2022-23 RealGM All-Season Awards - Discussion Thread

[MyUniBroDavis]

LeBron’s playing great for his age, but I’m not seriously considering him for top 5 right now. If he played well enough to merit serious consideration, it would shock the hell out of me.

Davis on the other hand is getting prettay…. prettay… close to bumping Giannis out of the top 5. His defense has just been incredible. Teams are shooting 20% worse with him as the primary defender and he’s in there contesting ALL THE TIME. His rebounding is huge and now he’s starting to pick up the scoring as well. If he keeps this level of play up and the Lakers beat the Warriors I think he’s pretty much guaranteed a top 5 spot.

It probably depends on how far the Lakers go

If bron didn’t have health issues this regular season I think he had a top 5 RS probably, if they have a deep run and he continues that he’d probably be top 5 for me, ditto with AD

It depends on how far they go, if they lose this round then there’s no shot of course

This feels like a year that whoever wins the chip is gonna have my POY lol

Well that’s fair because Jokic is winning the chip. But also he’s had such an incredible season so far that I don’t see how he gets caught by say Tatum if the Celtics win who are current favorites. They just haven’t been in the same stratosphere so far.

That’s fair, Celtics are probably the favs by a lot lol

If embiid/AD/Jimmy continue their performance and win the chip it’s probably theirs for me though, more so if nuggets don’t make the finals

[GSP]

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

[jalengreen]

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

I assume you'd have Jokic, Butler, Tatum

Who else are you thinking about? One of Curry/AD has to lose this series so that might be a tough play tbh

[Doctor MJ]

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

Nothing's impossible, but it's hard for me to imagine Embiid slipping out of my Top 5. We know he was awesome during the year, and we know he's hurt now, so even if he's terrible in this series, I don't expect to drop him below guys eliminated before this round, and it would take a heck of a lot for others eliminated in the same round to jump above him.

[GSP]

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

I assume you'd have Jokic, Butler, Tatum

Who else are you thinking about? One of Curry/AD has to lose this series so that might be a tough play tbh

I was thinking it was possible for both Steph and Ad TBH but we'll see how the series goes......Prolly a reach but how do ppl feel about Jalen Brunson as a darkhorse?

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

Nothing's impossible, but it's hard for me to imagine Embiid slipping out of my Top 5. We know he was awesome during the year, and we know he's hurt now, so even if he's terrible in this series, I don't expect to drop him below guys eliminated before this round, and it would take a heck of a lot for others eliminated in the same round to jump above him.

But couldnt the injury itself dock him? I remember in past Poys players got penalized and some removed from consideration b/c of injury. Philly is 2-0 w/o Embiid now in playoffs both games on the road B2b. If he gets backdoor swept and he looks injured and is a big part of that despite them winning game 1 itd be hard for me to keep him on despite the fantastic Rs

[MyUniBroDavis]

I would say pelinka had an amazing deadline

I think at the end of the day, Dlo/Vando/Beasley for Westbrook and a pick is crazy, a pick was what people thought would be to get rid of westbrook period

Beyond that, got rid of TB who was a defensive nightmare for us, got rid of the guard clutter, got Rui whose been out best bench player, Schroder ended up being a fantastic signing in the offseason when everyone doubted it

We basically got rid of all of our bad players (and I don’t count Westbrook in that category), and got 4 rotation players and 2 starters for that.

Even the bamba trade seemed like a perfect idea till he got hurt too

Vando was great, I think he’s matchup dependent and think he’s probably our 3rd best get during the trade season lol

Yeah so I have to reiterate first:

The only reason why he was able to make a trade where he can be credited with not giving up too much to get rid of Westbrook is because he previously made a trade where he actually gave up stuff to GET Westbrook. If you want to ignore the sheer idiocy of his previous move, you can, but I cannot.

Now, if we want to make the argument the net gain between the two moves is very positive, that would make sense to me in principle. If you think they bought low and sold high on Westbrook, by all means, speak to that.

I've mentioned Vando already as someone who could possibly be a big positive so that's a possible avenue for argumentation, but as you say, he's likely still a guy who you'll prefer to play bench in some matchups.

Re: Dlo, Beasley. Just so we're clear, these guys together are guys paid more than $45 mill in total, one of whom the other team was actively trying to get rid of ASAP, and the other of whom the Lakers are playing 11 MPG in the playoffs. It's nice if these guys work out for the Lakers, but let's be real that this wasn't a brilliant chess move, it was mostly just two teams looking to get rid of trash that was making their team worse.

Re: Got rid of TB. He was making less than $2 mill, so I really don't see him as someone who was a problem that you need to credit the GM with getting rid of. You could just tell him to stay home.

Re: Rui. He's definitely been a nice get. Point for Pelinka there.

Re: Schroeder fantastic. It's been a good move for a number of reasons, but I don't think I'd want him to be a starter on the Lakers unless the alternative was Westbrook.

Re: Bamba. Not that I'd want to hold the move against Pelinka, but you're talking about another guy on the roster making more millions per year than minutes the Lakers were playing him. I'm cautious about mentioning a guy like this to support an EOY case.

Hmm, I don’t really agree on the Russ move itself because what matters isn’t that these opportunities are available but picking the right one right?

At the end of the day, we traded a guy on a max contract, a pick that was said to be the cost for unloading him, for

I don’t think how much they are paid for matters much to me, because we needed to get 45 million worth of players that are tradeable to get rid of russ

Vando, who is 24, who might be our best defender in some series, who is making 4.5 mill next year

Dlo, whose our starting point guard and was fantastic for us in the RS, and looks like he’s doing a alot better as of late, expiring next year if things don’t work out too. Great combination with AD, and I don’t think we win g4 or g1 without him (and he dominated in g6). Expiring

Beasley, whose been poor so far and has a team option for next year, who has a very tradeable salary since he’s expiring too

Outside of Vando, both contracts are essentially expiring and our decision, and Dlo has been genuinely quite good for us if inconsistent at times.

At the end of the day, GMing is about getting guys that help you, that there were guys struggling for other teams that can help us is a positive because he was able to identify these things



When it comes to getting rid of guys, importantly we got rid of guys that were getting minutes but weren’t good for us or helping us, and while in a perfect world I get you can just tell these guys not to play in practice It’s not really practical because it seemed like our team was sold on some of them to an extent

To be clear though, what we got for TB basically recouped the draft compensation we gave to get Rui

What i would say is the Lakers went from a team that potential would not make the play in, to a team that has had the best record in the NBA post trades even with lebron missing half of the games, who beat 2nd seed memphis 4-2 with both Lebron and AD struggling offensively, and just took game 1 vs the warriors

In our current playoff rotation, here are our guys organized by minutes

Lebron
Davis
Reaves
Dlo - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Rui - Nunn trade
Dennis - Minimum off-season
Vanderbilt - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Troy brown jr - minimum off-season
Beasley - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Wenyen - minimum off-season


Going into the trade season, the Lakers were out of the play in (although I did think we would make it) and our only real shot at anything was if lebron and AD both went insane in the postseason like they did in the bubble

Lebron misses 14/25 last games, AD misses 2/25, even Dlo misses a few, and we go 17-8

In the postseason this far, despite bron and AD so far having been not great offensively (great defensively, especially AD), we manage to beat memphis in 6 deservingly, and just stole the first game against golden state

The roster they have been able to construct given where they started was great. Even the bamba signing in principle was fantastic considering what we gave up, he just got injured.

Right now I think the Lakers are one of the best 4-5 teams remaining, and at this point have a shot at a title (I would probably put DEN/BOS/PHI ahead, is equal to PHO and GSW), and if bron never hurt his foot I think they would absolutely steamroll the league right now

The supporting cast this team has been able to get from where they started out is gfreat


There are some concerns but

Reaves - undrafted player that’s our third best player, 15-5-5 with solid defense this postseason, rarely turns it over, often creating his own offense

Dlo - has been a above average starting caliber pg since he signed for us (which is good to be clear) There are concerns with his playoff consistency, seems to be turning it around. Defensively he has issues vs quicker guys but it’s a bit overblown, he’s not good, but he’s not horrendous or anything at least thus far if he’s not getting exploited

Rui - spark plug that currently averaged 13ppg on 70TS, a few hot shooting games mean teams have started to respect his three point shot a bit, and he’s played very good defense (numbers look off because of the small ball lineups)

Vando - y’all are higher on him than I am lol

Dennis - spark plug as well that’s been great defensively and often is the guy we go to when we can’t get anything going to draw fts

As a 3-8 on team with a double veteran max duo, it’s pretty stacked. That 4/5 of those guys are guys we got through trades or the minimum (and the other is Reaves!) is great imo


Was there an opportunity for this to happen? Sure! But trades are a two way street, and identifying these opportunities are important. We’ve gotten rid of guys that weren’t contributing for a very solid supporting cast. I’d argue we are the favorites to come out of the west barring health (which is a big concern of course)

I don’t think this makes him EOY clearly or anything, but what I’d say is he was able to turn

Bev/Russ/JTA/TB/Nunn, a first rounder and a second rounder

Into (bold for good playoff rotation guys for us so far)

Dlo/Vando/Rui/Beasley/Bamba

I would argue bamba would have been a great get if he was healthy too, as a backup center (and AD bamba lineups sound like hell for anybody going to the paint)

Then, we have Reaves, an undrafted signing and Dennis, a minimum signing

I would argue Ham has been great so far as well post deadline, that’s another can of worms though

[iggymcfrack]

I was just about to come in here and say “is it crazy to wanna have Jimmy over Embiid right now?” Which I think I might want. But I can’t really see ever dropping Embiid out of the top 5. I mean maybe if something crazy happens like LeBron wins Finals MVP, but it would still take another shock from where we are now.

[MyUniBroDavis]

To put in perspective how ridiculous ADs shot blocking has been, there are 6 teams (including the Lakers) that average more blocks than AD does, and 3 teams that average more per 48 minutes (Suns and Boston)

[WestGOAT]

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

Nothing's impossible, but it's hard for me to imagine Embiid slipping out of my Top 5. We know he was awesome during the year, and we know he's hurt now, so even if he's terrible in this series, I don't expect to drop him below guys eliminated before this round, and it would take a heck of a lot for others eliminated in the same round to jump above him.

But couldnt the injury itself dock him? I remember in past Poys players got penalized and some removed from consideration b/c of injury. Philly is 2-0 w/o Embiid now in playoffs both games on the road B2b. If he gets backdoor swept and he looks injured and is a big part of that despite them winning game 1 itd be hard for me to keep him on despite the fantastic Rs[/quote]

I was thinking same thing. Genuine question, how high can you be on a guy that is consistently hampered by injuries during the playoffs? At a certain point it shouldn't be an excuse for poor performance, but rather a penalty right?

It's basically the same when people expect CP3 to physically to breakdown during the playoffs, and if anything, CP3 has actually been more durable than Embiid overall so far.

[HeartBreakKid]

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

Nothing's impossible, but it's hard for me to imagine Embiid slipping out of my Top 5. We know he was awesome during the year, and we know he's hurt now, so even if he's terrible in this series, I don't expect to drop him below guys eliminated before this round, and it would take a heck of a lot for others eliminated in the same round to jump above him.

But couldnt the injury itself dock him? I remember in past Poys players got penalized and some removed from consideration b/c of injury. Philly is 2-0 w/o Embiid now in playoffs both games on the road B2b. If he gets backdoor swept and he looks injured and is a big part of that despite them winning game 1 itd be hard for me to keep him on despite the fantastic Rs

I was thinking same thing. Genuine question, how high can you be on a guy that is consistently hampered by injuries during the playoffs? At a certain point it shouldn't be an excuse for poor performance, but rather a penalty right?

It's basically the same when people expect CP3 to physically to breakdown during the playoffs, and if anything, CP3 has actually been more durable than Embiid overall so far.

Embiid already not getting POY is already a dock. His injury will prevent him from getting any first place votes.

[Doctor MJ]

I would say pelinka had an amazing deadline

I think at the end of the day, Dlo/Vando/Beasley for Westbrook and a pick is crazy, a pick was what people thought would be to get rid of westbrook period

Beyond that, got rid of TB who was a defensive nightmare for us, got rid of the guard clutter, got Rui whose been out best bench player, Schroder ended up being a fantastic signing in the offseason when everyone doubted it

We basically got rid of all of our bad players (and I don’t count Westbrook in that category), and got 4 rotation players and 2 starters for that.

Even the bamba trade seemed like a perfect idea till he got hurt too

Vando was great, I think he’s matchup dependent and think he’s probably our 3rd best get during the trade season lol

Yeah so I have to reiterate first:

The only reason why he was able to make a trade where he can be credited with not giving up too much to get rid of Westbrook is because he previously made a trade where he actually gave up stuff to GET Westbrook. If you want to ignore the sheer idiocy of his previous move, you can, but I cannot.

Now, if we want to make the argument the net gain between the two moves is very positive, that would make sense to me in principle. If you think they bought low and sold high on Westbrook, by all means, speak to that.

I've mentioned Vando already as someone who could possibly be a big positive so that's a possible avenue for argumentation, but as you say, he's likely still a guy who you'll prefer to play bench in some matchups.

Re: Dlo, Beasley. Just so we're clear, these guys together are guys paid more than $45 mill in total, one of whom the other team was actively trying to get rid of ASAP, and the other of whom the Lakers are playing 11 MPG in the playoffs. It's nice if these guys work out for the Lakers, but let's be real that this wasn't a brilliant chess move, it was mostly just two teams looking to get rid of trash that was making their team worse.

Re: Got rid of TB. He was making less than $2 mill, so I really don't see him as someone who was a problem that you need to credit the GM with getting rid of. You could just tell him to stay home.

Re: Rui. He's definitely been a nice get. Point for Pelinka there.

Re: Schroeder fantastic. It's been a good move for a number of reasons, but I don't think I'd want him to be a starter on the Lakers unless the alternative was Westbrook.

Re: Bamba. Not that I'd want to hold the move against Pelinka, but you're talking about another guy on the roster making more millions per year than minutes the Lakers were playing him. I'm cautious about mentioning a guy like this to support an EOY case.

Hmm, I don’t really agree on the Russ move itself because what matters isn’t that these opportunities are available but picking the right one right?

At the end of the day, we traded a guy on a max contract, a pick that was said to be the cost for unloading him, for

I don’t think how much they are paid for matters much to me, because we needed to get 45 million worth of players that are tradeable to get rid of russ

Vando, who is 24, who might be our best defender in some series, who is making 4.5 mill next year

Dlo, whose our starting point guard and was fantastic for us in the RS, and looks like he’s doing a alot better as of late, expiring next year if things don’t work out too. Great combination with AD, and I don’t think we win g4 or g1 without him (and he dominated in g6). Expiring

Beasley, whose been poor so far and has a team option for next year, who has a very tradeable salary since he’s expiring too

Outside of Vando, both contracts are essentially expiring and our decision, and Dlo has been genuinely quite good for us if inconsistent at times.

At the end of the day, GMing is about getting guys that help you, that there were guys struggling for other teams that can help us is a positive because he was able to identify these things



When it comes to getting rid of guys, importantly we got rid of guys that were getting minutes but weren’t good for us or helping us, and while in a perfect world I get you can just tell these guys not to play in practice It’s not really practical because it seemed like our team was sold on some of them to an extent

To be clear though, what we got for TB basically recouped the draft compensation we gave to get Rui

What i would say is the Lakers went from a team that potential would not make the play in, to a team that has had the best record in the NBA post trades even with lebron missing half of the games, who beat 2nd seed memphis 4-2 with both Lebron and AD struggling offensively, and just took game 1 vs the warriors

In our current playoff rotation, here are our guys organized by minutes

Lebron
Davis
Reaves
Dlo - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Rui - Nunn trade
Dennis - Minimum off-season
Vanderbilt - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Troy brown jr - minimum off-season
Beasley - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Wenyen - minimum off-season


Going into the trade season, the Lakers were out of the play in (although I did think we would make it) and our only real shot at anything was if lebron and AD both went insane in the postseason like they did in the bubble

Lebron misses 14/25 last games, AD misses 2/25, even Dlo misses a few, and we go 17-8

In the postseason this far, despite bron and AD so far having been not great offensively (great defensively, especially AD), we manage to beat memphis in 6 deservingly, and just stole the first game against golden state

The roster they have been able to construct given where they started was great. Even the bamba signing in principle was fantastic considering what we gave up, he just got injured.

Right now I think the Lakers are one of the best 4-5 teams remaining, and at this point have a shot at a title (I would probably put DEN/BOS/PHI ahead, is equal to PHO and GSW), and if bron never hurt his foot I think they would absolutely steamroll the league right now

The supporting cast this team has been able to get from where they started out is gfreat


There are some concerns but

Reaves - undrafted player that’s our third best player, 15-5-5 with solid defense this postseason, rarely turns it over, often creating his own offense

Dlo - has been a above average starting caliber pg since he signed for us (which is good to be clear) There are concerns with his playoff consistency, seems to be turning it around. Defensively he has issues vs quicker guys but it’s a bit overblown, he’s not good, but he’s not horrendous or anything at least thus far if he’s not getting exploited

Rui - spark plug that currently averaged 13ppg on 70TS, a few hot shooting games mean teams have started to respect his three point shot a bit, and he’s played very good defense (numbers look off because of the small ball lineups)

Vando - y’all are higher on him than I am lol

Dennis - spark plug as well that’s been great defensively and often is the guy we go to when we can’t get anything going to draw fts

As a 3-8 on team with a double veteran max duo, it’s pretty stacked. That 4/5 of those guys are guys we got through trades or the minimum (and the other is Reaves!) is great imo


Was there an opportunity for this to happen? Sure! But trades are a two way street, and identifying these opportunities are important. We’ve gotten rid of guys that weren’t contributing for a very solid supporting cast. I’d argue we are the favorites to come out of the west barring health (which is a big concern of course)

I don’t think this makes him EOY clearly or anything, but what I’d say is he was able to turn

Bev/Russ/JTA/TB/Nunn, a first rounder and a second rounder

Into (bold for good playoff rotation guys for us so far)

Dlo/Vando/Rui/Beasley/Bamba

I would argue bamba would have been a great get if he was healthy too, as a backup center (and AD bamba lineups sound like hell for anybody going to the paint)

Then, we have Reaves, an undrafted signing and Dennis, a minimum signing

I would argue Ham has been great so far as well post deadline, that’s another can of worms though

Okay, so just going to respond with a short post here:

Fundamentally, I don't like giving awards to execs for climbing out of the holes they dig for themselves. It's similar to why I'm reluctant to give EOY to an exec for tearing his roster down, except in this case we're talking about an exec whose "tear down", aka acquiring Westbrook, was entirely accidental due to incompetence.

But here's a fundamental question:

Do you believe that the Lakers are in better shape now - roster-wise - than they were in 2021?

Are you happier with

DLo, Vando, Rui & Ham,

than you were with

KCP, Caruso, Kuzma & Vogel

?

If the answer is "Absolutely, yes!" then to me that's an argument for Pelinka deserving net praise.

If the answer is something else, then he probably shouldn't.

Note that if you want to give him credit for a guy like Reaves, I think that makes sense, but I'm reluctant to credit the GM too much with this in general, and Reaves presence I don't think has much to do with them giving up the players they did.

[Doctor MJ]

Poy is gonna be really weird. If Sixers get backdoor swept with the only win being when Embiid was out and Harden dropping a playoff career high 45.............i think theres a legit case Giannis, Luka and Embiid shouldnt have a Poy spot. How insane would that be?

Nothing's impossible, but it's hard for me to imagine Embiid slipping out of my Top 5. We know he was awesome during the year, and we know he's hurt now, so even if he's terrible in this series, I don't expect to drop him below guys eliminated before this round, and it would take a heck of a lot for others eliminated in the same round to jump above him.

But couldnt the injury itself dock him? I remember in past Poys players got penalized and some removed from consideration b/c of injury. Philly is 2-0 w/o Embiid now in playoffs both games on the road B2b. If he gets backdoor swept and he looks injured and is a big part of that despite them winning game 1 itd be hard for me to keep him on despite the fantastic Rs

With the caveat that I'm not looking to micro-manage how others evaluate injury when considering season achievement:

I personally don't think it's right to drop Player A below Player B because Player A got injured after Player B's season was over, no matter how injury prone Player A is.

That may be a reason why I would prefer to build around Player B in the abstract, but just in terms of season achievement, I don't like the idea that a guy is rising on my list while sipping umbrella-laden beverages in Cancun.

Now, if something Player A does in the playoffs makes me fundamentally re-evaluate how I see him as a basketball player, it's still possible that Player B could end up moving above him, but even there, I'm reluctant.

As an example:

In '20-21 I ended up with Gobert ahead of Curry in my POY and ahead of Dray in my DPOY because I had Gobert on top after the regular season. Gobert ended up further demonstrating how much better Curry & Dray were in the playoffs in general...but since the Warriors weren't actually achieving anything in those particular playoffs, it was moot to me in this particular decision.

[Texas Chuck]

Disagree that we can't reward an exec for having a good year just because they once had a bad year. Steve Nash wasn't even a good NBA player until like year 5 or 6(I know Doc thinks he was better than Kidd as a rookie, but that's very much an outlier take with not much to defend it), so should he have never been named MVP? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. We expect players to get better.

Why can't execs learn from mistakes? Or since so much of this seems to be results oriented judgment rather than process-based, why can't they get credit when moves work even if previous moves failed?

If a coach is fired, can they never win COY again? Of course not.

I think that's a fundamentally flawed way of evaluating anyone.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Yeah so I have to reiterate first:

The only reason why he was able to make a trade where he can be credited with not giving up too much to get rid of Westbrook is because he previously made a trade where he actually gave up stuff to GET Westbrook. If you want to ignore the sheer idiocy of his previous move, you can, but I cannot.

Now, if we want to make the argument the net gain between the two moves is very positive, that would make sense to me in principle. If you think they bought low and sold high on Westbrook, by all means, speak to that.

I've mentioned Vando already as someone who could possibly be a big positive so that's a possible avenue for argumentation, but as you say, he's likely still a guy who you'll prefer to play bench in some matchups.

Re: Dlo, Beasley. Just so we're clear, these guys together are guys paid more than $45 mill in total, one of whom the other team was actively trying to get rid of ASAP, and the other of whom the Lakers are playing 11 MPG in the playoffs. It's nice if these guys work out for the Lakers, but let's be real that this wasn't a brilliant chess move, it was mostly just two teams looking to get rid of trash that was making their team worse.

Re: Got rid of TB. He was making less than $2 mill, so I really don't see him as someone who was a problem that you need to credit the GM with getting rid of. You could just tell him to stay home.

Re: Rui. He's definitely been a nice get. Point for Pelinka there.

Re: Schroeder fantastic. It's been a good move for a number of reasons, but I don't think I'd want him to be a starter on the Lakers unless the alternative was Westbrook.

Re: Bamba. Not that I'd want to hold the move against Pelinka, but you're talking about another guy on the roster making more millions per year than minutes the Lakers were playing him. I'm cautious about mentioning a guy like this to support an EOY case.

Hmm, I don’t really agree on the Russ move itself because what matters isn’t that these opportunities are available but picking the right one right?

At the end of the day, we traded a guy on a max contract, a pick that was said to be the cost for unloading him, for

I don’t think how much they are paid for matters much to me, because we needed to get 45 million worth of players that are tradeable to get rid of russ

Vando, who is 24, who might be our best defender in some series, who is making 4.5 mill next year

Dlo, whose our starting point guard and was fantastic for us in the RS, and looks like he’s doing a alot better as of late, expiring next year if things don’t work out too. Great combination with AD, and I don’t think we win g4 or g1 without him (and he dominated in g6). Expiring

Beasley, whose been poor so far and has a team option for next year, who has a very tradeable salary since he’s expiring too

Outside of Vando, both contracts are essentially expiring and our decision, and Dlo has been genuinely quite good for us if inconsistent at times.

At the end of the day, GMing is about getting guys that help you, that there were guys struggling for other teams that can help us is a positive because he was able to identify these things



When it comes to getting rid of guys, importantly we got rid of guys that were getting minutes but weren’t good for us or helping us, and while in a perfect world I get you can just tell these guys not to play in practice It’s not really practical because it seemed like our team was sold on some of them to an extent

To be clear though, what we got for TB basically recouped the draft compensation we gave to get Rui

What i would say is the Lakers went from a team that potential would not make the play in, to a team that has had the best record in the NBA post trades even with lebron missing half of the games, who beat 2nd seed memphis 4-2 with both Lebron and AD struggling offensively, and just took game 1 vs the warriors

In our current playoff rotation, here are our guys organized by minutes

Lebron
Davis
Reaves
Dlo - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Rui - Nunn trade
Dennis - Minimum off-season
Vanderbilt - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Troy brown jr - minimum off-season
Beasley - Russ/JTA/Jones trade
Wenyen - minimum off-season


Going into the trade season, the Lakers were out of the play in (although I did think we would make it) and our only real shot at anything was if lebron and AD both went insane in the postseason like they did in the bubble

Lebron misses 14/25 last games, AD misses 2/25, even Dlo misses a few, and we go 17-8

In the postseason this far, despite bron and AD so far having been not great offensively (great defensively, especially AD), we manage to beat memphis in 6 deservingly, and just stole the first game against golden state

The roster they have been able to construct given where they started was great. Even the bamba signing in principle was fantastic considering what we gave up, he just got injured.

Right now I think the Lakers are one of the best 4-5 teams remaining, and at this point have a shot at a title (I would probably put DEN/BOS/PHI ahead, is equal to PHO and GSW), and if bron never hurt his foot I think they would absolutely steamroll the league right now

The supporting cast this team has been able to get from where they started out is gfreat


There are some concerns but

Reaves - undrafted player that’s our third best player, 15-5-5 with solid defense this postseason, rarely turns it over, often creating his own offense

Dlo - has been a above average starting caliber pg since he signed for us (which is good to be clear) There are concerns with his playoff consistency, seems to be turning it around. Defensively he has issues vs quicker guys but it’s a bit overblown, he’s not good, but he’s not horrendous or anything at least thus far if he’s not getting exploited

Rui - spark plug that currently averaged 13ppg on 70TS, a few hot shooting games mean teams have started to respect his three point shot a bit, and he’s played very good defense (numbers look off because of the small ball lineups)

Vando - y’all are higher on him than I am lol

Dennis - spark plug as well that’s been great defensively and often is the guy we go to when we can’t get anything going to draw fts

As a 3-8 on team with a double veteran max duo, it’s pretty stacked. That 4/5 of those guys are guys we got through trades or the minimum (and the other is Reaves!) is great imo


Was there an opportunity for this to happen? Sure! But trades are a two way street, and identifying these opportunities are important. We’ve gotten rid of guys that weren’t contributing for a very solid supporting cast. I’d argue we are the favorites to come out of the west barring health (which is a big concern of course)

I don’t think this makes him EOY clearly or anything, but what I’d say is he was able to turn

Bev/Russ/JTA/TB/Nunn, a first rounder and a second rounder

Into (bold for good playoff rotation guys for us so far)

Dlo/Vando/Rui/Beasley/Bamba

I would argue bamba would have been a great get if he was healthy too, as a backup center (and AD bamba lineups sound like hell for anybody going to the paint)

Then, we have Reaves, an undrafted signing and Dennis, a minimum signing

I would argue Ham has been great so far as well post deadline, that’s another can of worms though

Okay, so just going to respond with a short post here:

Fundamentally, I don't like giving awards to execs for climbing out of the holes they dig for themselves. It's similar to why I'm reluctant to give EOY to an exec for tearing his roster down, except in this case we're talking about an exec whose "tear down", aka acquiring Westbrook, was entirely accidental due to incompetence.

But here's a fundamental question:

Do you believe that the Lakers are in better shape now - roster-wise - than they were in 2021?

Are you happier with

DLo, Vando, Rui & Ham,

than you were with

KCP, Caruso, Kuzma & Vogel

?

If the answer is "Absolutely, yes!" then to me that's an argument for Pelinka deserving net praise.

If the answer is something else, then he probably shouldn't.

Note that if you want to give him credit for a guy like Reaves, I think that makes sense, but I'm reluctant to credit the GM too much with this in general, and Reaves presence I don't think has much to do with them giving up the players they did.

If you take out Lebron and AD? i think it’s debatable?

When it comes to

KCP/Kuzma/Caruso vs Dlo/Rui/Vando, you have to keep in mind how they played for us

KCP was a great shooter for us but defensively we were usinf him as a guy guarding wings instead of guards, which tended to limit his defensive impact a bit because he was taken advantage of at times.

Dlo is worse defensively, substantially slower even tho I don’t think he’s horrible more so just a negative, but offensively he’s very often our 2nd or 3rd most effective offensive player nowadays, if he regains consistency in the playoffs he’d be the best player of the 6, for us at least

Kuzma just struggled for us in general and I do think Rui as a fit is better for us right now.

Caruso is better than Vando, losing Caruso was a huge
mistake

However, given the rest of the roster? I do think an argument could be made.

I like ham, he’s been coaching well post all star break and he’s most of the reason AD had a resurgence this year offensively despite declining a lot since his peak physically. As a rookie coach it’s hard to do better than what he’s done post deadline. Defensive gameplanning has been comparable to vogel in my opinion, offensive gameplanning tiers ahead. We’ll see how this series goes but dumb small ball rotations aside he really out coached Jenkins last series and we def had a better gameplan game 1 than the warriors did



To me, it comes down to this.

He messed up originally, sure, but post deadline we have built a roster capable of being a elite defense around AD (#1 post deadline), and a offense that can handle Lebron being hurt and in more of an off ball role against strong defenses

[Doctor MJ]

Okay, so just going to respond with a short post here:

Fundamentally, I don't like giving awards to execs for climbing out of the holes they dig for themselves. It's similar to why I'm reluctant to give EOY to an exec for tearing his roster down, except in this case we're talking about an exec whose "tear down", aka acquiring Westbrook, was entirely accidental due to incompetence.

But here's a fundamental question:

Do you believe that the Lakers are in better shape now - roster-wise - than they were in 2021?

Are you happier with

DLo, Vando, Rui & Ham,

than you were with

KCP, Caruso, Kuzma & Vogel

?

If the answer is "Absolutely, yes!" then to me that's an argument for Pelinka deserving net praise.

If the answer is something else, then he probably shouldn't.

Note that if you want to give him credit for a guy like Reaves, I think that makes sense, but I'm reluctant to credit the GM too much with this in general, and Reaves presence I don't think has much to do with them giving up the players they did.

If you take out Lebron and AD? i think it’s debatable?

When it comes to

KCP/Kuzma/Caruso vs Dlo/Rui/Vando, you have to keep in mind how they played for us

KCP was a great shooter for us but defensively we were usinf him as a guy guarding wings instead of guards, which tended to limit his defensive impact a bit because he was taken advantage of at times.

Dlo is worse defensively, substantially slower even tho I don’t think he’s horrible more so just a negative, but offensively he’s very often our 2nd or 3rd most effective offensive player nowadays, if he regains consistency in the playoffs he’d be the best player of the 6, for us at least

Kuzma just struggled for us in general and I do think Rui as a fit is better for us right now.

Caruso is better than Vando, losing Caruso was a huge
mistake

However, given the rest of the roster? I do think an argument could be made.

I like ham, he’s been coaching well post all star break and he’s most of the reason AD had a resurgence this year offensively despite declining a lot since his peak physically. As a rookie coach it’s hard to do better than what he’s done post deadline. Defensive gameplanning has been comparable to vogel in my opinion, offensive gameplanning tiers ahead. We’ll see how this series goes but dumb small ball rotations aside he really out coached Jenkins last series and we def had a better gameplan game 1 than the warriors did



To me, it comes down to this.

He messed up originally, sure, but post deadline we have built a roster capable of being a elite defense around AD (#1 post deadline), and a offense that can handle Lebron being hurt and in more of an off ball role against strong defenses

Maybe I'm not understanding. To me the job was to build around LeBron & AD. You take that away and you might as well talk about Westbrook being more able than any of these players at leading a team (and DLo being the 2nd best), instead of what he actually was for the Lakers (massive, contender-killing negative value).

Re: "it comes down to...post deadline". Honestly, I think it's totally fine if you don't want to consider what happened before '22-23 when evaluating '22-23 awards.

For me though Pelinka getting the award is a bit like a "Congrats getting your head out your a**, next time listen to us when we tell you not to put it in there" award.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Okay, so just going to respond with a short post here:

Fundamentally, I don't like giving awards to execs for climbing out of the holes they dig for themselves. It's similar to why I'm reluctant to give EOY to an exec for tearing his roster down, except in this case we're talking about an exec whose "tear down", aka acquiring Westbrook, was entirely accidental due to incompetence.

But here's a fundamental question:

Do you believe that the Lakers are in better shape now - roster-wise - than they were in 2021?

Are you happier with

DLo, Vando, Rui & Ham,

than you were with

KCP, Caruso, Kuzma & Vogel

?

If the answer is "Absolutely, yes!" then to me that's an argument for Pelinka deserving net praise.

If the answer is something else, then he probably shouldn't.

Note that if you want to give him credit for a guy like Reaves, I think that makes sense, but I'm reluctant to credit the GM too much with this in general, and Reaves presence I don't think has much to do with them giving up the players they did.

If you take out Lebron and AD? i think it’s debatable?

When it comes to

KCP/Kuzma/Caruso vs Dlo/Rui/Vando, you have to keep in mind how they played for us

KCP was a great shooter for us but defensively we were usinf him as a guy guarding wings instead of guards, which tended to limit his defensive impact a bit because he was taken advantage of at times.

Dlo is worse defensively, substantially slower even tho I don’t think he’s horrible more so just a negative, but offensively he’s very often our 2nd or 3rd most effective offensive player nowadays, if he regains consistency in the playoffs he’d be the best player of the 6, for us at least

Kuzma just struggled for us in general and I do think Rui as a fit is better for us right now.

Caruso is better than Vando, losing Caruso was a huge
mistake

However, given the rest of the roster? I do think an argument could be made.

I like ham, he’s been coaching well post all star break and he’s most of the reason AD had a resurgence this year offensively despite declining a lot since his peak physically. As a rookie coach it’s hard to do better than what he’s done post deadline. Defensive gameplanning has been comparable to vogel in my opinion, offensive gameplanning tiers ahead. We’ll see how this series goes but dumb small ball rotations aside he really out coached Jenkins last series and we def had a better gameplan game 1 than the warriors did



To me, it comes down to this.

He messed up originally, sure, but post deadline we have built a roster capable of being a elite defense around AD (#1 post deadline), and a offense that can handle Lebron being hurt and in more of an off ball role against strong defenses

Maybe I'm not understanding. To me the job was to build around LeBron & AD. You take that away and you might as well talk about Westbrook being more able than any of these players at leading a team (and DLo being the 2nd best), instead of what he actually was for the Lakers (massive, contender-killing negative value).

Re: "it comes down to...post deadline". Honestly, I think it's totally fine if you don't want to consider what happened before '22-23 when evaluating '22-23 awards.

For me though Pelinka getting the award is a bit like a "Congrats getting your head out your a**, next time listen to us when we tell you not to put it in there" award.

I mean, yeah the job is to build around lebron and AD, but 2020 bron and AD are better than 2023 bron and AD are, so it’s not a fair comparison just to compare the two teams. I think this team with 2020 bron would maul the league right now.

I think it’s more so that it was definately him saving a fumble but man he saved that fumble incredibly well, like the roster we have right now is one I’d be happy with if we never got westbrook in the first place

I understand the sentiment that he dug himself into a hole so he shouldn’t get much for getting himself out of it, but it’s more he dug himself into a hole and jumped into a pot of gold

I not a fan of pelinka in general, I think he got pretty lucky stuff worked out I tbh but taking those opportunities matter and I think in hindsight if the Suns lose the Lakers had by far the best trade deadline

[pdevos]

Is there an official voter's application and/or ballot for this? If so, I'd be interested in being a part of the voting.

[Colbinii]

Is there an official voter's application and/or ballot for this? If so, I'd be interested in being a part of the voting.

I recommend reading through the first post in this thread and follow-up with sending Doctor MJ a PM [he created the thread].

How do we become voters?

1. Participate in this thread sincerely and frequently. Note: Voters from previous years are allowed more wiggle room on this.
2. PM me.

[Doctor MJ]

Disagree that we can't reward an exec for having a good year just because they once had a bad year. Steve Nash wasn't even a good NBA player until like year 5 or 6(I know Doc thinks he was better than Kidd as a rookie, but that's very much an outlier take with not much to defend it), so should he have never been named MVP? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. We expect players to get better.

Why can't execs learn from mistakes? Or since so much of this seems to be results oriented judgment rather than process-based, why can't they get credit when moves work even if previous moves failed?

If a coach is fired, can they never win COY again? Of course not.

I think that's a fundamentally flawed way of evaluating anyone.

I'm reminded of the old question:

Did you stop beating your wife?

The man who says "Yes" did something good - he stopped beating his wife! - but that doesn't mean he should be getting Husband of the Year.

I'm all for Pelinka making moves that get him EOY. I just don't feel comfortable giving it to him on the basis of undoing a mistake that all the best GMs avoided making in the first place.

[Texas Chuck]

Disagree that we can't reward an exec for having a good year just because they once had a bad year. Steve Nash wasn't even a good NBA player until like year 5 or 6(I know Doc thinks he was better than Kidd as a rookie, but that's very much an outlier take with not much to defend it), so should he have never been named MVP? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. We expect players to get better.

Why can't execs learn from mistakes? Or since so much of this seems to be results oriented judgment rather than process-based, why can't they get credit when moves work even if previous moves failed?

If a coach is fired, can they never win COY again? Of course not.

I think that's a fundamentally flawed way of evaluating anyone.

I'm reminded of the old question:

Did you stop beating your wife?

The man who says "Yes" did something good - he stopped beating his wife! - but that doesn't mean he should be getting Husband of the Year.

I'm all for Pelinka making moves that get him EOY. I just don't feel comfortable giving it to him on the basis of undoing a mistake that all the best GMs avoided making in the first place.

Yeah this isn't a beating the wife issue though. At all. Pelinka wasn't intentionally doing something he knew was wrong (ie beating one's wife). Analogy doesn't apply here.

And I'm not defending Pelinka or any specific Exec. I'm disagreeing with your position that a guy who had a bad year as a GM previously should not be considered for this year. I just fundamentally disagree with that.