Anthony Davis can?t carry a team

Lol. If Lebron is not healthy the Lakers are screwed. Could not do it here, Can?t do it in LA.

Didnt he just get injured tonight again?

Then again they had basically no time off. Next year will tell.

I hate that I feel like this, but the Lakers imploding due to injury is...sort of what I was banking on happening. And I bet Griffin was too.

It's not cool though. I really don't like expecting misfortune to befall. I don't believe in karma or whatever, but...it leaves a bad feeling on my mind.

I mean, we know he can't carry a team, at least, not many teams (it's probably possible to construct a fantasy team in which he's the best player and everything is perfectly balanced around him but that's far from practical). That's not been a mystery for a long time. I don't think this is really news to anyone.

That said, I agree with Eman and most of us said it when the AD trade happened: a lot of the value of that trade was in the picks, and Griff was taking the gamble that Lebron would start to age out and AD would not be able to be The Guy within the next few years and they would lack the cap flexibility and the assets to bring in additional high level talent.

Here we are, 2 years on from that trade, and that's what seems to be happening.

Best possible situation is if they imploded and both lebron and AD left this offseason

It happened too soon. Now they will have a top 18 pick this year and wont have put a ton of miles on their tires in season. More guys will want to come if they dont win the title because now you can take some credit for helping them win instead of just joining a 2 time champ.

I bet the pick we get from them in 2022 will be worse than their 2021 pick. The only way we get a good pick is that 2024/2025 pick. Gotta hope Lebron tries to hold on and kills their cap while not being good anymore

Nobody feeling sorry for them today. Lakers fans calling Davis damaged goods now? Honeymoon over already?

Would you take Davis back if Lakers decided to kick him to curb in a year or two from now? Zion & Davis combo? Go BIG again?

I thought we all knew that the 24 turning into the 25 pick was the Opal

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Originally Posted by 13 - 3

Would you take Davis back if Lakers decided to kick him to curb in a year or two from now? Zion & Davis combo? Go BIG again?

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No. Davis is ********

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Originally Posted by MichaelMcNamara

It happened too soon. Now they will have a top 18 pick this year and wont have put a ton of miles on their tires in season. More guys will want to come if they dont win the title because now you can take some credit for helping them win instead of just joining a 2 time champ.

I bet the pick we get from them in 2022 will be worse than their 2021 pick. The only way we get a good pick is that 2024/2025 pick. Gotta hope Lebron tries to hold on and kills their cap while not being good anymore

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What superstar outside of Kahwhi has said they want LA

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Originally Posted by AusPel

What superstar outside of Kahwhi has said they want LA

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None, and until Lebron went there they hadn't acquired a big name in free agency since Shaq.

There seems to be this persistent myth that players just flock to NY and LA, when that just doesn't really happen. Like yes, AD asked out and wanted LA but he's a Klutch client and that's where Lebron plays: if Lebron was still in Cleveland he'd have been asking to go there instead. We all know the ''you can't get endorsements in New Orleans'' thing was nonsense (and that has quickly been shown to be the case by Zion racking up deals left and right).

Also, I think the framing of this season for the Lakers as ''they haven't put miles on their tires'' is weird considering:

- AD's injury problems have been persistent and severe, there's no reason to expect them to be any better next year and they are arguably more of a toll on the body than another 250 played minutes would have been
- Lebron's minutes, while low for him historically, have still been fairly high this year: he's played more minutes than Myles Turner, OG Anunoby, CJ McCollum, etc this year. Again, while he wasn't like a top 50 minutes in the league guy this year, it's not like he spent the whole season resting, he played fairly significant minutes and then got hurt.

I get the need to be cautious (never count out Lebron, yadda yadda, maybe they have a miracle recover *this* year, scrape the playoffs and storm it) and there are no guarantees but I feel like declaring it to have just happened too soon now is a bit doomsayer-y.

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Originally Posted by AusPel

What superstar outside of Kahwhi has said they want LA

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Who said superstar? I am talking about getting the best MLE guy. Getting guys who normally take 4-5 mil who go there for the min. They got Schroeder with the 27th pick last year. Now they will have the 17th or 18th to dangle. Plus Lebron and AD coming back healthy. That pick next year wont be good, we wont be better than them in 2023, so we wont swap. So, it will come down to hoping they will be bad in 24 or 25 -- which was always the case. The only hope. But this thread makes it seem like it might be better than that. It wont. Maybe one of those picks will be lotto, but I will still bet against it

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Originally Posted by Eman5805

I hate that I feel like this, but the Lakers imploding due to injury is...sort of what I was banking on happening. And I bet Griffin was too.

It's not cool though. I really don't like expecting misfortune to befall. I don't believe in karma or whatever, but...it leaves a bad feeling on my mind.

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I have zero issue with it.

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Originally Posted by HornetGuru

Best possible situation is if they imploded and both lebron and AD left this offseason

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ugh no.....in that case with lebron and AD both off the books the Lakers would probably fall into some avenue of being great.

The reality is the Lakers are the NBA's premiere franchise and over the last 60+ years have been somewhere between pretty good and really good for like over 85%+ of that time.

Betting on any Laker pick several years into the future to be a great pick is like betting on one of the boyfriends of the girls on mtv's 'teen mom' to be a stand up guy......it could happen, but history tells us it's unlikely.

When the lakers had that mini-run of very high picks that ended a few years back that was the only team in my or my dad's sports viewing life(!) they have been consistently bad. We can spin a bunch of buts and what ifs all day, but thats the reality...

Besides the lakers have already won this trade unfortunately. Or did you guys miss lebron and AD hoisting that title almost a year ago? I sure as hell didn't,and watching that *sucked*......

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Originally Posted by tacosman

ugh no.....in that case with lebron and AD both off the books the Lakers would probably fall into some avenue of being great.

The reality is the Lakers are the NBA's premiere franchise and over the last 60+ years have been somewhere between pretty good and really good for like over 85%+ of that time.

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The reality is that the NBA is different today than it has been in the past and the Lakers have spent the majority of the last decade being god-awful and nobody went there until Lebron decided he wanted to make a movie in Hollywood. Without the allure of playing for a chip with Lebron, what has happened in the last decade, under this owner and this GM, to make you think they'd suddenly be able to right the ship and be a great team without at least a few years of problems in between.

Remember, they can't just draft a star (Cause they don't have their picks) and they can't trade for one either (Cause they don't have their picks), and the draft/trade is usually how they acquire their guys: it's how they got Kareem, it's how they got Magic, it's how they got Pau, it's how they got Kobe, and it's how they got AD.

Lebron is literally the first time someone who was on top of the league went to the Lakers in free agency in a long time, since Shaq in fact.

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Originally Posted by AusPel

What superstar outside of Kahwhi has said they want LA

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Going by history

Chris Paul

As for NY

Carmelo Anthony