2nd Round: LA Lakers vs. Utah - Series LAL wins (4-2)

[Lake Dynasty]

Fisher (the perfect PG for your system) falls from the sky into your lap. Then, the perfect big man, Gasol, comes gift wrapped in one of the most one sided trades in NBA history. At least we stole Boozer from Cleveland fair and square haha....

When are people gonna stop with that crap? Memphis traded him for Cap space and 3 1st rounder plus a 2nd rounder. What else did you want the Lakers to trade for him, Jack and the Laker girls?

[loserX]

When are people gonna stop with that crap? Memphis traded him for Cap space and 3 1st rounder plus a 2nd rounder. What else did you want the Lakers to trade for him, Jack and the Laker girls?

Maybe a good basketball player? Garnett brought back Al Jefferson as part of the package. Kidd returned Devin Harris. (AND those trades brought back youth and draft picks.) LA didn't even give up anything approaching a starter. The only on-court "production" the Lakers lost was the mighty Kwame Brown.

Of course, it's not the Lakers' fault that the Griz front office was SO desperate to save money that they were willing to take back less talent. But nobody buys that it wasn't a complete rip-off.

[Wile E. Coyote]

It's a real tribute to utah that they pushed this series all the way to the sixth game. This series really should of been over in 4 or 5 tops.

Yet none of ESPN's 'experts' picked it to be over in 4 or 5. One even predicted Utah to win in six.

[Lake Dynasty]

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Maybe a good basketball player? Garnett brought back Al Jefferson as part of the package. Kidd returned Devin Harris. (AND those trades brought back youth and draft picks.) LA didn't even give up anything approaching a starter. The only on-court "production" the Lakers lost was the mighty Kwame Brown.

Of course, it's not the Lakers' fault that the Griz front office was SO desperate to save money that they were willing to take back less talent. But nobody buys that it wasn't a complete rip-off.

That wasnt what the Giz wanted. They want an Exp plus picks. They got that.

Its not the first time such a trade happened. B. Davis and R. Wallace trades were very similar but i dont see many fans upset over that. Like you said, there was an oppertunity and the Lakers took advantage. They shouldnt apologize for that.

Anyway thats all history now. I still either SA/NO will push the Laker real hard and if they make it to the finals then another huge test. Its not like it will be a cake walk to the 'ship.

Good luck to your Jazz, they earn it my respect, especially D Will. That kid is stright up balla.

[dockingsched]

de-sticky! jazz are now irrelevant.

[snaquille oatmeal]

de-sticky! jazz are now irrelevant.

not without the great Texas longhorns concent.


btw Utah still relevant, David Archuleta made to finals in American Idol.
boy can sing.

[JellosJigglin]

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Maybe a good basketball player? Garnett brought back Al Jefferson as part of the package. Kidd returned Devin Harris. (AND those trades brought back youth and draft picks.) LA didn't even give up anything approaching a starter. The only on-court "production" the Lakers lost was the mighty Kwame Brown.

Of course, it's not the Lakers' fault that the Griz front office was SO desperate to save money that they were willing to take back less talent. But nobody buys that it wasn't a complete rip-off.

Both teams got what they wanted. And the best "young" talent the Lakers had who was still on a cheap contract was Crittenton, who's going to be a very good player. Not to mention Marc Gasol who's been winning multiple MVP's in Europe. Despite all that, the thing they wanted the most was to dump salary. The Lakers had the largest expiring contract available.

The timing just worked out for both teams. If you think there was another team out there that could fulfill Memphis' criteria, I'd like to hear it. We've been down this road plenty of times.

This is a trade that you have to wait 2 or 3 years to fully evaluate. I remember after the Shaq trade, we had to put up with fans calling it the worst trade in NBA history. People couldn't see Shaq declining the way Lakers fans could, having watched him play every single night. But little did we know Caron Butler would blossom into an All-Star, and Odom would learn to play in the triangle, and the draft pick would turn into Jordan Farmar, a key bench player for the Lakers.

But all people saw was a lottery season. Forget the fact that Caron, Lamar and Kobe only played around 40 games together that year. Forget the fact that Rudy Tomjanovic left in the middle of the season while the Lakers were still in playoff position. Forget the fact that the interim head coach openly admitted he didn't like being a head coach and couldn't wait to go back to being an assistant, DURING THE SEASON. All they saw was "lottery". But that lottery season turned into Andrew Bynum. So we took it and moved on.

To say the Lakers just lucked out suggests incompetence. Kupchak knew what he was doing. Believe it or not, his plan was to have cap space by 2007, and the back up plan was to use Kwame as an expiring contract in 2008. Laker fans scoffed and pouted at that plan, which sounded ridiculous in 2005/2006. In the end, he traded Butler for Gasol. And that brings us full circle.

But don't think the Lakers haven't gone through their hard knocks for the last few years. It was a combination of bad luck (resulting in Bynum), good luck (resulting in Fisher), and a GM who drafted well and had a long term plan. It's not as easy as saying they lucked out. It was a long and bumpy road that led to where they are now.

Now let's see what Memphis can do over the next few years before we judge the trade. They have some good young prospects, cap space and plenty of draft picks.

[Profanity]

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Maybe a good basketball player? Garnett brought back Al Jefferson as part of the package. Kidd returned Devin Harris. (AND those trades brought back youth and draft picks.) LA didn't even give up anything approaching a starter. The only on-court "production" the Lakers lost was the mighty Kwame Brown.

Of course, it's not the Lakers' fault that the Griz front office was SO desperate to save money that they were willing to take back less talent. But nobody buys that it wasn't a complete rip-off.

Both teams got what they wanted. And the best "young" talent the Lakers had who was still on a cheap contract was Crittenton, who's going to be a very good player. Not to mention Marc Gasol who's been winning multiple MVP's in Europe. Despite all that, the thing they wanted the most was to dump salary. The Lakers had the largest expiring contract available.

The timing just worked out for both teams. If you think there was another team out there that could fulfill Memphis' criteria, I'd like to hear it. We've been down this road plenty of times.

This is a trade that you have to wait 2 or 3 years to fully evaluate. I remember after the Shaq trade, we had to put up with fans calling it the worst trade in NBA history. People couldn't see Shaq declining the way Lakers fans could, having watched him play every single night. But little did we know Caron Butler would blossom into an All-Star, and Odom would learn to play in the triangle, and the draft pick would turn into Jordan Farmar, a key bench player for the Lakers.

But all people saw was a lottery season. Forget the fact that Caron, Lamar and Kobe only played around 40 games together that year. Forget the fact that Rudy Tomjanovic left in the middle of the season while the Lakers were still in playoff position. Forget the fact that the interim head coach openly admitted he didn't like being a head coach and couldn't wait to go back to being an assistant, DURING THE SEASON. All they saw was "lottery". But that lottery season turned into Andrew Bynum. So we took it and moved on.

To say the Lakers just lucked out suggests incompetence. Kupchak knew what he was doing. Believe it or not, his plan was to have cap space by 2007, and the back up plan was to use Kwame as an expiring contract in 2008. Laker fans scoffed and pouted at that plan, which sounded ridiculous in 2005/2006. In the end, he traded Butler for Gasol. And that brings us full circle.

But don't think the Lakers haven't gone through their hard knocks for the last few years. It was a combination of bad luck (resulting in Bynum), good luck (resulting in Fisher), and a GM who drafted well and had a long term plan. It's not as easy as saying they lucked out. It was a long and bumpy road that led to where they are now.

Now let's see what Memphis can do over the next few years before we judge the trade. They have some good young prospects, cap space and plenty of draft picks.

Not so bad trade. Marc Gasol has had 25p-10r-8a in today's play-off game. Those numbers are huge for a FIBA game.

[Chubby Chaser]

Probably the biggest move that Kupchak did that went unnoticed is when he secretly extended Kwame's contract a year ago. On his original deal, Kwame was supposed to have expired already (this was back when the lakers had a "3 years plan" resulting in us grabbing someone in the free agent market class of 07. That didn't pan out, so Mitch had the gaul to extend Kwame to keep his large contract on the book sto see if he could do something with it later on down the road. Which, luckily for us, worked out perfectly when Gasol's availability came about. Great move by Kupchak

[JellosJigglin]

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Not so bad trade. Marc Gasol has had 25p-10r-8a in today's play-off game. Those numbers are huge for a FIBA game.

I've been following Marc's progress. He has been putting up some great numbers over the last couple months. He's going to be a good NBA player. How good? That I don't know. But he will be a quality NBA player for sure. I think a lot of people will be surprised.

In FIBA those are VERY good numbers. I believe the quarters are only 10 minutes there, correct?

[JellosJigglin]

Probably the biggest move that Kupchak did that went unnoticed is when he secretly extended Kwame's contract a year ago. On his original deal, Kwame was supposed to have expired already (this was back when the lakers had a "3 years plan" resulting in us grabbing someone in the free agent market class of 07. That didn't pan out, so Mitch had the gaul to extend Kwame to keep his large contract on the book sto see if he could do something with it later on down the road. Which, luckily for us, worked out perfectly when Gasol's availability came about. Great move by Kupchak

Yup. Like I said, the man knew what he was doing and proved a lot of doubters wrong. All a GM can do is put his team in a position to make a big move. Whether that move presents itself or ever materializes is out of his control. But he had the team in position, cap-wise, to make something happen. And now we understand why the greatest GM ever, Jerry West, called Kupchak a genius with the cap rules.

Regarding the Kwame deal, I believe they signed him originally to 3 years, but the 3rd year was non-guaranteed. They were hoping to sign Amare or Yao in 2007. Once those guys extended, the 2007 plan was officially dead. They guaranteed Kwame's 3rd year to use his expiring as a trading chip. It worked out flawlessly.

[Profanity]

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I've been following Marc's progress. He has been putting up some great numbers over the last couple months. He's going to be a good NBA player. How good? That I don't know. But he will be a quality NBA player for sure. I think a lot of people will be surprised.

In FIBA those are VERY good numbers. I believe the quarters are only 10 minutes there, correct?

Yup. And the assists are counting like they were in the 80's NBA. Think in a Vlade Divac type player.

[eatyourchildren]

Didn't Erudite say the Jazz were going to STOMP the Lakers in a couple of games, at the very least?

[loserX]

Both teams got what they wanted.

Exactly. The Griz wanted to dump their best player (a young, under-contract 20/10 big man) for capspace, at the expense of getting better talent. It's idiotic, but they got what they wanted.

And the best "young" talent the Lakers had who was still on a cheap contract was Crittenton,

No, it was Bynum.

Despite all that, the thing they wanted the most was to dump salary. The Lakers had the largest expiring contract available.

The timing just worked out for both teams. If you think there was another team out there that could fulfill Memphis' criteria, I'd like to hear it.

That all pre-supposes that the Grizzlies HAD to trade Gasol this year. I'm not quite sure why they felt they did. Next season an awful lot of teams have big expirings, and the Griz could have played them off each other and driven up the price. The only reason "the timing just worked out" is that the Griz got impatient and took the only offer on the table. That makes it a bad trade.

[JellosJigglin]

Didn't Erudite say the Jazz were going to STOMP the Lakers in a couple of games, at the very least?

Where has that guy been anyway? He made some pretty bold statements about the Jazz beating the Lakers. The crow is getting cold. He needs to come take a seat.

[JellosJigglin]

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That all pre-supposes that the Grizzlies HAD to trade Gasol this year. I'm not quite sure why they felt they did. Next season an awful lot of teams have big expirings, and the Griz could have played them off each other and driven up the price. The only reason "the timing just worked out" is that the Griz got impatient and took the only offer on the table. That makes it a bad trade.

About Bynum, you're right. He was the best young prospect. But he proved he could be a franchise player through the first half of the year. Gasol has never proven that. So trading Bynum for him would've favored Memphis. Not to mention the 7 year age difference. You don't trade a back to the basket center for a face up power forward.

Regarding the quote above, the reason the timing worked out was because Gasol wanted out. He didn't want to play there anymore and so they needed to move him.

Mitch Kupchak vaguely described how the deal went down. The Lakers were actually in talks with them way before the trade went through. The Lakers approached them first after hearing about Gasol wanting out. Memphis was asking for a lot from the Lakers (he didn't say specifically which players), and they couldn't get a deal done.

Memphis then went out and talked with other teams, and weren't satisfied with any of their offers either. So they approached the Lakers and opened up discussions again. This time around, they wanted to go a different direction. They decided they wanted cap space and picks instead, which is what the Lakers were originally hoping for.

So no, Memphis didn't rush into it as much as you might think. They talked with other teams, they just weren't satisfied with what was being offered. Once it was clear they weren't going to get equal talent, they decided to just go with clearing cap instead.

Everyone assumed he'd end up in Chicago, but their owner/GM got a little too caught up in overrating his players. Maybe if Chicago had an expiring contract, they would've been able to package that with one of their young players, but they didn't have that available to them.

So the Lakers had what they were looking for, they had what the Lakers were looking for, and here we are.

[loserX]

Everyone assumed he'd end up in Chicago, but their owner/GM got a little too caught up in overrating his players. Maybe if Chicago had an expiring contract, they would've been able to package that with one of their young players, but they didn't have that available to them.

Yes they did. They could have S&T'ed PJ Brown the same way the Lakers did with McKie. (In fact, a lot of people believe that the reason PJ went so long into the season without signing was that he was hoping for exactly that.)

From what I understand, the problem was not that Chicago was overrating their players, it was that they refused to go into the luxury tax (which such a move would have done). Since they wouldn't S&T Brown, they didn't have any other expirings, and since that's what the Griz really wanted, no deal.

Anyway, this is FAR from the original intent of the thread, so I'll stop Thanks for the additional info, though, it was interesting.

[dockingsched]

basically the lakers didn't put a price on winning while other teams did. money interests came ahead of winning for teams like chicago.