slifersd wrote: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..