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What are some of the biggest blunders this franchise has had in your opinion? It can be recent or ancient history

1 - Not pulling the right trades. I'm talking not doing JKidd for Van Exel when Dallas called, instead waiting to do Lue months later. Not giving up Bynum for prime Melo in Denver is another one when you have Kobe Pau LO MWP Fish to play with him.

2 - Drafting poorly to help Kobe and Shaq. We were very good at it during showtime but awful with them. There was Deaven George over AK47. We took Sam Jacobson over Rasheed Lewis. Picked Madesen when Michael Redd was still there. Went for Kareem Rush, 6 three pointers versus Minny shot out, over Carlos Boozer. And Cook was selected with both Barbosa and Josh Howard on the board. Just ugh.

3 - Penching Pennies in place of depth. There was not paying Horace the BAE he asked for to return in 2001, instead paying Samaki walker the vet min to replace him. Not paying Lue 4mil for 2 years like he wanted, instead the Hunter vet min. Refusing to pay Horry 2mil to backup Malone as Horry has made public. There is also refusing to pay Fish the mle in 04s summer and then giving him the equivalent 3 years and a knee surgery later when you suffered with Chucky Atkins, Smush, Shammond Williams, Tierre Brown, and Aaron McKie as his replacements. Probably can look at not sucking it up and giving Ariza money too

4 - Rodman. I liked his talent and his hustle, but Rambis was nowhere near ready to handle him back in 99. Maybe had he come the next year he could have been channeled.

You should rename the thread "Kicking the Dead Horse."

How many years in row did they, literally, sell off their first round picks for three or four million in cash?

That sh*t was infuriating. During that time the team was good, but it always felt like they had no vision of the future, like they were "playing the game" like a lazy feline who just want to eat and get fat but has no real idea where the food,even comes from.

Love the hell out of Jerry West, but drafting Frankie King in the first round was a crazy reach.

George Lynch was a wasted lottery pick. He ended up being a great role player in Philadelphia, but was drafted here to play PF and simply couldn't. They tried giving him SF minutes, but he was remarkably limited there. He was perfect with the ball hogging Iverson though.

Half of those draft "blunders" you listed are actually second round steals where pretty much every team passed on those players. You might as well add Ginobili and Parker there if you are going to go down that route.

Just from the past 3-4 seasons:

1. Not negotiating down the pick protections on the Nash and Howard trades
2. Not using the amnesty clause on Kobe and giving him a 2 year deal
3. Passing on Lowry and IT to chase Lebron and Melo
4. Deng and Mozgov
5. Not extending Bazemore a QO

I'll catch major flak for this, and, I admit, you never really know what's there and not there when it comes to trades, but not trading Bynum or Gasol for a lead guard (I'm talking way before the botched CP3 trade) was a complete failure to me.

It was crystal clear that that team did not need two centers, one of them was our greatest trade chip, and Derek Fisher and Farmer weren't really cutting it. In my opinion, they could have had any number of great lead guards if they broke up the twin towers sooner.

I was on record wanting Iguodala, young and, at that time, disappointing Harden, Wall (a bit of a reach on my part), and others (the names escape me right now).

How about not getting a backup point guard out of that draft where there were a thousand quality floor generals ...

... Darren Collinson, Party Mills, Beverley, Toney Douglas, and the guy I really wanted that year ... Nick Calathes.

Hiring Mike Brown and Byron Scott.

ALL HAIL wrote:How about not getting a backup point guard out of that draft where there were a thousand quality floor generals ...

... Darren Collinson, Party Mills, Beverley, Toney Douglas, and the guy I really wanted that year ... Nick Calathes.

We drafted both Beverley and Douglas that year before trading them away for cash.

TyCobb wrote:Hiring Mike Brown and Byron Scott.

I'd add Mike No D'Antoni to that list. McMillan and a select few college coaches would've been better options.

Signing Boozer irked me to the core. Keeping him around, even worse. Wasted years of flexibility for us, contributed nothing. I remember Magic Johnson and others lobbying for him as if he were Tim Duncan. Sigh.

The most annoying part over the last five years or so still has to be Jim Buss.

Trading Payton for what they did was a blunder. The whole way they did it was by not even telling him he was traded which is why he didn't report quickly and we ended up with Chucky Atkins over Marcus Banks. I still believe Payton, Kobe, Caron, and Odom would have been a better team

Bazemore is a great one too especially when we used our exemption on Ryan Kelly and Xavier Henry over him

Also the biggest blunder with Mike Brown was changing his whole assistant staff. They were an over 500 team and Mitch/Jim decide to implement the Princeton with their own assistant staff the next year when you get Nash and Dwight ... wtf

Then to top it off the tell Phil you can't wait for him to make a decision but hire dantoni and he doesn't join the team for a week. And when he does join, you won't give him any assistants of his own, instead keeping your crew you made brown take. Phil told them outright wait, in getting my health evaluated and I'm contacting all my assistants. Lakers cheaper out and half assed with dantoni there on top of waiting for him to come a week later when not giving Phil a day

Slava wrote:

ALL HAIL wrote:How about not getting a backup point guard out of that draft where there were a thousand quality floor generals ...

... Darren Collinson, Party Mills, Beverley, Toney Douglas, and the guy I really wanted that year ... Nick Calathes.

We drafted both Beverley and Douglas that year before trading them away for cash.

Yeah, I know. I honestly didn't know much about Bev, but Douglas was a tremendous 3&D point guard prospect.

That four or five year period of selling off first round picks was utterly ridiculous.

Many people here at the time justified it with the narrative that "we didn't need young players, and Phil Jackson won't play them anyway".

Blunders of the highest order, as far as I'm concerned.

Seems like the title should be "every blunder" not "biggest blunders", i mean...rodman? Payton? Talk about irrelevant.


For me one of the bigeest blunders was and probably still is how reluctant and far behind they've been in adopting analytics as part of the culture. For a time they were the only team not to have a bball person at the Sloan conference. It's put them behind in evaluating data related to player performance or health, but also destroyed public perception of the team that contributed to failed free agent meetings. Just look at the LMA fiasco.

Even if you think the effect of advanced analytics is limited and overstated, what it did to the way players see this franchise was huge.made the team look archaic and behind the times

I think drafting Russell over Myles Turner and Porzy was another blunder, but it's (maybe) too early to tell.

Also, drafting Anthony Brown over Josh Richardson and Norman Powell, two guys, to me at least, who were much, much better, was a huge mistake as well.

ALL HAIL wrote:I think drafting Russell over Myles Turner and Porzy was another blunder, but it's (maybe) too early to tell.

Also, drafting Anthony Brown over Josh Richardson and Norman Powell, two guys, to me at least, who were much, much better, was a huge mistake as well.

Yeah Myles Turner is probably the second best in that draft class... I think its too early to tell about Porzingis, he hasn't been too impressive.
Also we avoided the biggest blunder of them all by not drafting Jahlil Okafor. Which feels pretty good.

A blunder is a stupid or careless mistake. There was nothing stupid or careless about the drafting of DLo.

I mean seriously, this act is getting old.

dockingsched wrote:Seems like the title should be "every blunder" not "biggest blunders", i mean...rodman? Payton? Talk about irrelevant.


For me one of the bigeest blunders was and probably still is how reluctant and far behind they've been in adopting analytics as part of the culture. For a time they were the only team not to have a bball person at the Sloan conference. It's out them behind in evaluating data related to player performance or health, but also destroyed public perception of the team that contributed to failed free agent meetings. Just look at the LMA fiasco.

Even if you think the effect of advanced analytics is limited and overstated, what it did to the way players see this franchise was huge.made the team look archaic and behind the times

Well, the "biggest" has to be letting Horry walk in favor of Slava Medvedenko. When Malone goes down, Medvedenko b comes the starter instead of Horry.

If Horry is the starting PF in The Finals against the Wallaces, I think the Lakers win.

I'm convinced that dumb-ass move cost the Lakers a ring. They secured Payton and Malone then got lazy crafting the bench and it cost them dearly.

dockingsched wrote:A blunder is a stupid or careless mistake. There was nothing stupid or careless about the drafting of DLo.

I mean seriously, this act is getting old.

Russell juxtaposed against two unicorn centers could most definitely be considered a blunder. How often do shotblocking shooter come around? And what's the going rate for a decent center? They had an opportunity to lockdown a new-age center on a rookie pay scale, but instead chose to get cute. But I could eventually end up wrong. We'll see.

One things for sure, if Turner had been drafted, Mozgov, or any other overpriced half-dead center would not have been signed, that is undeniable.