If you don’t understand how the NBA salary cap works then the premise of this thread makes sense to you. If you know better, then you realize it is missing important context. At the time (Feb of 2019) the Lakers were dumping salary to clear a max salary slot to pursue Kawhi Leonard in the summer. Zubac was going to be a free agent and due for a big raise that summer. There was no way they were going to be able to retain him and they couldn’t take back salary. Of course the pursuit of Kawhi didn’t work, but the Lakers were right to swing for the fences. In hindsight the worst thing that happened that summer was not losing out on Kawhi, but not signing Jimmy Buckets. He was a free agent that summer and said he wanted to come. We ignored him to pursue Kawhi. Imagine if we had Lebron, Butler, and AD? We would probably have 3 chips by now, at least 2. To me that’s more significant than what happened with Ivica Zubac.
No not in history, but just further evidence Rob doesn't value the draft process. He uses the draft to improve a player/role he needs.
I understand moving guys like Hart, Ingram, Ball, Christie, FRPs when you're talking about dealing for a superstar in his prime, because that's very much justified and gets results.
The fact that we moved so many of our draft picks for dud/shortterm moves is why Pelinka is pretty ordinary.
However with the Luka trade he does have a clean slate. He has a great thing going here with Luka/Reaves/Rui/Hayes/Knecht/2031 FRP all in play, while Lebron is sill playing at an all star level. Lets see what he does. In the end it's all about championships. I can ignore mistakes if we can win rings.
The Williams trade scared me, that he's just going to repeat the same mistakes again and again (2 of our picks were going out in that trade). However at the moment he has a great situation with a team that has a superstar in his prime and he deserves credit. We have assets galore with Reaves, Rui, Hayes, Knecht, 2031 FRP. So if he can win a ring/construct a winner from this spot, he's fine. If not, he needs to go. Lakers standard should not just be set for their stars and coaches.
If you don’t understand how the NBA salary cap works then the premise of this thread makes sense to you. If you know better, then you realize it is missing important context. At the time (Feb of 2019) the Lakers were dumping salary to clear a max salary slot to pursue Kawhi Leonard in the summer. Zubac was going to be a free agent and due for a big raise that summer. There was no way they were going to be able to retain him and they couldn’t take back salary. Of course the pursuit of Kawhi didn’t work, but the Lakers were right to swing for the fences. In hindsight the worst thing that happened that summer was not losing out on Kawhi, but not signing Jimmy Buckets. He was a free agent that summer and said he wanted to come. We ignored him to pursue Kawhi. Imagine if we had Lebron, Butler, and AD? We would probably have 3 chips by now, at least 2. To me that’s more significant than what happened with Ivica Zubac.
No. you have your facts wrong, I've seen this false narrative in other threads on LG, it's time (again) to correct this.
Zubac was a RFA in Feb 2019 and had a cap-hold of just $1.9m (compare to a placeholder cap-hold of $0.9m, so just $1m above). If the Lakers did not want to sign him to a long-term deal they had a number of other (read better) options:
1) Keep him on the roster and end up with roughly $36M of cap-space MORE THAN ENOUGH to sign one of Kawhi or Irving or Thompson in the off-season at around $33m, still leaving $3m for other moves
2) Trade him for a better deal than Muscala, there was the entire off-season 4 months away to get better deals, remember he was an RFA. Oh also remembe that the deal wasn't just Zubac, it was Zubac + Beasley for Muscala.
3) Now IF (a big IF) his incremental $1m really did present a hinderance to some out-of-this world signing/deal, then just renounce him when the actual signing/deal was actually imminent! This is what FO's do all the time to clear roster space and/or create minor cap-space, $1m was/is peanuts!
There was absolutely no rational reason for the FO to do this deal OTHER THAN the possible explanation that Magic (and/or Pelinka) panicked with the lack of success of their all-playmaker 0-shooting team and wanted to avoid censure for wasting LBJ's first year as a Laker.
Oh and here's a reference that corroborates all I've written above
If you don’t understand how the NBA salary cap works then the premise of this thread makes sense to you. If you know better, then you realize it is missing important context. At the time (Feb of 2019) the Lakers were dumping salary to clear a max salary slot to pursue Kawhi Leonard in the summer. Zubac was going to be a free agent and due for a big raise that summer. There was no way they were going to be able to retain him and they couldn’t take back salary. Of course the pursuit of Kawhi didn’t work, but the Lakers were right to swing for the fences. In hindsight the worst thing that happened that summer was not losing out on Kawhi, but not signing Jimmy Buckets. He was a free agent that summer and said he wanted to come. We ignored him to pursue Kawhi. Imagine if we had Lebron, Butler, and AD? We would probably have 3 chips by now, at least 2. To me that’s more significant than what happened with Ivica Zubac.
No. you have your facts wrong, I've seen this false narrative in other threads on LG, it's time (again) to correct this.
Zubac was a RFA in Feb 2019 and had a cap-hold of just $1.9m (compare to a placeholder cap-hold of $0.9m, so just $1m above). If the Lakers did not want to sign him to a long-term deal they had a number of other (read better) options:
1) Keep him on the roster and end up with roughly $36M of cap-space MORE THAN ENOUGH to sign one of Kawhi or Irving or Thompson in the off-season at around $33m, still leaving $3m for other moves
2) Trade him for a better deal than Muscala, there was the entire off-season 4 months away to get better deals, remember he was an RFA. Oh also remembe that the deal wasn't just Zubac, it was Zubac + Beasley for Muscala.
3) Now IF (a big IF) his incremental $1m really did present a hinderance to some out-of-this world signing/deal, then just renounce him when the actual signing/deal was actually imminent! This is what FO's do all the time to clear roster space and/or create minor cap-space, $1m was/is peanuts!
There was absolutely no rational reason for the FO to do this deal OTHER THAN the possible explanation that Magic (and/or Pelinka) panicked with the lack of success of their all-playmaker 0-shooting team and wanted to avoid censure for wasting LBJ's first year as a Laker.
Oh and here's a reference that corroborates all I've written above
Heavy sigh, it is you who are wrong and there are two important lessons you need to learn from this: (1) not everything you read on the Internet is true (2) not all sources are equal. If you harken back to when the Lakers made the AD trade you will remember that it involved 3 teams: Lakers, Pelicans, and Wizards. The Lakers were forced to involve the Wizards because after the AD deal the Lakers were still short of having a full, max salary slot available. So they had to pay the Wizards a 2nd round pick to take the salaries of Mo Wagner (who was a promising young players himself at the time and is still playing with his brother in Orlando), Isaac Bonga, and Jemario Moon. It was only AFTER this trade that the Lakers had a max salary slot available. This link explains it and remember this is from ESP MF N, not that site that you mentioned which is probably run by some kid out of his mothers basement. Now remember, the Zubac deal was made much earlier during the season. If the Lakers would have had a max salary slot even with Zubac’s cap hold, why were they still dumping salary in July AFTER trading him? And look, even if we accept that that drivel that you linked to was true, if you just think about it logically, that article is self-contradictory. It plainly says that Zubac was a restricted free agent. Meaning if someone made him an offer above his cap hold, the entire point of the article would be moot. But of course someone was going to make him an offer! By the summer the Laker’s intentions were the worst kept secret in the league. Everyone knew EXACTLY what they were going to do, trade for AD, and clear a max salary slot to sign Kawhi. So everyone knew that if they signed Zubac to an offer sheet, the Lakers would not match. The Lakers knew that they had no chance of keeping Zubac. Your own article says that if you just think about it. Now bow down before I make a phone call and have 25 killas runnin up on ya’ll!
There are some trades that you just know right from the start they're going to bite you in the ass. This was one of them. Even at the time I didn't understand why we were just giving him away like that. 8 remember the nicknames, Zublock and ZuPac lol. He was making a bigger impact on the games as time went on. It was strictly a cost cutting move. This is the type of deal billionaire owners wouldn't make.
1) Your ESPN article doesn't mention anything about Zubac* but I get the point you are making. If they had to trade players to open up cap room, then clearly Zubac's salary would've gotten in the way as well. But the thing is, you could just include him in that kind of trade if it came down to it.
2) If another team makes an offer on Zubac, the Lakers could just renounce Zubac's cap hold if they needed to. But it's likely they'd have had enough time to figure out what Kawhi et al were going to do before that happens. If Zu wanted to stay with the Lakers, he has no reason to sign the RFA offer until after the Lakers sort their business out.
Basically, preemptively trading a player like Zu who would always be trivial to get rid of to create cap room for a guy who might not even come is bad asset management but sort of understandable. But why Muscala is the player you want to get back -- that's the unacceptable part.
*I agree with your point that I'd rather trust ESPN than some random person on SSR. But again, your link doesn't explicitly say anything about Zubac. What if the trade you linked to opened up more than $1M more than the max free agent amount? Then Zubac's cap hold is manageable. IDK what the number actually is.
1) Your ESPN article doesn't mention anything about Zubac* but I get the point you are making. If they had to trade players to open up cap room, then clearly Zubac's salary would've gotten in the way as well. But the thing is, you could just include him in that kind of trade if it came down to it.
2) If another team makes an offer on Zubac, the Lakers could just renounce Zubac's cap hold if they needed to. But it's likely they'd have had enough time to figure out what Kawhi et al were going to do before that happens. If Zu wanted to stay with the Lakers, he has no reason to sign the RFA offer until after the Lakers sort their business out.
Basically, preemptively trading a player like Zu who would always be trivial to get rid of to create cap room for a guy who might not even come is bad asset management but sort of understandable. But why Muscala is the player you want to get back -- that's the unacceptable part.
*I agree with your point that I'd rather trust ESPN than some random person on SSR. But again, your link doesn't explicitly say anything about Zubac. What if the trade you linked to opened up more than $1M more than the max free agent amount? Then Zubac's cap hold is manageable. IDK what the number actually is.
And why would it need to in order to make my point? Keep in mind that the poster I was responding to and the SSR article were making the claim that the Lakers could have kept Zubac and still had a max salary slot available. This was simply not true. The ESPN article proves that because even AFTER dumping Zubac’s salary (really his cap hold) we still had to make ANOTHER deal to clear a max salary slot. Remember the Zubac deal was made earlier, during the season. I referenced that article because it explicitly states in its text that the deal with the Wizards was done to clear a max salary slot. Make sense?
There’s another important lesson you should all learn from this. Most of the guys running these teams are pretty smart, yes even Nico! Most of the times when you see a trade happen that, on the surface, appears not to make sense, it’s being done for salary cap reasons. Either someone is trying to clear space to sign someone else or a team is trying to get under the luxury tax or an apron. Even one of the most famous “dumb” trades of all time, the Pau for Kwame Brown trade was done for salary cap reasons. The Lakers got Pau ultimately because Kwame represented the biggest expiring deal available at the time. That’s what Memphis wanted. It was also well known at that time that Marc Gaso was tearing it up in Europe and would make a fine replacement for his brother. Ultimately Memphis got Marc Gasol and used the available cap space that the trade opened up to sign Zach Randolph. Those two went on to form the nucleus of the best team they ever had. It ultimately was a good trade for both teams despite what Stephen A. might have said at the time.
<snip>
Heavy sigh, it is you who are wrong and there are two important lessons you need to learn from this: (1) not everything you read on the Internet is true (2) not all sources are equal. If you harken back to when the Lakers made the AD trade you will remember that it involved 3 teams: Lakers, Pelicans, and Wizards. The Lakers were forced to involve the Wizards because after the AD deal the Lakers were still short of having a full, max salary slot available. So they had to pay the Wizards a 2nd round pick to take the salaries of Mo Wagner (who was a promising young players himself at the time and is still playing with his brother in Orlando), Isaac Bonga, and Jemario Moon. It was only AFTER this trade that the Lakers had a max salary slot available. This link explains it and remember this is from ESP MF N, not that site that you mentioned which is probably run by some kid out of his mothers basement. Now remember, the Zubac deal was made much earlier during the season. If the Lakers would have had a max salary slot even with Zubac’s cap hold, why were they still dumping salary in July AFTER trading him? And look, even if we accept that that drivel that you linked to was true, if you just think about it logically, that article is self-contradictory. It plainly says that Zubac was a restricted free agent. Meaning if someone made him an offer above his cap hold, the entire point of the article would be moot. But of course someone was going to make him an offer! By the summer the Laker’s intentions were the worst kept secret in the league. Everyone knew EXACTLY what they were going to do, trade for AD, and clear a max salary slot to sign Kawhi. So everyone knew that if they signed Zubac to an offer sheet, the Lakers would not match. The Lakers knew that they had no chance of keeping Zubac. Your own article says that if you just think about it. Now bow down before I make a phone call and have 25 killas runnin up on ya’ll!
I will ignore your insulting and condescending tone and focus on the facts.
Read some of the other postings and answer the following simple question:
If Zubac was on the Lakers roster in the offseason, AND the Kawhi trade was imminent, what would stop the Lakers from simply renouncing him as an RFA and saving the $1M ?
And then you blabbed something about another team making him an above-the-cap-hold offer. Well if that happened the Lakers let him walk, and again save the needed $1M, so what's the issue?
Finally, I expect you to counter with: what's the point of keeping Zubac on the roster if the Lakers didn't intend to sign him to a long term deal AND/OR felt he would be poached by another team?
Answer: there was little to gain by trading him prematurely for a near-0 value like Muscala, and there was something to be gained by having the OPTION to find a better trade for him during the off-season given (as shown above) he was really no impediment to opening up the Kawhi max-space AND the fact that sometimes signings don't happen - like the purported Kawhi signing.
<snip>
And why would it need to in order to make my point? Keep in mind that the poster I was responding to and the SSR article were making the claim that the Lakers could have kept Zubac and still had a max salary slot available. This was simply not true. The ESPN article proves that because even AFTER dumping Zubac’s salary (really his cap hold) we still had to make ANOTHER deal to clear a max salary slot. Remember the Zubac deal was made earlier, during the season. I referenced that article because it explicitly states in its text that the deal with the Wizards was done to clear a max salary slot. Make sense?
Fine the article was wrong. Doesn't change my argument that there was really no urgency to trade Zubac in February, they could (and in my opinion should) have waited until the offseason. If I'm missing something that disproves this, I'm happy to learn.
Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2025 7:04 pm Post subject: Re: That Zubac trade is shaping up to be one of the worst trades in history
TMG wrote:
LakerDYnasty72 wrote:
TMG wrote:
Seriously what in the hell went through Earvins head?
I refuse to call him magic as a GM because his tenure resembled more chaos than Magic. If any Magic at all.
Ivica Zubac is averaging 20/11 for this month.
He's averaging 16/12 for the season.
WE GAVE THIS DUDE AWAY FOR MIKE (bleep) MUSCALA
Not only did we give him away....
WE GAVE HIM AWAY TO THE CLIPPERS.
This dude just made the Cavs bigs look like the biggest (bleep) on the floor. He alone dominated both Allen And Mobley.
What in the actual (bleep) Earvin.....
I just needed to vent after seeing Zubac ball out yet again.
So, op, I want you to know up front that there's absolutely nobody on this board who still remembers and hates that trade to this day more than me. It leaves a bitter taste every time it's brought up and posted again.
Personally, what has helped me move along is the special place we now hold among the elites. Think about it, the Mavs traded us a not yet in his prime Luka Doncic, for a past his prime 32 year old AD, and a 21 year Christie who's prime will never come anywhere near who we got.
Also, yes the trade was asinine, but can I encourage you with the fact that we got the center, who is a maturing, rim running, lob threat extraordinaire, and better fitting center, not yet in his prime version, in Jaxson Hayes?.....for nothing!
And he's also four years younger than Z. Hayes is doing well now and will get better. Surely NO's fans are as pissed about these turn of events, as we are about what Z is doing for the other LA team.
Let's focus on, meditate on, and appreciate the gifts the Mavs, and to a lesser extent the Pels have gifted us. We will never let go of the past, but at least it doesn't sting like hel_ like it use to.
I mean yeah looking at where we are at right now it's in a great place!
But the amount of weird ass trades we've made over the years feels like one brainfart too many. Of course getting Luka Doncic at the end of it all eases all that up in a major way lol.
And yes Hayes does fit better alongside our stars but man Zubac and Jax rotation would be FANTASTIC.
I understand, but there's a reason that we don't drive anywhere while solely looking into the rearview mirror; it teaches us to seldom look back in the past, to focus on the present, and plan for the future.
<snip>
Heavy sigh, it is you who are wrong and there are two important lessons you need to learn from this: (1) not everything you read on the Internet is true (2) not all sources are equal. If you harken back to when the Lakers made the AD trade you will remember that it involved 3 teams: Lakers, Pelicans, and Wizards. The Lakers were forced to involve the Wizards because after the AD deal the Lakers were still short of having a full, max salary slot available. So they had to pay the Wizards a 2nd round pick to take the salaries of Mo Wagner (who was a promising young players himself at the time and is still playing with his brother in Orlando), Isaac Bonga, and Jemario Moon. It was only AFTER this trade that the Lakers had a max salary slot available. This link explains it and remember this is from ESP MF N, not that site that you mentioned which is probably run by some kid out of his mothers basement. Now remember, the Zubac deal was made much earlier during the season. If the Lakers would have had a max salary slot even with Zubac’s cap hold, why were they still dumping salary in July AFTER trading him? And look, even if we accept that that drivel that you linked to was true, if you just think about it logically, that article is self-contradictory. It plainly says that Zubac was a restricted free agent. Meaning if someone made him an offer above his cap hold, the entire point of the article would be moot. But of course someone was going to make him an offer! By the summer the Laker’s intentions were the worst kept secret in the league. Everyone knew EXACTLY what they were going to do, trade for AD, and clear a max salary slot to sign Kawhi. So everyone knew that if they signed Zubac to an offer sheet, the Lakers would not match. The Lakers knew that they had no chance of keeping Zubac. Your own article says that if you just think about it. Now bow down before I make a phone call and have 25 killas runnin up on ya’ll!
I will ignore your insulting and condescending tone and focus on the facts.
Read some of the other postings and answer the following simple question:
If Zubac was on the Lakers roster in the offseason, AND the Kawhi trade was imminent, what would stop the Lakers from simply renouncing him as an RFA and saving the $1M ?
And then you blabbed something about another team making him an above-the-cap-hold offer. Well if that happened the Lakers let him walk, and again save the needed $1M, so what's the issue?
Finally, I expect you to counter with: what's the point of keeping Zubac on the roster if the Lakers didn't intend to sign him to a long term deal AND/OR felt he would be poached by another team?
Answer: there was little to gain by trading him prematurely for a near-0 value like Muscala, and there was something to be gained by having the OPTION to find a better trade for him during the off-season given (as shown above) he was really no impediment to opening up the Kawhi max-space AND the fact that sometimes signings don't happen - like the purported Kawhi signing.
Dude! you’re going in circles and ignoring the key fact. In order to present Kawhi Leonard with a max contract they had to dump Zubac’s salary as well as the other salaries mentioned in the ESPN article. You can’t make contingent offers in the NBA. This ain’t real estate. In a competitive situation with a free agent you can’t go in there and say, well I don’t have a max slot, but if you sign with me I’ll see if I can dump some players and free up some cash and then I’ll get back to you. You also face the prospect that you could essentially be held hostage by teams who will demand exhorbitant compensation to take your contracts. Teams clear their space before free agency begins. This is my last post on this. I think I’ve made my point.
Feel compelled to chime in with a couple of points:
* I agree we need to get over this. We're in an overall better state. Every GM has hits and misses.
* Sadly, I don't think this was done primarily as a cap-clearing move. As noted, they simply could have renounced him. Considering that we didn't yet know the eventual parameters of the AD trade, there was no way for them to know the eventual financial implications to the point that they needed to sacrifice team success for a measly $1 million dollar gain in flexibility (which it really wasn't). I think they really believed that Muscala would have greater impact.
* Teams back then had a week to match offer sheets. Top FAs are usually decided by then. Accordingly, Kawhi made his decision on the 4th. Any offer sheet for Zubac would not have had any direct impact on their ability to sign any max FA as long as it happened during the first week.
* The last minute inclusion of the Wizards was due to a miscalculation/misunderstanding by Rob. He made the error of finalizing the AD trade BEFORE completing his free agent signings. Instead he could've waited later to finalize and NOT have to send assets to the Wizards in order to maintain a max slot. It is detailed in these articles:
I'm not in the right state to try to crunch the numbers and look back at all the 2019 figures so maybe somebody else can but my bet is that if the order of operations had been:
1) Not trade Zubac
2) Agree to the parameters of the AD trade before the draft
3) Sign their first-round draft pick ASAP
4) Sign Kawhi/Butler/Kyrie before the 7th
5) Match any Zubac offer sheet or sign him to a deal using his bird rights
6) Finalize the AD trade 30 days after step 2 at which point the pick (and his salary) becomes trade eligible.
they could've had their cake and eat it too while also holding on to Wagner, Bonga, and what turned out to be the 38th pick in the 2022 draft. Luckily they made up for the latter by trading into the 35th pick that same year to draft Max Christie.
In terms of step 6, some have argued that NO would not have been willing to wait. It would held up their eventual decision to trade our #4 pick to ATL for two lower picks. And even if NO/ATL were willing to wait the 30 days, it would have prevented all three of those draft picks from participating in summer league which tends to be a valuable experience. Would those teams have been on board? We'll never know. But it was technically possible from a strict CBA standpoint IMO. _________________ Luxury Tax/FA Spreadsheet (Save to your Google Drive to edit)
Feel compelled to chime in with a couple of points:
* I agree we need to get over this. We're in an overall better state. Every GM has hits and misses.
* Sadly, I don't think this was done primarily as a cap-clearing move. As noted, they simply could have renounced him. Considering that we didn't yet know the eventual parameters of the AD trade, there was no way for them to know the eventual financial implications to the point that they needed to sacrifice team success for a measly $1 million dollar gain in flexibility (which it really wasn't). I think they really believed that Muscala would have greater impact.
* Teams back then had a week to match offer sheets. Top FAs are usually decided by then. Accordingly, Kawhi made his decision on the 4th. Any offer sheet for Zubac would not have had any direct impact on their ability to sign any max FA as long as it happened during the first week.
* The last minute inclusion of the Wizards was due to a miscalculation/misunderstanding by Rob. He made the error of finalizing the AD trade BEFORE completing his free agent signings. Instead he could've waited later to finalize and NOT have to send assets to the Wizards in order to maintain a max slot. It is detailed in these articles:
I'm not in the right state to try to crunch the numbers and look back at all the 2019 figures so maybe somebody else can but my bet is that if the order of operations had been:
1) Not trade Zubac
2) Agree to the parameters of the AD trade before the draft
3) Sign their first-round draft pick ASAP
4) Sign Kawhi/Butler/Kyrie before the 7th
5) Match any Zubac offer sheet or sign him to a deal using his bird rights
6) Finalize the AD trade 30 days after step 2 at which point the pick (and his salary) becomes trade eligible.
they could've had their cake and eat it too while also holding on to Wagner, Bonga, and what turned out to be the 38th pick in the 2022 draft. Luckily they made up for the latter by trading into the 35th pick that same year to draft Max Christie.
In terms of step 6, some have argued that NO would not have been willing to wait. It would held up their eventual decision to trade our #4 pick to ATL for two lower picks. And even if NO/ATL were willing to wait the 30 days, it would have prevented all three of those draft picks from participating in summer league which tends to be a valuable experience. Would those teams have been on board? We'll never know. But it was technically possible from a strict CBA standpoint IMO.
I know I said I was done with this thread but the hard-headedness (that’s a word) of some of you guys is mind boggling to me. So you win. Pelinka is an idiot, we should fire him and have the people on his thread running the team. I mean sure after trading Zubac they still had to make another trade to clear a max salary slot, but that is immaterial. The Lakers should have just held onto Zubac and I presume Wagner, Bonga, and Moon and somehow that max salary slot would have appeared as if it was manifested. I stand corrected.
It's funny you go on the FA thread and I'm basically accused of being a clueless Rob jocker. Just stating the facts man, whether or not it's in support of Rob. It's spelled out in both the ESPN and Business Insider articles. You didn't seem to acknowledge the mechanics that they suggest. Otherwise, sorry if that was triggering. _________________ Luxury Tax/FA Spreadsheet (Save to your Google Drive to edit)
No AD, No clue Luka was on the way.
JJ's zone and high motion offense destroyed ZU and his clips.
Jaxson and Rui interchanging at center.
If you are not trying to overplay lumbering center ball with too many iso post ups, Zu becomes a gigantic road block.
Would I love Zu on our current roster, of course I would. But tbh don't know how effective he would be in JJ's system. Which has proved already can neutralize bigs like Jokic and Zubac from being a deciding factor with their cheap ass flat footed layups
No AD, No clue Luka was on the way.
JJ's zone and high motion offense destroyed ZU and his clips.
Jaxson and Rui interchanging at center.
If your are not trying to overplay lumbering center ball with too many iso post ups, Zu becomes a gigantic road block.
Would I love Zu on our current roster, of course I would. But tbh don't know how effective he would be in JJ's system. Which has proved already can neutralize bigs like Jokic and Zubac from being a deciding factor with their cheap ass flat footed layups
Yeah, they were exposing the hell out of him anytime they NEEDED a basket they knew they could hunt him and get it.
He's also making $20 million a Year over the next three. Extremely easy pass on that in 2025. No lumbering bigs are worth that these days if your goal is to win a Championship imo. I'm not sure why so many are so enamored by this still...
I tend to agree with that assessment of Zu. I was just pointing out some cap mechanics because I honestly get geeked out over that stuff and a guy with "nerd" in his username chimed in. As I first stated in post, we're ultimately in a better place so although it does irk me a bit that Jerry West made the comments that he did, I'm definitely not losing any sleep over it. _________________ Luxury Tax/FA Spreadsheet (Save to your Google Drive to edit)
Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 4839 Location: Lake Nacimiento
Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2025 10:03 pm Post subject:
gng930 wrote:
I tend to agree with that assessment of Zu. I was just pointing out some cap mechanics because I honestly get geeked out over that stuff and a guy with "nerd" in his username chimed in. As I first stated in post, we're ultimately in a better place so although it does irk me a bit that Jerry West made the comments that he did, I'm definitely not losing any sleep over it.
I didn't mean everyone in here or anything just more so in general and up until he got the big pay raises he was a fantastic value big that I would have loved to have here as well so I get it to a point but it seems like a couple times a Year I see this all being rehashed.
Seeing the discussion about the actual details was the highlight here as some of the exact details of moves that Year were a bit hazy. We probably all got at least a little bit of geek in us considering we're on a Lakers message board anyways
Yeah that's why I stated on another thread that "starting center on a championship team" encompasses a wider spectrum than other positions. Does it count if he starts all of your regular season games but is marginalized in 2 of 4 playoff series for instance? To your point about $20 million lumbering centers, Jokic is an obvious exception. I would argue though that even at the max he is underpaid, so you need said center to be historically good to pay him that much. Looking at the current list of highest paid centers, Gobert, Hartenstein and Lopez stand out as more lumbering bigs. Gobert was obviously a key factor in beating Denver last year but his limitations in the playoffs otherwise are well-documented. That Bucks team aged quickly and Lopez only accentuated that; they're a third tier team IMO accordingly. It will be interesting though to see how playable Hartenstein remains throughout the playoffs. _________________ Luxury Tax/FA Spreadsheet (Save to your Google Drive to edit)
Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2025 12:34 am Post subject: Re: That Zubac trade is shaping up to be one of the worst trades in history
TMG wrote:
Seriously what in the hell went through Earvins head?
I refuse to call him magic as a GM because his tenure resembled more chaos than Magic. If any Magic at all.
Yeah well MJ didn’t have success as a gm either. We got spoiled by Jerry West but former superstars are much more likely to be failures at the gm position.
Joined: 20 Jul 2006 Posts: 8787 Location: Left coast
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2025 9:41 pm Post subject:
hype wrote:
I doubt it even makes top 15 in Lakers history
You make it sound as if dumb Lakers trades are routine throughout history. I'm disputing that and challenge you to name 5, and you can include the Westbrook trade.
Regardless whether you think Zu would fit on this squad, he was a squandered asset, just like Randle was. They could have been used to get something valuable in return, maybe diminishing what needed to be traded for AD.
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