Imma overreact to the first half of the first preseason game against the worst team in the league and I ain’t gonna apologize for it.
Luka in mid season form. Wings are winging. LaRavia MIP. Thybulle comeback player of the year. Adou rotation ready. We move!
Lakers in 5!
CNA/NNOC was joined by partners in labor and in the community, totaling over 1000 strong, to protest ICE and their use of Palantir, who also provides AI data harvesting and “scheduling” services to hospitals
I get speculation and stuff, but you need to be careful when claiming things are fact. Here are three things to keep in mind:
1: The "Mark Jacobs" twitter account is not a real source. He does not know anything. He has been caught making shit up on several occasions. The Kuminga quote about not being interested in the bright lights of LA was pulled straight out of his ass. There is no reason to believe it is real. Nobody else has shared or corroborated it.
2: When an insider says something, treat it as speculation, not fact. Even the more connected insiders like Shams get things wrong a lot, and they all have various allegiances and agendas. Don't rely on any singular source for information.
3: Anthony Irwin is not a credible source. For anything. Ever.
While obviously every team would prefer to have 4 Amen Thompsons and a Rudy Gobert on defense, recent trends in the NBA have me wondering if a team needs anything more than a Gobert to be elite, or at least very good, on the defensive end.
Basketball is historically what I would consider a "strong link" sport, where having the best overall player talent usually dictates the winner. But it seems that defense specifically in the modern NBA operates as a "weak link" system.
When I was growing up and playing and watching basketball, players would be assigned a man, and they would stick to that man as much as possible. At the P&R, players would either go under screens or get hedging help. But switching was something only the truly elite defenders got to do.
The game is so different now. Offenses are so heavily spaced and skilled that they use endless pick-and-roll combinations to force switches. They can completely ignore an elite perimeter defender and isolate the worst defender on the floor. If you have one weak perimeter defender among a group of otherwise elite perimeter defenders, the offense will systematically attack the poor one. Elite perimeter defenders get schemed out of the play easily since they can only guard one person at a time.
I feel like the main thing that determines whether a defense can reach elite status is rim protection. An elite rim protector guards the most valuable real estate on the floor against all five opposing players simultaneously. Shots at the rim convert at roughly 70 percent, and three-pointers convert at somewhere between 36 to 40 percent, depending on the player.
A rim protector who forces a team to abandon a layup attempt and kick the ball out alters the fundamental math of the possession. Advanced metrics like the Rim Deterrence Index consistently show that interior bigs provide significantly more value to a team's defensive rating than even the best point-of-attack guards or wing stoppers.
The entire premise of a drop coverage or funneling scheme is that there's always a backline of defense to protect your perimeter defenders. The truly elite teams are the ones that are able to scheme their rotations to manipulate where an offense is able to generate its shots from. That isn't something that relies on individual defensive talent, that relies on a team that knows its angles, hustles, and has a high collective IQ. The ability to play defense within a system matters far more than your ability to defend one-on-one.
An example of this is that Rudy Gobert's peak years, the Jazz consistently fielded top defensive ratings despite starting multiple defensively limited guards. The scheme relied entirely on funneling ball handlers toward the paint, allowing Gobert to play a one-man zone.
The Bucks won a championship and maintained elite regular-season defensive ratings using extreme drop coverage with Brook Lopez. Perimeter defenders fought over screens and applied back-pressure, yielding pull-up jumpers while Lopez stayed glued to the paint. They mathematically accepted open above-the-break threes because securing the paint with an elite rim protector is vastly more stable.
Also. Individual offense scales infinitely better than individual defense. A great offensive player dictates the action, while a great defensive player can only react. You can easily scheme around individual defensive weaknesses on the perimeter as long as you have the right system and an elite anchor in the paint.
I think a lot of watchers of the game will say "well who is going to guard X" when talking about matchups, but that seems to be the wrong question to ask. It seems to me that the right question to ask, instead of "who is going to guard X" is "how is X team going to scheme their coverage to handle Y player?"
Thoughts?
Lineups that included both Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves allowed 111.4 points per 100 possessions last year. Most starting lineups average around 115 points per 100
Keeping in mind this was with a big man rotation of Dominayton and Jaxson Hayes, a 300 year old LeBron, and Rui "I don't know where I'm supposed to be on the court" Hachimura playing substantial minutes with them.
You can definitely build a good defense around these two players with the right pieces.
The downvote vultures are gonna flame me for this, but imma stand 10 toes down on this: the single least important position on defense in the NBA in the year 2026 is the isolation defender.
Offensive players are far too skilled, and the rules are so slanted against isolation defense these days, to the point that frankly, a high IQ and motor often matter more. I keep thinking back to the Minnesota game last year when Austin was our only ball handler because Luka and LeBron were injured. Jaden McDaniels is considered a premier wing stopper in the NBA, but Austin Reaves ended up with 28 points and 16 assists, while completely frying him in the clutch.
Even with that aside, there's so much switching, off ball actions to free up scorers, and targeting weak defenders in the NBA these days, that it's very rare for a player to stay guarding a specific player for most of a game. Especially in the playoffs. What's far more important is the ability to scheme around your team's strengths, and to play defense as a cohesive unit.
Our team is built around chaos. We have a ton of opportunistic havoc makers on defense now, and a lot more speed on the wing. We also have an elite rim protector which will allow our guards and wings to be a lot more aggressive trying to disrupt passing and driving lanes.
For a team like ours, where our base coverage will be drop with an elite rim protector, individual defensive skill on the wing is secondary to a player's ability to fulfill their role. The POA needs to be able to get over the top of screens quickly to prevent the three. The chaser needs to be able to navigate off ball screens and make it harder for their man to get the ball in their preferred spots. The on ball wing needs to take the correct angle to funnel the attacking player into help The off ball wing needs to rotate correctly and call out screens and other important coverages. The big man needs to be able to protect the rim, deny man behind, and quarterback coverages. Those are the essential facets of a drop coverage scheme.
Being able to scheme well, and execute that scheme as a team, matters way more than individual wing defense. JJ has proven he's a great defensive schemer, and we have a lot more athleticism and aggressiveness on defense this year. Plus, we finally have a good defensive center, I really need people to understand just how damaging our lack of a real center has been over the last few years.
We are going to have a competent defense this year. It's probably not going to be top 5 or anything like that. But it is going to be good enough for us to win a lot of games and make a playoff push. Take that to the bank.
On the bird app, Tim mentioned what defensive roles would look like if Mamu starts at the 4
"POA: Grimes
Chaser: Reaves
Helper: Luka
Helper: Mamu
Anchor Big: Kessler
In a heavy drop base scheme that should be decent. The issue is if you're facing a high volume on-ball scoring wing you have a gap."
For my commentary: this is something I've been saying for a while. Different defensive systems have different strengths and weaknesses, which is why different teams with different personnel are more likely to succeed with different base packages.
Last year, with Dominayton and Hayes as our two bigs, playing drop didn't make much sense. Both were terrible at it. So we went to this switching scheme and relied on disciplined backline rotations to cover up weaknesses. Our defense was bad, but it probably was the best it could have been given how fundamentally flawed the roster was last year.
Grimes and Kessler fundamentally change the calculation. We went last year from having no drop capable bigs to having one of the best. Combining that with Grimes who is a legitimately solid defensive player at the POA position, we'll be moving from a base switch to a base drop defense.
The benefit of a base drop is that your perimeter players are under less pressure to get stops, because there is always help behind them. The general purpose of wing defenders in a base drop is to hold their own and, more often, funnel attacking players into the teeth of the defense where your big can do their job and your other backline rotations can plug up holes.
In other words, on ball lockdown defense doesn't matter quite as much in a base drop as does having a high IQ and motor.
The Raptors were an elite switching team because nearly everyone on their roster is a defensively slanted wing. This let their length and athleticism cover for Mamu's weaknesses despite not having a drop big. But Mamu would still get exposed a lot on the perimeter specificially because there was no elite paint protector behind him.
Walker covers for that. So while it isn't the perfect defensive pairing, it isn't a fatal one. Mamu at the 4 is maybe not the most ideal scenario, but defensively it's playable, and offensively, this team with Mamu at the 4 would have no business not being the best offense in the league. The amount of shooting and playmaking in this lineup would be ridiculous.
The main flaw of having Mamu at the 4 isn't Mamu himself, it's that we absolutely cannot allow Kevon Looney to be a steady rotation player. We need a real backup 5. But if we can get one, I think Mamu at the 4 is totally fine.
A career 33 percent three point shooter who thinks he's Kobe Bryant, with a piss poor bball IQ, that can't defend off ball to save his life, who has an ego so big he refused to defer to Steph fucking Curry, who very clearly is going to put his stats first over anything else because he wants a bigger bag?
This is the guy we're panicking over not getting?
Seriously?
If this is our fifth starter, we aren't championship contenders anyway, so I'd rather those minutes go to Adou or Ziaire, see if we can find something there.
==Edit== I will make very clear. I am not an attorney. This is just my take, and the sections of law that are informing that take. I do not pretend to have all the answers, I just think I have an idea of what the end result will likely be based on what the law says.
I went WAY too deep down the rabbit hole after this news came up trying to figure out how this drama would end. I'm fairly confident at this point that this sale is going to go through regardless of what Jeanie wants.
The basic dispute here is not whether the trust that Jerry Buss established for his six children establishes Jeanie as the controlling owner of the Lakers, that was litigated in 2017 and affirmed by probate. When we get to whether or not this prevents a sale of the team, it's not super clear based on what we know so far about the trust.
What is clear, though, is what California precedent says. California courts are highly unlikely to be with Jeanie on this one if she does litigate to block the sale.
First is a section of California's Civil Code that prevents the transfer of an asset or property to an heir or heirs that stipulates that that asset can't be transferred or sold. Basically, a grantor can't transfer an ownership or beneficial interest to heirs while permanently prohibiting alienation (transfer or sale) of that interest. This section of civil code has been litigated before and has been applied to the transfer of trusts. If Jerry Buss did intend for the sale to be prohibited absent Jeanie's support, courts are not likely to enforce that provision.
Next is a section of California Probate Code that legally binds trustees to manage trust assets for the collective benefit of all beneficiaries. Even if Jeanie is the only one allowed to make decisions like a sale of the asset, she faces a major fiduciary risk if she refuses what is basically a historic multibillion dollar liquidity event when doing so solely satisfies her non-financial preference at the expense of the other five siblings.
Finally is a different section of California's probate court to change the terms of a trust if there is a major change in the trust's circumstances that the creator of the trust didn't foresee, if the current terms of the trust under the new change don't serve the overall economic purpose of the trust, which is to provide for all six siblings. The Buss family already surrendered majority control of the Lakers in the sale to Walter. California probate courts have the legal right to recognize that the current terms of the trust don't serve its purpose, and order changes. So, even if the courts do recognize that Jeanie has the right to veto the sale under the current terms, courts can revisit that 2017 settlement because of the major change in ownership.
Nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out but I really hope, with the legal landscape against her, Jeanie backs down soon. If she really cares about the Lakers, she will put her ego aside and let this fight end for the good of the team she claims to love so much
After it was reported that the Buss family voted to sell their 17.8 percent stake in the Lakers to Iger and Kushner, Jeanie replied with the claim that based on the 2017 court ruling in a dispute between her and her brothers, she has to approve any sale
This is not how the court ruling works
In the fight over control, the probate court decided that Jerry Buss's trust was "crystal clear" that Jeanie must remain a director and the controlling owner for as long as the family owns the team.
This ruling protected her title, not the assets themselves. It did not grant her a unilateral veto over what the Buss family trust does with its shares
The Buss family trust requires a majority vote over major financial decisions. The 5 other siblings outvote Jeanie. She can try to go to court to block the sale but she will almost certainly lose
There is no such thing as a good billionaire, so unless you decide to only support teams whose owners are the peak of ethics, then let it go. Wait to freak out until we find out wtf this means for our team regarding investments into things like a more robust staff/front office, medical and recovery teams, training programs, etc.
Kushner and Iger are bog standard ultrarich dems, which is to say they suck but it's not like they are bigots or anything. Let's maybe wait to see what this looks like in the real world a few months after the sale is approved in September before we reach conclusions, and not be so reactionary for once?
TL;DR: I don't think it would be as much of a catastrophe as some Laker commentators have been saying.
Mamu is the absolute perfect fit on offense, and his defensive weaknesses can be schemed around. While I'd definitely feel better from a roster construction standpoint if we got a starting 4 and Mamu was the backup 5 to Kessler, if we do start Mamu I don't think it will be the end of the world.
Four of our starting spots are locked: Luka, Austin, Walker, and Grimes will be starting (there's no world he isn't. You can't play drop without a good POA defender and Grimes is the only starting caliber POA defender on the roster). We haven't penciled Mamu as the fifth starter yet because he primarily played at the 5 in Toronto, and he isn't a great wing defender.
If we do make a swing for a big wing, that player will start obviously. But if we swing for a big instead, which rumors have been indicating we might do, then Mamu will start.
On offense, he's the perfect fifth starter for our roster build. He's the textbook"keep the blender going" type. He won't be the one to start it, but he has a really high BBIQ and makes really quick decisions, he's the exact kind of player JJ is going to love. He's not as high percentage a three point shooter as Rui, but he takes a lot more of them, and he does literally everything else better than Rui on that end. He is very good in the short roll, screens well, and can attack the rim too. In other words: he does everything you want an off-ball player to do, and he does it well. Luka and Austin are going to LOVE playing with this guy.
On defense, Mamu typically guarded small centers and slower wings on the Raptors, and he was much better against the former. That being said, the Raptors ran primarily a switching scheme, which puts a lot more individual pressure on wing defenders to be good in isolation defense. Mamu can't handle skilled wings in isolation, and he will get exposed when asked to do so.
Unlike last year, we will not be running a switch everything scheme, we will be running drop, no other base defense makes sense for this roster.
In a drop coverage, elite wing stoppers are still very helpful since they require less defensive help, but the entire premise of a drop coverage is that there's always a backline of defense to protect your perimeter defenders. The ability to play defense within a system matters far more than your ability to defend one-on-one. For context, the Mavs used a drop coverage scheme as their primary defense in their recent finals run. In that scheme, Luka always had help behind him, he was able to use his IQ to funnel defenders into that help, and it allowed him to be an elite helper when another wing was on ball.
Mamu isn't a good individual wing defender, but he has a very high IQ and motor. While he's not the ideal fit for a wing defender, you can scheme for that, and his skillset on offense would make our starting lineup the favorite to be the best offense in the league, possibly by a good margin.
The NBA cap rules are so complex at times that it is understandable that people aren't up with all the rules and restrictions on signing players.
Ever since it was reported that Peyton Watson might take his qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent next year, there's been a lot of chatter about him signing with LA as an unrestricted free agent next year.
We won't have the money to offer him unless he's willing to take a huge discount over what he's seeking now.
The Lakers will be over the cap next year, meaning that the Lakers cannot just sign free agents to whatever amount they want. Depending on where salaries are, we will have access to two pots of money that we can use on free agents: the non-taxpayer mid level exception and the biannual exception.
The NTPMLE will be worth around 16m next year. That's an exception a team will only get if they are at least that amount below the first apron. That's why Austin and Mamu took pay cuts next year: to allow us the ability to use the full NTPMLE. It's also probably why there's a holdup with Kuminga: I bet that Rob is holding out on signing him to any amount that would jeopardize access to that NTPMLE.
We will also have the biannual exception, which is worth a little under 6 million dollars. We used that exception this past year on Marcus Smart. This is an exception that above the cap teams can use once every two years.
This gives us a little over 20 million dollars to spend on free agents next year. This alone is less than Watson is seeking, but it gets even harder to fathom him signing here when you factor in that you cannot aggregate exceptions. You can't combine those two exceptions to sign one player, they are two completely separate pots of money.
We don't have the draft capital to execute a sign and trade, nor will we have enough to offer him unless he's so determined to come to LA that he's willing to sign for at least 10ms less than he's seeking this year.
I’ve been watching reruns of the 2023 Lakers Warriors series to see how they used Kevon Looney on the offense, and it reminded me how good Darvin Ham’s defensive tactics and adjustments were that series, and how weird it is that someone who did that good also had some of the dumbest, goofiest coaching ideas and moments ever.
Game 1 the Lakers top locked the Warriors to death and won. Game 2 the Warriors adjusted by putting AD in the P&R and starting JaMychael Green instead of Looney and won. Game 3 the Lakers adjusted by having AD ignore Green and putting Vando on Draymond to switch their screens and won. Game 4 the Warriors put GP2 in at center and won the first half, then the Lakers adjusted at halftime by putting AD on Wiggins (a worse screener) and won.
It was objectively a masterful defensive chess match, and he beat Steve Kerr, a legendary HOF coach, in that chess match.
He had the same kind of masterful defensive gameplan with the first NBA cup against the Pacers. The man could clearly run a high caliber defensive scheme.
It’s so weird to me that the same man who was able to coach like that also did crazy shit like play Taurean Prince 30+ minutes a night, start an all wing lineup with absolutely no spacing, completely refuse to start Vando even after that amazing Lakers Warriors game where we won in double OT thanks entirely to his work replacing Prince who was getting killed that game, starting a 3 guard lineup against that huge Nuggets lineup game 1, etc.
JJ is so much better as a coach than Ham was and it was a wild upgrade, but Ham did have his moments, to the point where it’s jarring how good those moments were despite how horrid his coaching job was overall.
Smurve80
SP SA Lime keycaps
Gateron Harmonic switches
This is a fun board ngl. The solenoid adds a ton of character but it isn't overwhelming. The harmonics add a nice little tick to the keypress that complements the rumble of the solenoid.
Is it the best keyboard ever? Surely not, but at its price point it's a no brainer tbh
Atlanta now has 17 guaranteed contracts on their books. Despite what some reporting was saying, it was always highly unlikely that Atlanta would be willing to take back Jarred Vanderbilt in a sign-and-trade for Kuminga. Now it's almost certain that they won't.
It's also highly unlikely that they would take multiple players back for Kuminga given the state of their roster, so aggregating multiple contracts is probably a no-go as well. This means one of three things is going to happen:
1: The Lakers and Hawks are able to find a third team to join the trade and take on some of the players Atlanta/LA doesn't want
2: The Lakers have another move that absolutely nobody sees coming in the pipeline that doesn't involve Kuminga (very possible knowing how quietly Rob moves with things like this, but the options seem to be very scarce)
3: This is our final roster, minus maybe a few tweaks on the margins since we're at 15 player slots filled already.
I really hope the second scenario comes to pass, I've always been iffy on Kuminga's fit here, as talented as he is. The third scenario would be by far the worst, we don't have a single starting-caliber 4 on this roster right now.
I genuinely do not care where LeBron James ends up for his next team, but I really hope he picks soon since that seems to be holding up a ton of movement in this offseason. A lot of dominos will fall once that announcement is made.
This man’s athleticism is absurd. Especially for his size, this guy is bulky as hell. His eyes are literally at the rim, this was a terrible setup pass by Mañon, and it didn’t even matter.
Him catching lobs from Luka is going to be so much fun
There are certain things that you can’t make judgements about from summer league, but there are also lots of things that you can. After watching Adou completely shut Caleb Wilson down when he’s guarded him (I think he’s forced like 7 turnovers when guarding him or something crazy like that) I’m so confident in his NBA readiness as a defender
His screen navigation is really good, light years better than Vando, which makes him viable at the point of attack and as a wing stopper. He moves his feet well, he’s physical without being out of control, he’s disruptive, and he’s so athletic. He has the body of a player that can guard the best wing attackers in the league, and I think he will eventually get to that level if he keeps putting the work in.
While he’s still obviously really raw, he’s looked under control on offense too, he’s a decent passer and he even FINALLY hit a three. I would put him above Vando on that end, not that that means much.
He definitely still needs more polishing but given he plays by far our weakest position, I think he’s going to really have some chances this year.
Skip to 4:15 to where they start talking about Walker Kessler.
Locked on Lakers had Tony Jones on, who covers the Jazz and the Sixers for the Atlantic, to talk about three of our new guys.
I almost don't want to believe the way he talks about Walker, because i'd be getting my hopes up. But if the way he describes Walker is true (he tells a story about how the tanking Jazz had to sit him during his first season with them after the Gobert trade because they were worried he'd win too many games for them when they were tanking for Wemby), the rest of the league is in for a scary time.
Anyway, this is worth a watch.
From Jovan Buha on the bird app:
Update on Austin Reaves’ contract with the Lakers: Final terms are four years, $180 million, with a player option in 2029–30, league sources tell me. Reaves agreed to a lower amount than the previously reported $185 million to help give Los Angeles more future flexibility.
Reporting seems to indicate that he took a 4 percent raise next year, which, when aligned with Mamu taking a lower salary next year, should free up enough for us to have the full NTPMLE and BAE, that's over 20 million to spend as long as we don't aggregate the two exceptions
Clever manuevering from Pelinka