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Pop goes the weasel.
No idea what the real issue is but this is the 2nd year in a row that someone on the Spurs has wanted to be traded. Plus add in Simmons who also wanted to leave. I know the Spurs have a great reputation but there must be some issues there.
Pop goes the weasel.
The real issue is that it was always Timmy that held the team together not Pop.
If getting Kawhi is prerequisite to getting the others, LAL will have to pay through the snout for him
All 3 is just not possible...at all.
Different issues, different reasons. Also, LMA was professional enough to voice his concern straight to Pop unlike Kawhi's group. What's up with them not wanting Kawhi to have a one-on-one with Pop? And then there's the media circus plus Jabari Parker.
Spurs almost certainly won't want Ball. Ingrim is a polarizing prospect that PATFO may not even want.
That leaves who? Hart and Kuzma plus late 1st's plus 2 years of Deng's deal. That isn't a serious trade offer.
Pop maybe has gotten more "loud & confrontational" with officials as the years have went by but generally speaking aside from Danny Green, who the does he yell at? I havent really seen him get on somebody really since Tony when he was young. Pop has gone soft, tbh.
Simmons wanted more playing time and Pop wasn't willing to give him that time, mostly because for most of the year he wasn't particularly good. He turned the corner during that Houston series and balled out but it wasn't like he was mistreated.
Aldridge's issues were a lack of touches and that he was essentially just out their setting screens and grabbing offensive rebounds on offense while Kawhi carried the offense.
He went to Pop and they talked it through like G's do and Pop admitted that he misused him and they began repairing their relationship from there.
I still think Kawhi and Pop are close but his handlers are mishandling Kawhi and keeping him from Pop like an ex-wife keeping the kids away from the father.
I don't see an issue with that, I think that is a good thing.
Watching him interact with Murray is a lot different from how he interacted with Parker. Pop said that he needed to push Parker because there was never a player that could push him for minutes. With Murray, he pulls him aside during a stoppage and tells him what he did wrong and what he needs to do the next time, pats him on the ass and sends him back in.
Kawhis group will spin it, fans will fish for reasons & flakey player fans will make excuses but the most likely reason is spurs didnt offer supermax. Lets not lose sight of that.
Last edited by Slippy; 06-17-2018 at 07:01 AM.
It really makes sense! All you keep hearing from Jabari Parker is how you have to treat today's players so delicately an how Kawhi isn't Duncan, those days are over. So it's is a very interesting take on it.
I thin Jabari also implied at one point that today's supserstar's groups are empowered and modern clubs no and accept this. Kawhi's group wants to be LeBron's group.
Whitlock and Broussard taking shots at Pop and RC.
It's interesting how these things happen. Pop's rep is being tarnished. Just like Phil Jackson's was after the "posse" remark with Melo.
Pat Riley's rep was hurt when LeBron left in 2014 and seems to have recovered. I hope this is temporary. But at Pop's age could not be time to repair. Hope its not a Sloan like ending in Utah.
If the Lakers want to trade for Kawhi, you force them to move Ingram or Ball for the pieces you actually want.
Bill Plaschke of the LA Times thinks the Lakers can get all three:
Do you believe in Magic? Kawhi Leonard could be the first major step in Lakers' renovation
By Bill Plaschke
JUN 15, 2018 | 3:30 PM
This is it, Magic. You’re up.
What was proposed in this column space two months ago can now happen. At this seminal moment in franchise history, the Lakers need to do everything possible to make it happen.
The long-expected news has finally broken that Kawhi Leonard is asking out of San Antonio, and he wants to come home to Southern California, and his first choice would be the Lakers and …
DO IT NOW!
Magic Johnson needs to drop everything, grab his buddy Rob Pelinka, disappear into a back room, dial up the Spurs, and get to work. Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Throw in everybody but Jack Nicholson and Lawrence Tanter. Give them everything but Jeanie Buss’ Twitter account.
Do what they couldn’t do last summer with Paul George. Make it happen even though the Spurs would hate for it to happen. Find a way, any way, to acquire the player who could open that long-locked door to championship contention.
If Leonard comes, potential free agent George would come. And if George comes, you can bet LeBron James would come.
The Lakers can afford all three. They can perform the salary cap gymnastics to fit all three. They are the perfect team for all three.
With those three players, they would end their five-year playoff drought, challenge Golden State and Houston in the West, potentially get back to the Finals for the first time in nine years. For the first time since the days of Kobe and Shaq, they would be a nationally hated Super Team, and, man, wouldn’t that be super?
If all that sounds impossible, well, who thought James would ever flee for Miami and build a le winner, or that Kevin Durant would run to Oakland and enrich a le winner? The stars wonderfully control this league now, and if three of them want to be part of a glorious Lakers history, who says they can’t?
It starts with Leonard, a 26-year-old former NBA Finals MVP and two-time league defensive player of the year who has leverage because he can opt out of the final year of his contract next summer. If the Spurs don’t trade him now, they probably would lose him for nothing next summer, so they’re on the clock.
Could they just keep him and roll the dice? Not when he’s already mentally checked out of an organization that publicly questioned his toughness last season when he played in only nine games after suffering a right quadriceps injury. By the end, he was so estranged from the team that he didn’t even show up for the playoff series against Golden State. So yeah, he’s surely gone.
Lots of teams want him, and here come those hated Boston Celtics again, so acquiring him is not going to be easy. But the Lakers, basketball’s most glamorous franchise, are fronted by the basketball world’s most charismatic figure in basketball’s most electric city.
Earlier this week, Buss cryptically tweeted, “Do not ever underestimate. … Nothing else to say.’’
Fine. No underestimation here. Go for it.
The first challenge is that the Spurs are surely making all kinds of Gregg Popovich-scowling-faces at the idea of trading Leonard to a Western Conference rival. The Lakers gave them Derek Fisher and 0.4 seconds. The Lakers gave them four playoff series defeats since 2000. And the Spurs are just going to give them their future Tim Duncan?
No, the Spurs are not going to want to trade with the Lakers any more than the Indiana Pacers wanted to trade unhappy George to his beloved Lakers last summer. So the Pacers traded out of the East, gave George to Oklahoma City for what was then considered a small return, and only by the grace of Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis did they save face.
Do the conservative Spurs want to take that same chance? Do they really want to take less value from a team that knows the former Riverside King High star would probably be a one-year rental? Do they want to just give him away?
The Lakers’ biggest advantage is that they are the one team that can give up big assets and trust that Leonard would be worth the investment. Their other advantage is that, well, they actually have those assets.
Trade Brandon Ingram. Trade Kyle Kuzma. Trade their 25th-overall pick in next week’s draft. This is the part where some Lakers fans will scream, “Throw in Lonzo Ball!’’ No, sorry, it’s impossible to imagine the button-down Spurs would want anything to do with Ball and his traveling circus. But heck yeah, sure, if the Spurs want him, throw in Lonzo Ball.
By agreeing to trade two former first-round picks and a future first-rounder — you will do that, right, Magic? — the Lakers can make the Spurs the best possible offer for a player who could eventually walk away and leave San Antonio with nothing. The Spurs would have to swallow hard, but if they could get beyond pride they would see it’s the best of a situation they could have prevented.
They blew it by questioning their best player; they blew it by creating fireworks around a guy who never says a word or causes any commotion; they foolishly became estranged from their future. So now they have to pay the price, and only the Lakers can truly minimize thedamage.
Yes, the Lakers could be sacrificing their own future for a guy who just spent a year nursing a leg injury. But remember, this deal would not just be about Kawhi Leonard. This is about Leonard, and James, and George, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build a team that could enrich history.
Down the hall, the Clippers would be interested in Leonard in a deal centered around their 12th and 13th overall picks next week, and perhaps Tobias Harris. That would bring Leonard to Los Angeles, but there’s no way they can improve the team around him like the Lakers can.
This is a deal that works best for the Lakers. This is the first falling domino in a potentially glorious purple-and-gold-tinted chain reaction.
This is a Magic moment.
Last edited by Russ; 06-17-2018 at 09:22 AM.
bill... tired of his crap.
Have anything in mind, because I don't. What do Ball and Ingrim net you? A top 10 pick plus Hart and Kuzma and two years of Deng's deal. That's probably a worse offer. It's odd; people keeping saying Kawhi to the Lakers, like the Lakers have the pieces that the Spurs would want but I think its far more likely that they don't.
With Clippers, they at least the 12th and 13th plus Harris who is only 25 and finally looks like he is living up to his potential. While that's a decent package, I don't know if it's enough for the Spurs to pull the trigger on- especially if Philly and Boston come correct
hmm, maybe just let Jabari coach and be done with it.
Boom. Seems like people are looking for more than what's right in front of them. There could not be a bigger difference in the professionalism displayed between LMA, and Kawhi and his group.
Plaschke is known to penetrate and understand the unrealistic expectations and hormones of Laker fandom. He likes to be controversial and ESPN giving him a major platform to spew his crap is all the proof you need.
He knows players have gotten more sensitive, hence the toning down.
https://www.complex.com/sports/2018/...tweak-practiceMany believe that Kawhi's time in San Antonio is coming to an end, but no one seems to really understand what's exactly going on. A new report from Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, however, may shed some light on this weird situation. Isola quotes a "rival executive" who says Leonard wants coach Gregg Popovich and the Spurs organization to "tweak" the way they do things.
"From what I understand, he wants Popovich to lighten up a little with practice and tweak some things," the executive is quoted as saying. "The Spurs may not want to change their ways, but this is Kawhi Leonard we're talking about."
Which is funny because pop has turned into a huge softball since his wife died. Kawhi could probably legit had gotten Pop fired in 2015 by being tact about it. Everything we've seen shows that he did not take the most direct route to backstab a coach in the classy way. Granted pop is probably a unique coach but pop was 50/50 on retiring after 5 and could have been pushed to retire at that point.
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