NBA Rumors Round-Up
NBA Rumors: Lakers Unlikely to Make Trades?
Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.
All posts by Jeff HawkinsUpdated27 Oct 2023
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The Lakers, meanwhile, don’t figure to be very active on the trade market in the coming months, according to league sources. The Lakers were able to come up with the draft pick (from Houston) in exchange for taking on the contract of guard Jeremy Lin, and they’d be interested in adding another pick.
The chief issue for the Lakers when it comes to potential trades is obvious from a glance at the roster — there are slim pickings. “There isn’t much there you’re going to give up a lot for,” one general manager told Sporting News.
Two weeks ago, we covered in this space that the Lakers are unlikely to sign a free agent in the immediate future even though they recently worked out players like Quincy Miller, Jordan Hamilton, Tyrus Thomas and Dwight Buycks among others. This is because the Lakers want to stick with their current roster for the time being.
Now, according to this report, it doesn’t sound like they’ll be making a major trade anytime soon either. In the past, L.A. has managed to add big-name players through blockbuster trades, but this roster doesn’t have many attractive assets so that kind of move seems very unlikely.
In recent days, some fans in L.A. have been dreaming about the Lakers trading for Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo, but it’s hard to imagine the Lakers landing him since many other teams could likely put together a better offer for the veteran point guard. Deveney writes that the Lakers and Celtics “have had no substantive talks” regarding a Rondo trade.
One move that could be a possibility for these Lakers is trading off some of their veterans, such as Jordan Hill or Nick Young, for draft picks before February’s trade deadline. This could give them some more picks to continue their rebuild and also allow them to lose some more games, which could help them finish with one of the worst records in the league and keep their top-five protected pick that they owe the Phoenix Suns. This is similar to what the Philadelphia 76ers did last season, trading away veterans like Spencer Hawes and Evan Turner for draft picks and the chance to improve their lottery odds.
This has been a rough year for the Lakers, but they should be able to turn things around quickly and set themselves up nicely for life after Kobe Bryant if they’re able to keep their top pick and put another young star (such as Jahlil Okafor or Emmanuel Mudiay) alongside Julius Randle. The Lakers aren’t used to building through the draft, but that could be their best option at this point.
“Part of it was that he couldn’t get along with anybody else in the organization,” Lacob said. “And look, he did a great job, and I’ll always compliment him in many respects, but you can’t have 200 people in the organization not like you.”
Jackson, now an ESPN broadcaster who did not immediately return a message seeking comment, had successes Lacob said made the decision to fire him “a really tough call.”
Around the time of his firing, there were reports that said Mark Jackson didn’t have a single ally in the Warriors organization by the end of last season, and this quote from Joe Lacob seems to confirm that.
The article is about Lacob’s praise for new head coach Steve Kerr, who has led the Warriors to an NBA-best 17-2 record in his first stint as a coach, but Lacob also managed to take some shots at Jackson during the interview.
In addition to saying that everyone in the organization disliked Jackson, he also said that Jackson’s coaching staff “[wasn’t] that good.” There is speculation that this was because Jackson didn’t want to have anyone on the staff who could possibly become a threat to replace him. Lacob said that he offered to pay for any assistant coach Jackson wanted, but the head coach wouldn’t bring in more experienced assistants.
“[H]e did the one big thing that I wanted more than anything else from Mark Jackson he just wouldn’t do, in all honesty, which is hire the very best,” Lacob said of Kerr. “Carte blanche. Take my wallet. Do whatever it is to get the best assistants there are in the world. Period. End of story. Don’t want to hear it. And (Jackson’s) answer … was, ‘Well, I have the best staff.’ No you don’t. And so with Steve, very, very different.
“You can’t have a staff underneath you that isn’t that good. And if you’re going to get better, you’ve got to have really good assistants. You’ve got to have people that can be there to replace you. We all know this from all of our companies. It’s … Management 101. A lot of people on the outside couldn’t understand it when we (fired Jackson).”
Kerr brought in experienced coaches like Alvin Gentry and Ron Adams, whereas only one coach from Jackson’s five-man staff is still employed in the NBA this season.
We will likely never all of the behind-the-scenes drama that led to Jackson being fired, but it certainly sounds like Jackson was disliked for some reason based on Lacob’s comments.
Ante Tomic has missed the train to the NBA. Furthermore, I’m told he’s not even interested in going overseas to the league. Sources believe Tomic will renew his vows with Barcelona going forward. There is no question that he’s a legit NBA talent – he can score, rebound, and pass. I just don’t think the NBA is something Tomic is thinking about.
via David Pick of Basketball Insiders
According to Pick, it seems unlikely that Tomic will ever play in the NBA.
Tomic is now 27 years old and still playing overseas, so it seems the Jazz will never get to sign the player who they drafted with the 44th overall pick in the 2008 NBA Draft.
This is unfortunate for Utah, since Tomic has developed into a very good player overseas. He has played with Zagreb, Real Madrid and Barcelona, and he won the Adriatic League MVP in 2009 and was selected to the All-ACB Team in 2011 and 2013 and All-Euroleague First Team in 2013 and 2014. He has also won a number of championships and suited up for Croatia’s national team.
Last season with Barcelona, Tomic averaged 11.7 points, 6.4 rebounds and 2.1 assists while shooting 62.9 percent from the field.
It would have been interesting to see what Tomic could do in the NBA, but Pick doesn’t think like we’ll ever be able to see him play at this level.
