Jerry Buss Pulls Off Talks With Lamar Odom..

Does it annoy anyone else how we only have 58 mil spent on contracts while the Lakers have a massive 84 mil being spent, yet they are the ones who always seem to be the front runners for new players to come in? We have been seriously hurting in cap space for a while, but still no where close to the Lakers, yet the continue to rack up the star players without ever having the need to rebuild. Its almost unfair.
 
Kings Faithful said:
Does it annoy anyone else how we only have 58 mil spent on contracts while the Lakers have a massive 84 mil being spent, yet they are the ones who always seem to be the front runners for new players to come in? We have been seriously hurting in cap space for a while, but still no where close to the Lakers, yet the continue to rack up the star players without ever having the need to rebuild. Its almost unfair.
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There are obvious intangibles and luck in their favor, but as far as the salary cap goes, it depends on how the players are acquired. If you draft or trade for them, you can go over the cap to re-sign them if the owner's willing. You can also use the MLE to sign FAs regardless of cap (Artest). What LA can't do is sign star FAs with anything but the MLE while they're over the cap. I don't think anyone on the Lakers since Shaq (13 yrs) has been acquired as a FA with capspace because there hasn't been any since Shaq.
 
Kings Faithful said:
Does it annoy anyone else how we only have 58 mil spent on contracts while the Lakers have a massive 84 mil being spent, yet they are the ones who always seem to be the front runners for new players to come in? We have been seriously hurting in cap space for a while, but still no where close to the Lakers, yet the continue to rack up the star players without ever having the need to rebuild. Its almost unfair.
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a) They're a winning team, so players want to go there
b) Owners are willing to spend
 
kennadog said:
Let's add in the basic fact that the Lakers have way more BB revenue to spend than smaller market teams, like the Kings.
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I think there's also a mea culpa that it looks like the early 80s out there again. The financial shape of the league is helping superteams to conglomerate like planets, while the pitiful teams like Memphis and Minnesota are preyed upon by those teams. And, just like then, LA and Boston are already prohibitive favorites for the title in JULY. Shrewd management is always an advantage, but so much more in a time like this. LA, Boston, and SA are parlaying with ease.
 
The Sacramento economic picture is especially grim. The effects of the general recssion hitting everyone, with a couple of other factors.

One of the most over-heated real estate markets in the country, so the real estate crash has been awful here.

The fact that government is the biggest employer here (10%) so the State's economic woes have provided a double whammy. State workers and local government workers have had salaries cut by as much as 15% or have been laid off, pushing more people into foreclosure and deeper into debt/bankruptcy. We are at 11% unemployment and projections are 13% by early next year.

Now, of course, the commercial loan problems are arising and more and more businesses are failing. The Kings as a franchise are probably treading water economically and hoping they can make it through.

Not that every region hasn't suffered, but the bigger the population, more diversification of business, more businesses period, the effects are spread out more diffusely.
 
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It's almost unfair yes... but then you look at the big picture and you have to say for yourself that you have to be realistic. I can forgive being frugal, I just can't forgive stupid draft choices and ridiculous contracts.
 
Gargamel said:
I think there's also a mea culpa that it looks like the early 80s out there again. The financial shape of the league is helping superteams to conglomerate like planets, while the pitiful teams like Memphis and Minnesota are preyed upon by those teams. And, just like then, LA and Boston are already prohibitive favorites for the title in JULY. Shrewd management is always an advantage, but so much more in a time like this. LA, Boston, and SA are parlaying with ease.
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One of the reasons the stern wants to get rid of the MLE in the contract.
 
Oprostaj said:
It's almost unfair yes... but then you look at the big picture and you have to say for yourself that you have to be realistic. I can forgive being frugal, I just can't forgive stupid draft choices and ridiculous contracts.
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For GP, I think the only bad draft choice he's had was Douby. He has a very good track record drafting. Maybe not so good trading. And I'd say almost all contracts in the NBA are ridiculous.
 
kennadog said:
For GP, I think the only bad draft choice he's had was Douby. He has a very good track record drafting. Maybe not so good trading. And I'd say almost all contracts in the NBA are ridiculous.
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I'm still not totally convinced Quincy Douby was a totally bad draft choice. He did have skills.

I think his real problem was that his confidence was completely destroyed by being put into games more than once when he hadn't played and was being sent in at the end to do the impossible. IIRC, it was after either the second or third time it happened that you could just see by his body language that he no longer had any faith in his own ability. Adding in the attempts to make him into something he wasn't, and Douby was pretty much doomed.
 
VF21 said:
I'm still not totally convinced Quincy Douby was a totally bad draft choice. He did have skills.

I think his real problem was that his confidence was completely destroyed by being put into games more than once when he hadn't played and was being sent in at the end to do the impossible. IIRC, it was after either the second or third time it happened that you could just see by his body language that he no longer had any faith in his own ability. Adding in the attempts to make him into something he wasn't, and Douby was pretty much doomed.
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I think it was a bad choice because we needed a pg and instead took a tweener. Even worse, there were other pgs available right after Douby. Still, one bad first round choice in quite a few years is pretty good.
 
sdballer said:
I think it was a bad choice because we needed a pg and instead took a tweener. Even worse, there were other pgs available right after Douby. Still, one bad first round choice in quite a few years is pretty good.
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their were several pgs available after we picked douby. even our own sergio rodriguez.... drafting douby cost us to now have beno signed to a 5 year deal. had petrie drafted sergio, farmar or rondo we wouldnt have beno now.
 
sdballer - Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think it was a GREAT choice. I just think his eventual departure from the Kings was due at least in part to the horrific way in which he was utilized. The fact he's not playing anywhere strengthens the argument about him not being NBA material but I'll always wonder what might have happened if he would have gone to a different team, one that didn't play him out of position before relegating him to "Hey, you at the end of the bench. Get in there and save the game!" status.
 
VF21 said:
sdballer - Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think it was a GREAT choice. I just think his eventual departure from the Kings was due at least in part to the horrific way in which he was utilized. The fact he's not playing anywhere strengthens the argument about him not being NBA material but I'll always wonder what might have happened if he would have gone to a different team, one that didn't play him out of position before relegating him to "Hey, you at the end of the bench. Get in there and save the game!" status.
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only because i have watched all of their games for the last several years... douby wouldve been a better fit on the lakers than farmar.... he could do all of the pg duties that fisher has to do without a problem. farmar wants to drive and dish, which isnt what pgs do in the triangle. douby is a great shooter and has good size for a triangle pg. if we had taken farmar the lakers wouldve probably taken douby. he is the type of player that could learn alot playing behind fisher, especially with brian shaw there as well.

he could also play the same role that gibson plays for the cavs... we needed him to run the offense and thats not his game. i dont blame douby for being douby, i blame petrie for thinking that douby could be molded into someone who wasnt douby. thats like us asking martin to play like brandon roy, its not his game and he would look horrible trying to do so. its not his game....
 
^^I kind of agree. And I also think there's enough blame left to put some on Reggie Theus' plate, too. He was the one who simply refused to play Douby until he was pretty much publicly called out about it and responded by throwing Quincy out there at the end of a game when he hadn't played at all that night and then calling his name for the final "clutch" shot.
 
AriesMar27 said:
their were several pgs available after we picked douby. even our own sergio rodriguez.... drafting douby cost us to now have beno signed to a 5 year deal. had petrie drafted sergio, farmar or rondo we wouldnt have beno now.
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That's a great point that I hadn't thought of.
 
VF21 said:
^^I kind of agree. And I also think there's enough blame left to put some on Reggie Theus' plate, too. He was the one who simply refused to play Douby until he was pretty much publicly called out about it and responded by throwing Quincy out there at the end of a game when he hadn't played at all that night and then calling his name for the final "clutch" shot.
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that was a problem as well... douby had like 1 good game against the warriors and then he was asked to take a game winner for a team that was at the time full of vets... granted he probably was our best 3pt shooter but still... he wasnt mentally prepared to do something like that. you have to want to take the last shot. thats something that we sorely missed last season. we had a lot of close games and had no one to take the shot that wanted to take it.
 
i'm still a douby supporter. it's unfair the way everybody wanted to shape him into a PG. he's definitely a undersized SG with ability to fill it up. too bad he didn't get a shot like wallace wasn't utilized. hopefully, he gets his confidence back and proves everybody wrong.
 
There are many, many shooters in this league, from Matt Carroll to Terence Kinsey, who'd be ecstatic with the opportunity that Douby was given. There are plenty of guys who can sit for 46 mins and then come in and hit shots in the final 2 mins, many aren't even in the NBA.

The problem with Douby isn't that he was used incorrectly, the problem was he couldn't shoot straight. I don't know and I don't care how great he was in college, he sucked in NBA. And it's not like he was used exclusively as a PG, he sucked at the SG spot too. So stop making excuses for Douby already.

And notice that after Douby complained that he was too cold to shoot, that was the end of his day with the Kings. There is no such thing as "too cold to shoot" in the NBA. If it's too cold for you to shoot then you shouldn't be in the league.

I wish Douby the best but if he doesn't improve, he's not going to be in the league very long. And yes, he was a bad pick.
 
Douby could shoot just fine....when it didn't really matter. Any pressure at all and he just couldn't get the ball in the hole. When your being sold primarily for your shooting ability, that about kills it. I agree that he was put in some awful end of game situations, but it proved he wasn't going to make it, unless he gets a lot more mental toughness.

That's probably a little harder to determine ahead of time, unlike physical skills.
 
So....If you are PJ..

Do you go with a frontcourt of Odom/Gasol and bring Bynum off the bench, or do you go with a frontcourt of Gasol/Bynum and bring Odom off the bench?

I like the first lineup myself, Bynum is always slow to recover from injury. If he gets rolling after a month or so I could see him starting though and bumping Odom to the bench. Either way, the Lakers will have a great 6th man.

The Lakers just have so much talent now, not fair! I'm really hoping that the Artest signing bites them in the ***. Maybe he'll leave the team in the middle of the playoffs to promote a rap album or something.
 
gunks said:
So....If you are PJ..

Do you go with a frontcourt of Odom/Gasol and bring Bynum off the bench, or do you go with a frontcourt of Gasol/Bynum and bring Odom off the bench?

I like the first lineup myself, Bynum is always slow to recover from injury. If he gets rolling after a month or so I could see him starting though and bumping Odom to the bench. Either way, the Lakers will have a great 6th man.

The Lakers just have so much talent now, not fair! I'm really hoping that the Artest signing bites them in the ***. Maybe he'll leave the team in the middle of the playoffs to promote a rap album or something.
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Personally, I would go with Odom/Gasol. But then I'm not a big Bynum fan. I think he is very overrated. If he wasn't on the Lakers, no one would know much about him IMO.
 
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