By the time the NBA draft ended — when Portland couldn’t find any more dance partners and Steven A. Smith was forced to shut up because the cameras were turned off — the Lakers ended up doing well in my mind with Jordan Farmar, a trade for veteran Maurice Evans and J.R., err, Danilo Pinnock. […]
Draft
Draft Open Thread
NBA draft day is about hope, about the promise of the future. Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And a good thing never dies. For the Lakers, the hope is that a raw prospect at 26 this year could become a key cog in just a few seasons. That a gamble […]
Movin’ On Up?
Update: Well, really there is nothing to update. Mitch Kupchak talked with the media yesterday (you can read about it here or here) and said nothing new or exciting. He’d like to move up but doesn’t expect to. He said they would take the best player available at 26, but don’t expect said player to […]
Sliders
No, this post is not about the Jerry O’Connell TV show (which I loved the first season or so of, but it went downhill after that). With less than a week before the draft it’s time to focus there. I’m talking about guys sliding down the draft board. Celtics Blog and Lowpost.net teamed up for […]
The NBA’s Intelligent Design
Everywhere from Bristol to blogs, Dallas and Phoenix are being touted as the future model for an NBA roster — multi-talented and athletic big men, strong perimeter teams, and the ability to play at pace. Versatility, match up nightmares, speed. Personally, I think the hype about the “new NBA†is a bit overstated — in […]
Luck be a Laker
A Time for Reflection: Past drafts may conjure up images of Sam Bowie and broken legs, Len Bias and broken dreams, or more recently Darko Milicic and broken chains. Laker fans specifically have spent plenty of time either thinking about, or avoiding thinking about, Kupchak era draft picks. But the draft is almost always ultimately […]
Notes at 3 am — Draft Thoughts
Let’s start some draft and free agent talk and thoughts, basically some thinking out loud as we start to hear about workouts and look at prospects. • By the way, wise Portland fans are putting a good face on yesterday. Now, if this were next year and Greg Oden was in the draft….. • In […]
The Vision Thing
In the heat of the playoffs, I got an email from a new Web site asking bloggers to play GM-for-a-day and tell us what their team should do in the off-season. I’m not sure how you do that in any serious detail yet — free agency signings can’t happen for two months (July 10) and […]
Early Draft Thoughts
With a few days off for the team, and the NCAA tournament just concluded, I felt like looking ahead to the draft and what kind of players might be around for the Lakers to get. My first thoughts: It’s not great. This is considered a weak draft, and after looking at what might be around […]
Draft Notes
Just a collection of thoughts: • We’ve all got questions about Andrew Bynum — is he the next Shaq or (as Dan R. put it) the next Stanley Roberts? The first look at him will be at the Summer Pro League in Long Beach, which I will be attending as much of as I can. […]