How long are we gonna suck?

[Dr Aki]

Someone's or some entity's got to buy the Lakers. Like Disney did w the failing Star Wars franchise jump started it. Ok thanks bye see you after my temporary ban.

At least they should start spending some dough. It's unacceptable that the wealthiest franchise in the league ranks 21st in payroll. Something tells me the Buss kids weren't left much besides their equity in the team, thus they're milking the cow. I hear rumours of much dissent in the family since Ballmer dropped two billy on the Clips. Let's hope greed gets the better of them.

you have just displayed zero understanding of the CBA

i mean, come on, the lakers threw max contracts at those that deserved max contracts, they didn't take them. it's not a willingness to spend, clearly with the nash and dwight trades, the lakers FO were willing to spend, just not spend haphazardly and lock the lakers into salary cap hell

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c[/youtube]

[mcscotty]

Someone's or some entity's got to buy the Lakers. Like Disney did w the failing Star Wars franchise jump started it. Ok thanks bye see you after my temporary ban.

At least they should start spending some dough. It's unacceptable that the wealthiest franchise in the league ranks 21st in payroll. Something tells me the Buss kids weren't left much besides their equity in the team, thus they're milking the cow. I hear rumours of much dissent in the family since Ballmer dropped two billy on the Clips. Let's hope greed gets the better of them.

you have just displayed zero understanding of the CBA

i mean, come on, the lakers threw max contracts at those that deserved max contracts, they didn't take them. it's not a willingness to spend, clearly with the nash and dwight trades, the lakers FO were willing to spend, just not spend haphazardly and lock the lakers into salary cap hell

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c[/youtube]

21st in payroll is 21st in payroll. Other teams don't seem too concerned. You can spare the insults.

[mcscotty]

At least they should start spending some dough. It's unacceptable that the wealthiest franchise in the league ranks 21st in payroll. Something tells me the Buss kids weren't left much besides their equity in the team, thus they're milking the cow. I hear rumours of much dissent in the family since Ballmer dropped two billy on the Clips. Let's hope greed gets the better of them.

In what ways are the Lakers being cheap? You want them to go out and overpay for players that aren't worth it or sign guys to long term contracts that aren't part of the long term goals of the team...

The CBA limits how much they can spend on the rookies and players on rookie contracts so not sure where you want them to spend the money.

In today's NBA it's hard to maneuver a team into being in position to go after the big contract players, why would you want them to go out and screw that up after it took them a few years to get into that position?

With the CBA as it is the Lakers are in a great spot going into next summer, loads of cap room and young talent for the future, not sure how anyone could find this a problem to be honest

We were in a great spot last summer, too. Look how well that ended. In what ways are the Lakers being cheap? Filling out roster spots with washed up Euro league players. Holding on to bench warmers like Kelly and Sacre and their cheap contracts. Fortunately, Metta coming back on Vet min has worked out, but who saw that coming? Then, Kobe has to go out and play 36 minutes last night cause Byron has no other options. Lakers should be near the top of the list every season with respect to payroll…..not 21st.

[Dr Aki]

are you aware of what the salary cap is?

do you know what bird rights are?

do you understand what a max contract is and how it's calculated?

do you understand how exceptions are generated and how limited in number they are?

this isn't baseball, where money can be thrown around without other teams unable to match huge contracts?

you have displayed absolutely no attempt to understand the NBA's CBA, and frankly, distilling the lakers issues to one overly simple concept (willingness to spend) is not only incredibly poor, it's also not even a reason that applies to the lakers, who were, are and will spend to put championship products on the floor

please, for the love of god, go to http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm and read before you embarrass yourself further

[mcscotty]

are you aware of what the salary cap is?

do you know what bird rights are?

do you understand what a max contract is and how it's calculated?

do you understand how exceptions are generated and how limited in number they are?

this isn't baseball, where money can be thrown around without other teams unable to match huge contracts?

you have displayed absolutely no attempt to understand the NBA's CBA, and frankly, distilling the lakers issues to one overly simple concept (willingness to spend) is not only incredibly poor, it's also not even a reason that applies to the lakers, who were, are and will spend to put championship products on the floor

please, for the love of god, go to http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm and read before you embarrass yourself further

I don't have to read the CBA to know there are loopholes. Kobe makes $25 million a year, and LeBron makes $20 million. The Cavs have a payroll in excess of $100 million….the Cavs….Cleveland. Explain that to me and we can figure out how to offer players a little extra to compensate for the nasty income taxes in California.

[Dr Aki]

are you aware of what the salary cap is?

do you know what bird rights are?

do you understand what a max contract is and how it's calculated?

do you understand how exceptions are generated and how limited in number they are?

this isn't baseball, where money can be thrown around without other teams unable to match huge contracts?

you have displayed absolutely no attempt to understand the NBA's CBA, and frankly, distilling the lakers issues to one overly simple concept (willingness to spend) is not only incredibly poor, it's also not even a reason that applies to the lakers, who were, are and will spend to put championship products on the floor

please, for the love of god, go to http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm and read before you embarrass yourself further

I don't have to read the CBA to know there are loopholes. Kobe makes $25 million a year, and LeBron makes $20 million. The Cavs have a payroll in excess of $100 million….the Cavs….Cleveland. Explain that to me and we can figure out how to offer players a little extra to compensate for the nasty income taxes in California.

i rest my case, you haven't even made the bare minimum effort

maybe you should study up instead of spouting nonsense, it's apparent you don't even know the most basic of CBA basics

i ain't gonna spoon feed you

[mcscotty]

Avoiding questions and hurling insults….you should be a politician.

[Dr Aki]

if you even bothered to go to the link i provided, you would very quickly realise you can't out-offer teams that hold a FA's bird rights

now instead of educating yourself, you've just decided to simply become indignant and doubled down on your lack of knowledge on the core provisions of the CBA

bravo, you've let your hubris prevent you from learning something new and all you've done is appear too lazy to even bother researching the matter

[billy_21]

Everything about this team and its rebuild starts from the top. I tried to give Jimmy and his staff the benefit of the doubt when he first took over officially, and I must say I simply cannot do that any more. The decisions made by these guys have been nothing short of atrocious the last few seasons and have set this team back big time.

Every summer, we go on these wild goose chases for the biggest FA we can find. Even though the likelihood of them signing with us was marginal at best, non-existent at worst. I mean, honestly, why would Melo or LMA leave a better team who pays more money for us? 75 and sunny can't get us everyone. The key for our rebuild or at least return to relevance should have been on that second tier of free agents, like Isiah Thomas, Greg Monroe and Chandler Parsons. Those guys were young, talented and had some room to continue growing, and their teams weren't inclined to keep them at all cost. And yet, these are the exact players we ignore. We never even had a meeting for Isiah Thomas or Parsons, and gave a half ass offer to Greg Monroe.

My biggest fear is that this management is no longer making decisions based on basketball reasons (I know we all hate that word, but bear with me here). It just seems like we are never making any of our personnel decisions based on the primary objective of making the team better any more. Instead, we always make moves to grab headlines and try to generate interest in the team. Byron Scott got the job because of his Lakers connections, and that Magic would finally stop bad mouthing the Lakers management; Melo and LMA were both questionable fits on this team due to their position and age, but they would increase interest in the team and put asses in seats; D'Angelo Russell was the hot new kid on the block that everyone wants to see cause of his slick play making, so we picked him and his flash over Jahlil Okafor's steady but unspectacular game. All these moves have backfired on us already, and I bet you next summer we are still going to go after Durant instead of focusing on someone we can actually get. That TV contract with TMC has our revenue tied to ratings, and the management is now apparently going full force to help maintain ratings instead of building a solid basketball team. Until that is corrected, we are never going to get out of this mess no matter how many contracts come off the books.

Moving right along from the apparent 'complexities' of the CBA.. back to the actual topic.. Everything slifersd has mentioned is exactly what is wrong with the current Lakers..

The Lakers FO does not seem interested in making any decisions to the betterment of the actual TEAM! Every decision that Jim Buss has made (i'm not buying these moves done by Mitch) Jim Buss has tried to hit a home run at every turn and with the way the team has been the last 3 seasons we need to go the long way around back into some sort of relevance i.e through the draft. Making personnel decisions based on what's good for 'Business' is going to drag the Lakers brand through the mud and there is a very strong chance that we could end up being the Knicks of the West.

First things first, Jim Buss either needs to pull his head in and let Mitch do his job and get back to actual basketball decisions or just sit back and collect his $$ from being an owner of the team.

2 - Kobe needs to sail off into the sunset, with everything that Kobe has said about when his going to call it time.. I don't see any scenario where Kobe comes back next season. You can just tell that his done, his been a professional and put in the work to come back and get on the court for his last season of his current deal.

3. Be smart during the draft, target guys in the draft based on best available Talent (see 76ers). For this too happen point #1 needs to be in full effect and the FO needs to ensure that our draft options are not based on who we're targeting in FA.

4. FA - Target realistic guys that are willing to come here to build and restore some pride back into the purple and gold. Eg, when we replaced Ariza with MWP aka: Ron Artest. Happy to stand corrected, but from memory Ariza's agent wanted more than we were willing to pay at the time and he ended getting the same amount that we paid Ron to come from Houston (main point here is that Ron wanted to come here). Surround our young core with some solid vets who can help develop them into reaching their ceiling (eg.. timberwolves)

In saying this, I'm not saying we should not target Superstars. By all means lay out the carpet to all the stars and give a good pitch, we might even get lucky and get one to come here.. But lets not put all our hopes on KD, DMC, Russ coming here and getting us back into contention.

These are just basic/simple steps that the FO should be looking at.. the more we stike out on hitting that home run to get back into immediate contenders, the less attractive we seem (e.g Dwight stay campaign)

If we don't these basic steps right, unfortunately I see us sucking for a LONG time..

[Dr Aki]

if you even bothered to go to the link i provided, you would very quickly realise you can't out-offer teams that hold a FA's bird rights

now instead of educating yourself, you've just decided to simply become indignant and doubled down on your lack of knowledge on the core provisions of the CBA

bravo, you've let your hubris prevent you from learning something new and all you've done is appear too lazy to even bother researching the matter

I didn't mention any specific players with Bird rights. For all you know, I could have been talking about UFA's. You're pulling stuff out of your ass.

so why'd you use cleveland as a comparison?

you think cleveland would be able to have a 100 mil plus wage bill without possessing love's, kyrie's and thompson's bird rights?

if you're suggesting to look at overpaying scrubs, do you even understand that the largest contract the lakers' could've offered after they reached the salary cap was the MLE?

unless of course, that was what you were suggesting, locking the lakers into overpaying scrubs for years, cos none of these good UFAs were taking the lakers' money

yes, let's suck slightly less by raising our wage bill without a set plan

[Mirjalovic]

At least they should start spending some dough. It's unacceptable that the wealthiest franchise in the league ranks 21st in payroll. Something tells me the Buss kids weren't left much besides their equity in the team, thus they're milking the cow. I hear rumours of much dissent in the family since Ballmer dropped two billy on the Clips. Let's hope greed gets the better of them.

you have just displayed zero understanding of the CBA

i mean, come on, the lakers threw max contracts at those that deserved max contracts, they didn't take them. it's not a willingness to spend, clearly with the nash and dwight trades, the lakers FO were willing to spend, just not spend haphazardly and lock the lakers into salary cap hell

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c[/youtube]

21st in payroll is 21st in payroll. Other teams don't seem too concerned. You can spare the insults.

we are in rebuilding mode dude.

don't need to spend now.

who would we need to pay ? Marc, LMA, LeBron, Melo reject us in FA. FO willing to spend, but they are waiting the right players/moment.

[mcscotty]

Well thank you Dr. Aki for going over this and bringing me up to speed. I'm neither an agent, owner, player, or labor relations lawyer. Nor do I have much interest in the subject. I guess it's worked out well for the small markets like San Antonio, Cleveland, Oklahoma, and Milwaukee, but how I miss the good old days.

[Dr Aki]

i'm going to let your attempt at facetiousness pass

the entire CBA's purpose, going back to the 2005 CBA agreement was to limit the ability of the lakers to simply throw money at the problem and shortcut their way to success, nevertheless, it's only a matter of time before the lakers become a marquee destination again

the foundations for slingshotting into contention are in place, the lakers have the young talent, there's massive amounts of capspace in the immediate and intermediate future to sign pieces, or acquire large expiring contracts for picks

the lakers need only time, which will provide the natural progression, the team chemistry and lack of kobe's large overbearing shadow to make the leap, but it's going to have to be organic, there is no magical pau gasol for kwame brown trade, and even if that happened, we don't have a 29yo kobe to take advantage

[gts1]

i rest my case, you haven't even made the bare minimum effort

maybe you should study up instead of spouting nonsense, it's apparent you don't even know the most basic of CBA basics

i ain't gonna spoon feed you

sometimes it pays to just cut and run instead of wasting your time

[kinein]

Indefinitely, the Lakers need to find out if what they have right now in terms of young talent is going to pan out. There is already proven talent in terms of the veterans that were signed, but at this point its really a hodge-podge of vets and newbies and whether they can compete within the division and the west for now...

Just enjoy this year for what it is, Kobe's Farewell Tour.

Whether Randle, Russell, Clarkson and the others can mature and grow as players is going to take more time.. (years) they aren't immediate game-changers.