The Lakers are tanking for the Sixers or Celtics.

[rebound]

The rich get richer.

Ainge trading the Brooklyn pick for Kyrie is looking brilliant. Not sure why the Cavs didnt request the better of the picks. Surely Boston wouldn't have held off on the trade?

[H20Knick]

https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/rankin ... h-by-other

I don't know, rebound. I think LA will finish better than 5th worse when its all said and done. They're 5th worse in point differential playing the 7th toughest (home/away adjusted) strength of schedule and they lost all 6 games during this stretch where Lonzo was out. He'll be back Friday, they'll climb out of the bottom 5 and the pick will go to Philly. This is really not bad for Boston still though because they can call dibs on Sacramento's 2019 pick, which will be really damn good. That franchise is awful.

[taowave]

Are you factoring in the idiot??

LaVar Ball, right now, is probably most associated with overheated popup retail openings and the bizarre basketball odyssey of his two younger sons. He’s a reality TV star and a famous Famous Person, and part of his job as a person who is famous for being famous is to say outlandish things in order to draw attention, in order to put his brand in front of the strange and deeply impressionable percentage of people who will automatically gravitate towards Famous People, and tend to do so with outstretched fists full of money.

But LaVar Ball is also the father of Lonzo Ball, the rookie franchise point guard of the Los Angeles Lakers, so when he says Lakers head coach Luke Walton “has no control of the team” and that no current Lakers players want to play for him anymore, you have to decide for yourself whether he’s saying that as a professional buffoon who has hired himself to say controversial things, or as a person with special insight into the inner culture of the Lakers. For that matter, that’s a determination the Lakers will also have to make, inevitably. Here’s some of what LaVar had to say about Luke Walton and the Lakers, via an ESPN report from sunny Lithuania:

“You can see they’re not playing for Luke no more,” Ball said from a spa resort in Birstonas, where he is staying while his two youngest sons, LiAngelo and LaMelo, get ready to make their professional debuts with Lithuanian team Prienu Vytautas. “Luke doesn’t have control of the team no more. They don’t want to play for him.”

“That’s a good team,” he added of the Lakers, who have lost nine straight games. “Nobody wants to play for him. I can see it. No high-fives when they come out of the game. People don’t know why they’re in the game. He’s too young. He’s too young. ... He ain’t connecting with them anymore. You can look at every player, he’s not connecting with not one player.”


“Even if you bring in a LeBron or a [Paul] George, he can’t coach them guys,” he said. “What is he gonna tell them? He’s too young. He has no control.”

Luke Walton is, in fact, pretty young, and the young Lakers do, in fact, stink. If only there were an older man, with a tighter relationship with the team’s most important young player, and with some very specific ideas of exactly how the Lakers should be using that young player, who didn’t have anything better going on—who, in fact, was bumbling around a dismal eastern European outpost, flailing away at a Facebook reality television show, dragging his children through a miserable and pointless and totally improvised detour through the outermost bands of the basketball universe—who could step in and take over as head coach of this young and talented Lakers team.

I suppose the question is, would any one Lakers player want to play for such a man?

[nazrmohamed]

I really hate that guy man. How do you put your son in that position.

[spree#8]

Carlisle isn't amused about the media giving Lonzo's father a platform:
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2199 ... l-platform

DALLAS -- Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle, the president of the NBA's Coaches Association, considers it a "disgrace" that LaVar Ball's comments criticizing Los Angeles Lakers coach Luke Walton were published.

"As president of the coaches association, I view the recent ESPN article as a disgrace, quite honestly," Carlisle said before Sunday's game against the New York Knicks. "Luke Walton is a terrific, young coach who is bringing along a young team, and it's a difficult task. If you don't believe it, just ask me. We're going through that now and went through that last year."

Ball, the outspoken father of Lakers rookie point guard Lonzo Ball, told ESPN's Jeff Goodman that Walton has lost control of the team and players "don't want to play for him."

Carlisle, who worked as an ESPN analyst while between coaching jobs during the 2007-08 season, referred to ESPN as a partner of the league and mentioned that coaches grant the network access and interviews because of that partnership.

"In exchange for that, they should back up the coaches," Carlisle said. "Printing an article where the father of an NBA player has an opinion that is printed as anything like legitimate erodes trust. It erodes the trust that we've built with ESPN, and our coaches are upset because Luke Walton does not deserve that.

Lakers coach Luke Walton and rookie Lonzo Ball disagreed with LaVar Ball's latest criticism of the Lakers coach that he has lost his team, which had lost nine in a row before beating the Hawks Sunday night

"Two years ago, he took a veteran team and led them to 24 wins in a row, which is an amazing accomplishment. Off of that, he earned the Laker job. To have to deal with these kinds of ignorant distractions is deplorable."

Carlisle was asked if he were suggesting that ESPN should determine what news to publish based on what coaches will like.

"I'm saying that they should look at their sources and do a better job of determining whether they have any merit or any validity. Or are they just blowhard loudmouths?" Carlisle said. "That's what I'm saying. You got that?"

The NBA Coaches Association released a statement late Sunday stating: "The article attacked Coach Walton on the basis of one person's unsubstantiated opinion. The story failed to provide quotes or perspectives from any players, or from Lakers management, either named or unnamed, verifying the claims made in the story."

Walton said that some coaches reached out to him on Sunday, voicing support for him after seeing LaVar Ball's comments.

"They are all on the same idea that it is our job as coaches to coach our teams and not be concerned about parents and what other people outside of the organization think," Walton said in Los Angeles before playing the Hawks. "A lot of them have shown their support as far as they know what it is like to coach young teams and from what they see, how hard our group plays. And they really, just like I do, they really like our young team and the way that we compete."

Giving that clown a platform is really a disgrace for a sports journalist IMO. That's boulevard or Page six in the Post, but IMO no fan of the sport should give any shit what any parent of an NBA player thinks. I for one couldn't care less.

[dcapodic]

Giving that clown a platform is really a disgrace for a sports journalist IMO. That's boulevard or Page six in the Post, but IMO no fan of the sport should give any shit what any parent of an NBA player thinks. I for one couldn't care less.

Welcome to the real world, 2018 Rick.

Don't get me wrong, I am sick of this kinda stuff all around in the media these days but the idea that this is a "disgrace" to have happen in the NBA is silly. It is happening everywhere, with little or no sources, just "unnamed", etc. Also, when the media gets its hands on a loose cannon like Ball, they ride it for all it is worth and use that as their excuse for saying anything.

This crap is going on all over, just need to pick up a paper, looks at any of the major "news" sources splash pages, etc. to see it every day. If they can pound the president with it constantly, then I think Luke can put his big boy pants on and manage to survive.

[taowave]

Lakers have won 10 of 14 without Lonzo playing...

They definitely aren't in tank mode,and have some nice young talent.