The Official Off-Season NBA Thread

[freeze]

 

[nick.]

THEY said no one is bigger than the Lakers brand

 

[Cashflow]

THEY said no one is bigger than the Lakers brand

Pelinka needs to just cut his losses and trade him this offseason

 

[WASHED KING]

Lebron is the NBA lakers need to humble themselves.

 

[Based Jesus]

Lebron the owner and GM
You love to see it

 

[addict4sneakers]

Lebron the owner and GM
You love to see it

“I’M NOT ONLY THE CLIENT, I’M THE PLAYER PRESIDENT” - 2Pac voice

 

[lawdog1]

THEY said no one is bigger than the Lakers brand

Damn. Insurrection in El Segundo. Wild times.

 

[firstclass]

 

[lovehateself]

THEY said no one is bigger than the Lakers brand

GD you Earv

 

[amitt5504]

Awww

 

[friscostylez]

Here's to another decade of drafting in the lottery and 1st round playoff exits for LoLakers

Hope the covid chip was worth it

 

[el presidente]

“I’M NOT ONLY THE CLIENT, I’M THE PLAYER PRESIDENT” - 2Pac voice

 

[jpzx]

 

[pmatic]

 

[Based Jesus]

 

[tay1]

Here's to another decade of drafting in the lottery and 1st round playoff exits for LoLakers

Hope the covid chip was worth it

How's an aging Draymond & Klay, and not being able to resign Wiggins gon leave ya'll

 

[Blue Mamba]

Kyrie really got his way in the end

 

[tupac003]

THEY said no one is bigger than the Lakers brand

Spoiler: The biggest diva ever

Oram: As tensions rise between LeBron James and Rob Pelinka, where will Lakers draw the line?
By Bill Oram 2h ago

104

LeBron James and the Lakers are heading for a divorce.

Or, like with so many other relationships that have teetered on the brink of a break-up, they will find a way to reconcile.
Whichever way this goes, the events of the past week have proven something that has often been overlooked in the first four years of LeBron’s Lakers tenure: The gift of his presence is not without an expiration date. This was always made abundantly clear to his past employers. When he signed a four-year contract with the Lakers in 2018, James bucked his tradition of signing one-year deals in Cleveland, repeatedly leveraging his own looming free agency to keep the pressure on Cavaliers brass. There has never been that kind of urgency with the Lakers.

Maybe it was the fact that he already owned two mansions in L.A. Or the fact his production company was in the process of becoming a major player in Hollywood. Or that no one knew he would be playing at a league-altering level at age 37.

Whatever the reason, the Lakers appear to have taken for granted that whenever James decided to sail off into the sunset, he would take Sunset Boulevard to get there.
And as a likely result of that, there have been far more wasted years, including this 27-31 season, than there ever were in Cleveland and Miami.

That illusion of permanence has now been shattered, thanks not only to a series of passive-aggressive missives from James that make it clear he was frustrated by the Lakers inaction at the trade deadline, but also, in a conversation with The Athletic’s Jason Lloyd, entertaining the prospect of returning to Cleveland and explicitly stating his final year will be spent playing alongside his son — wherever that may be.

This has to all come as a shock to the Lakers and especially their vice president of basketball operations, Rob Pelinka, who has repeatedly yielded to James and the appropriately-named Klutch Sports Group that represents him.

Why appropriate?

Because James and agent Rich Paul long grabbed hold of the Lakers organization and are now beginning to really squeeze.

The situation is tense enough that one source close to the Lakers likened it to the early days of a war.

So far, the Lakers haven’t shown a particular willingness to engage in battle with their superstar, with sources saying that Pelinka has insisted internally that there are no hard feelings between the two sides.

But even if it is for now a one-sided war, by digging their heels in and not giving James everything that he wants has the potential to be received as a form of aggression — a battle tactic in its own right.

Pelinka erred when he said there was “alignment” between the front office and the Lakers superstars after the team failed to make a trade at the deadline. There quite clearly was not.
It remains murky, however, what exactly Pelinka was supposed to do at the deadline, and to what end.

If the Lakers traded their one available first rounder, a 2027 pick, and it didn’t make them a contender — which by now feels completely out of reach — it would have only limited their ability to improve the team in the offseason.

It’s obvious that James wanted him to do something. But Pelinka no doubt remembered that the last time he yielded to James’ management instincts, he got saddled with Russell Westbrook.
It is notable that maybe for the first time in James’ tenure, he did not get what he wanted out of Pelinka.

And now there is a divide between two of the key pillars in the unorthodox power structure of the Lakers that includes Jeanie Buss, Pelinka, James and Klutch, and much of the Rambis family tree.

As is true for the dynamic between any NBA star and his team, what’s best for James is not always what’s best for the Lakers. Pelinka shoulders at least some responsibility for the long-term health of the organization

That is of course not of as much interest to James as he chases a fifth title and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record.
And it only makes sense that he would focus his frustration on Pelinka’s inactivity at the trade deadline, because if he were to peel back any additional layers of the team’s roster, he would see his fingerprints all over it, too.

It’s impossible to know where all of this leads. James has the leverage to force a trade out of Los Angeles this summer, if that’s something he is interested in. He clearly has no great loyalty to Pelinka, the man who pushed the Lakers chips in to acquire James’ chosen co-star, Anthony Davis.

Why should he, considering the roster construction in each of James’ other three seasons in L.A?

And if James is done with Pelinka but not ready to be done with L.A. then doesn’t Jeanie Buss have to at least consider making a change at the top of her family’s business?
If James feels like the Lakers are not doing everything to maximize his golden years and he sees that as them pushing him away then, well, he might as well already be gone.
That heat you’re feeling is coming from the flamethrower James is pointing at Pelinka.

There is a certain irony that it is Pelinka who is now being pushed around by a Lakers superstar and his powerful agent. For nearly two decades, Pelinka was that agent, pressuring the Lakers in his own way on behalf of Kobe Bryant.

The Lakers are a superstar-driven franchise, a fact Pelinka embodies perhaps to a fault.

The philosophy can essentially be traced back to the beginning of basketball time, but for the sake of keeping it in the color TV era let’s just go back to 1991 when Magic Johnson’s career was cut short after he was diagnosed with HIV.

Jeanie Buss was as close to Johnson as anybody. She considered him another brother. But she also knew what he had meant for the Lakers, and what it meant for the Lakers to lose him.
When I recently spoke to Buss for a story on Johnson, she really emphasized how important it is that the Lakers not only have stars, but that the franchise takes care of them.
“I made my prayers at night and said, ‘If you ever send us another player like Magic Johnson,’” she said, “I will never take that player for granted again, and what that means to our city.”
That next player was Kobe Bryant. With him soon came a young agent named Rob Pelinka.

But for as important as Bryant was to the Lakers, sources inside the organization have long said that not even the legendary Black Mamba wielded as much power within the organization as James now has.

Bryant was never able to strong-arm the Lakers to make a move like the one James helped orchestrate for Westbrook, which has proven to be an outright disaster.
The Lakers did trade Shaquille O’Neal to placate Kobe before he hit free agency in 2004, but when he was under contract like James is now they did not always give in to his demands.
They didn’t give in to his trade demand in 2007. They brought back Phil Jackson even though his relationship with Bryant was strained. They avoided making a panicked move to marginally improve a lackluster roster and instead waited for Pau Gasol to become available.

The Lakers rewarded Bryant’s trust and as a result, they earned his loyalty. When he was still rehabbing from a devastating Achilles injury in 2013, the Lakers heaped upon Bryant a two-year, $49.5 million extension that essentially amounted to a lifetime achievement bonus. Bryant was so fervently embraced by the organization that when they overhauled the front office it was his agent Pelinka who was tabbed to be the new GM.

That is the way Pelinka was schooled in the Lakers way of doing business.

But now that he is on the other side of the table, Pelinka might be discovering that James and Paul work from a different playbook.
The relationship between LeBron and the Lakers now feels far more transactional than it ever did before.
This is a franchise that has long prided itself on keeping its stars happy. Now, the biggest of them all is, quite apparently, rather unhappy.
Here is the only question left to ask: In 2022, where is the line of what the Lakers are willing to do for a star?

 

[Moheezy]

Pelinka needs to just cut his losses and trade him this offseason

Does he have a no trade clause? Is that still a thing?

 

[B Sox]

People in here really thought the most powerful athlete ever wasn’t going to be able to call his shots in LA

 

[tay1]

Bron bought to take **** over and do some straightenin

 

[sneeker]

they should have seen this coming considering what we already saw last year. no offense to Anfernee Simons, but his dunks were no better than this year's slam dunk contest.

 

[HOU$TON]

 

[amitt5504]

Petty hate >>>

 

[wavycrocket]

MJ energy this all star weekend was incredible. Black cat remains one of the most I unintentionally funny people ever. But you know he serious business. Tru