How does the Lakers front office recover from this?

[Gus McCrae]

Mitch sounded really unimpressive on mason and Ireland. I can't see him convincing any free agent on the fence about signing with us to actually move forward. He seemed unable to answer questions directly from mason like " what was your offseason goal" and " how do you implicate analytics" and then from Ireland " what are your thoughts on upshaw and do we have his rights"? He also didn't answer the question about "walk us through the Aldridge interview" very clearly.

All in all, I've considered Mitch a top tier GM for a long time but now that I'm stepping back and re-evaluating him he just seems like a dinosaur. He doesn't seem sharp or personable

[dockingsched]

You can't expect to listen to a Mitch interview and get specific detailed answers, that's not something he ever does.

I felt the complete opposite of you saying he was unable to answer, to me he answered with as much detail as I could hope for.

[Gus McCrae]

He seemed surprised that Mason had heard of SportsVu and got confused by Ireland's question about Upshaw when it was pretty simple. He also didn't layout what his actual plan was for the offseason there's no need to be cryptic about it

[dockingsched]

He said he didn't think spending too much time talking about upshaw was a good idea since he's so far off, what part did he not understand?

And he did layout the plan, he stated that once they decided to go with Russell in the draft and with last yr's draft in consideration too, their plan was to target a big man first via free agency and if not via trade.

[ArC_man]

Mitch in interviews typically speaks as if he's talking to an average casual fan. Even though he's so gung ho about analytics, Mason is a casual fan.

I don't see any reason to outline any specifics about the plan for the offseason. To me it's pretty clear that we had a list of FAs, we approached them in order of priority, and we also had a backup plan in Hibbert set up (and probably other backups like David Lee) in case we didn't land anyone.

[Gus McCrae]

Okay, most people would consider our off season a failure outside of the draft. We had Aldridge clowning on our presentation, some weird Jeannie Buss statement that Jim will retire if we don't make the playoffs, and we signed 0 of our targeted free agents. While we lucked into getting a second overall pick in general the front office hasn't come off looking very sharp. I'd argue the most embarrassingt thing i've ever seen was the Dwight STAY poster last year.

All that said, Mitch knew Mason was clowning on him for the past week or so and wanted to come on to set the record straight. This was a good opportunity for him to sound very competent and reassuring.

Question 1: what was your plan for the offseason- what is your vision? - "well we got a small so we wanted to get a big in FA or via trade". Obviously Mitch. But the question is more towards what are you trying to do? compete in X years? Why did Aldridge seem like a good fit, etc.

Question 2 (this is all off memory): what happened at the Aldridge meeting that he went publically and dissed us? " well there was a round table so it was really difficult to do the meeting because we weren't sitting across from each other and then our time was up so it didn't go well. But not as bad as he said." this is no a reassuring comment.

Question 3: how do you and B. Scott use analytics? "wait, you know what sportsvu is? that's impressive. and you have access? that's very interesting" Like mitch thought he was ahead of the curve using this feature that regular fans do. I really didn't have too much issue with this one though.

Question 4: Is Upshaw going to play for the Lakers or Defenders and do we have his rights? "wow, that's a lot of question. i dont' know if he'll make the team or even play tonight" it wasn't that difficult and i dont think he answered the second part of the question.

I get that Mitch dumbs it down for the fans but he didnt give me a sense of direction or acknowledgement of what went wrong this offseason. Anyways, this is just what i took from the interview. I know he's holding cards and can only say certain things but hearing him talk I can see why he doesnt win anyone over in FA interviews.

[dockingsched]

He definitely answered the part about Ipshaws rights if that you're referring to, he stated that he's an unrestricted free agents and they don't have his rights.

[Jedi32]

I actually think we recovered pretty well. Of course realgm general board would disagree but I see hibbert as a game changer for us on defense. He'll be Tyson Chandler just younger imo. Bass is a blue collar type, we drafted Russell have Randle coming back. We have a healthy kobe(hopefully) plus we got some more fire power coming off the bench with lou williams. I actually give our offseason an A-/B+.

[ArC_man]

Gus, here's what I got from Mitch's interview with regards to your numbering system:
1) 'When you started FA, what were you trying to do? What was your goal?" - The plan was to first go from the draft. Since we drafted a guard the next goal was to flesh out the roster by getting a big. The goal heading into FA was to contact a number of bigs that they marked in FA, whether through in person meetings or by phone.

2) "What happened in the Aldridge meeting?" - They've had meetings with previous FAs using a similar style that were well received, so they went into the LMA meeting taking a similar approach with the caveat that they believed LMA was under-appreciated so they focused on making him feel wanted and appreciated. However, towards the end of the meeting they ran out of time when talking about basketball issues and rushed the end -- a consequence of including too many people in the meeting, the fixed length of the meeting, etc. He didn't think the meeting was as bad as perceived but didn't feel they did their best job but they'll improve going forward ("live and learn").

3) "How important is analytics, how are you guys sorting it out?" - SportsVU has changed the way coaches and GMs look at basketball. Data produced after every game is sent to the analytics department -- 5 people with advanced degrees in varying fields (only 2 Ph.Ds though ) -- the analytics department puts the data into a understandable form and shares it with Mark Madsen who narrows down the amount of information and shares it with the rest of the coaching staff. A lot of the information is also used by Mitch in FA/Trades.

4) Doc already addressed this, I think Mitch almost always undersells prospects to not put too much pressure on them.

Mitch answers questions very literally, he doesn't assume or project the intent of any question. If you give him leeway to ramble with open ended questions, he will go on and on and you will probably miss his point.

[DEEP3CL]

Ahh...Mitch was typical Mitch, nothing he said surprised me. The things we we're already hearing in the media about the meeting is stuff Mitch answered without really saying it.


When he said that they've pretty much used the same pitch to every free agent, I can clearly see why none are coming. I think Mitch and especially Jeanie is out of touch with these younger players that are 25-30, they come from the AAU structure and trust me I've spent years in coaching in that culture.

They seem to not understand even though people at NBA levels have been saying this for years....but you don't have to be in the big markets to have endorsement success. To me it was disappointing to hear Mitch say they didn't get to get that much basketball talk in on a 2 hour meeting. That needed to be point number 1, but with them being out of touch and not evidently knowing how Aldridge is as a person hurt them.

Okay Mitch had part of what was bugging him right, but LA is a very private person so all the media glitz wasn't going to move him. And this "what our brand can do for you globally", is Jeanie's little skit she likes to drive. That's pretty much a moot point now and has no need in free agent meetings anymore. Players know this stuff now, what they want to know about is how the progression of the team is coming along, will you spend money to stay competitive, they want to know from the coaches how they would be utilized. This is simple stuff to improve on.

There is no need to go into a meeting with TWSN reps in the room, you don't need gimmicks and I pointed this out in the thread I made regarding how to go into the meeting. But I think Mitch summed it up best when he said "you live and learn from it", at least they realized they made a mistake. Plus they should've known you can't pitch every free agent with the same pitch, weather it was successful or not with other FA's is irrelevant. They have to do a better job of targeting who's reality and who's not.

Like 2016 for example, we won't be in a full fledged winning mode yet so why waste time mentioning that you're going after top tier free agents ? We all know and I'll say it now, but we're not even a threat to land Durant. Our goal should be a guy like Derozen. Now if we're in a winning situation in a few more years down the road then you attack like a shark. Players are only coming to ready to win now teams.

If Julius, D-Lo and JC along with our other rookies seem like they're forming a nice core then believe me free agents will see it. Turns out me and kblo247 were right all along, because we've been saying for the last two years we've been saying the team needed to build with B-Level players for the short term until the team turns the corner. Guys like Hibbert, Bass, Lou are much better than we've had the last 3 years.

But as far as these pitch meetings, we gotta do better and I think we will. Whenever you get exposed you have no choice but to change.

[dockingsched]

B level players last year means no draft pick at all, so no you two weren't right all along

[DEEP3CL]

B level players last year means no draft pick at all, so no you two weren't right all along

Ahh...yes I was, it's moot and irrelevant to say that.

[john248]

Had the Lakers not tanked last year and signed a roster full of mid-tiered or "B-level" guys, D'Angello Russell likely wouldn't be here. Instead, the Lakers would've planned poorly and been stuck as a treadmill team with no cap space. The irrelevant point would be assuming that a star free agent will sign with a B-list roster or that a turn around would've happened in a single off season.

This offseason isn't all that different than the last with striking out on the big names in FA, lottery picks (Randle, Russell), expiring contracts (Lin, Boozer, Hibbert, Kobe), and the token bad signing (Nick Young, Lou Williams). Of course there's Brandon Bass that was nice for this year, and additions to a younger core.

The Lakers only have a brigher outlook because 2 key players return from injury to go along with a lotto pick in Russell; also, Hibbert will do better things in the 20 minutes he plays versus what Jordan Hill and Boozer did. Should Kobe and Randle be injured again, things look crappy and only slightly better than last year.