't PG would have grounds for a lawsuit if they barred him from singing at a particular place?
Unless the CBA bars the NBA from punishing teams for tampering I'm not sure what George and his agency could do. The answer in court would seem to be "If you didn't want this result you shouldn't have been playing footsie with a team that wasn't employing you."
 

nighthob

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MLB applied similar bans/restrictions to the Red Sox last year in signing International players due to skirting the rules in signing Moncada. It is also a fairly typical practice in penalizing Premier League teams who breach protocol. All it would take is a little creativity on Silver's part.
Just a minor correction that had nothing to do with Moncada and was just MLB making an example of Boston to stop the practice of prospect bundling. In Boston's case it was over a group of Venezuelan players from the same baseball academy that they signed during the period in which bonuses were capped at 300K because of the Moncada signing. The charge being that some of the guys were signed to phantom bonuses that the academy re-routed to the better players in the group.

It does seem to have worked as the teams currently under the 300k restriction were busy trading international signing bonus money for minor leaguers rather than buying bundles of prospects from baseball academies this year.
 

moly99

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I wonder also if owners are not super pleased to see an agent in the position and want to send a message early to play it straight. Not that anyone else does.
It's worth noting that Mitch Kupchak was one of the few NBA execs who followed the letter of the law on tampering, and that was one of the reasons he was fired. Since then the Lakers have gone in the opposite direction of publicly trying to woo free agents.

It's also interesting to think through the other dominoes that a Lakers free agency punishment would stop from falling. Without George the Lakers probably don't have enough firepower to lure LeBron, for example.
 

nocode51

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Didn't they forbid some Celtics from signing somewhere with the Pierce, KG trade or something? I don't remember the details but I thought Doc did something that stopped it. Maybe we couldn't trade with the Clippers?

Sent from my Nexus 6P using SoSH mobile app
 

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Rough Carrigan

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I found it interesting that in their statement, the Lakers said that there's no proof of tampering and didn't explicitly deny it. Sure nothing comes of this unless they were incredibly reckless.
Maybe, but the NBA seems almost uniquely hopeless compared to the other three major leagues in the U.S. There has got to be tremendous resentment on the part of many/most of the franchises at how extremely difficult it is to build a true contending team. Those teams would probably love to see something happen here.
 

moly99

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Maybe, but the NBA seems almost uniquely hopeless compared to the other three major leagues in the U.S. There has got to be tremendous resentment on the part of many/most of the franchises at how extremely difficult it is to build a true contending team. Those teams would probably love to see something happen here.
Part of this is due to the nature of basketball as sport dominated by star players. (In baseball I would rather have two B players than one A and one D, while it is the other way around in basketball.) But the other half of the equation is that the NBA is run through networking rather than the more corporate business model of MLB and the NFL.

I can definitely see the small market teams agitating for stricter control over agents and GM's talking to try and get their players off one team and onto another team.
 

HomeRunBaker

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Maybe, but the NBA seems almost uniquely hopeless compared to the other three major leagues in the U.S. There has got to be tremendous resentment on the part of many/most of the franchises at how extremely difficult it is to build a true contending team. Those teams would probably love to see something happen here.
I don't understand this at all. The NBA is well ahead of MLB in this area and in the same league as the NFL and NHL . The bottom 5 markets in MLB routinely trade their best players prior to them hitting arb to reload with younger players......who are then traded prior to them hitting arb.....lather, rinse, repeat.

The 4 smallest NBA markets are New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Memphis, and San Antonio......3 of those 4 have been winning playoff series for the past decade while not being forced to trade their star players for cheap prospects. Due to the NBA's revenue sharing program these 4 teams ranked no lower than 17th overall in team salary for this coming year (Memphis) while having two others in the Top-10 (OKC 7th and NO 9th).
 

Rough Carrigan

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I don't understand this at all. The NBA is well ahead of MLB in this area and in the same league as the NFL and NHL . The bottom 5 markets in MLB routinely trade their best players prior to them hitting arb to reload with younger players......who are then traded prior to them hitting arb.....lather, rinse, repeat.

The 4 smallest NBA markets are New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Memphis, and San Antonio......3 of those 4 have been winning playoff series for the past decade while not being forced to trade their star players for cheap prospects. Due to the NBA's revenue sharing program these 4 teams ranked no lower than 17th overall in team salary for this coming year (Memphis) while having two others in the Top-10 (OKC 7th and NO 9th).
The NBA seems to be the most predictable of the four leagues. Teams at the fringe of contention seem to have a better chance of winning it all in the other leagues than in the NBA. Do you think that the owners of many or most NBA teams feel as though the deck is stacked heavily against them? Do you think they would like to see the league put serious impediments in the way of L.A. and a few other franchises casually taking their best talent away from them?
 

lovegtm

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Do you think they would like to see the league put serious impediments in the way of L.A. and a few other franchises casually taking their best talent away from them?
Yup, the Lakers and Knicks have been signing everybody's free agents like there's no tomorrow for the past 10 years. It's an epidemic, and someone has to stop it.