Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[KillerLeft]

Agree (in hindsight) that deal for KP was the point for reset.  

Don't agree that if KP was good, the Wizards would be good.  Luka played at MVP level and Mavs didn't even make the playoffs.  The Wiz have a few decent players but Beal is a shell of his former self.  Nobody is calling KP a star, but he is better than what he was here (after the first year).  He just didn't fit, particularly with Luka.

I’m just making the general (and correct, I believe) point that it’s easy to take players who put up numbers on losing teams too seriously. It’s not that Porziņģis would have to be the best player on a good team to win my respect for his game, but it would be nice if he had any history of being the second or third best player on a good team. 

I think there are scads of players in the pro game who feel they should be featured and are talented enough to make that a plausible direction. Once they get their shot, the team has to win to validate that direction. If it doesn’t work, they need to do what everyone else does: learn how to support someone else who’s actually worthy of inclusion in the league’s top 1%. I’m not sure if it’s all ability, or if there is some sort of mindset/ego block with Porziņģis, but to me, it seems like he is now a failure on both of those levels. I flatly would not want him on the team I followed.

You brought up Luka, for example. Remember when we were all trying to talk ourselves into the idea that Dennis Smith Jr. was a legit NBA prospect, only to see Luka drop in and completely transform the team overnight? Then, they made the playoffs the very next year? That’s max player impact, to me. 

And I’ll go you one further: Luka put up great numbers again this past season, but I vehemently disagree that he played at an MVP level. I think it was maybe his worst season, so far, except for his rookie year when they were finding his role. The crap where he doesn’t get back on defense was at an all-time high, his passion for the game seemed to be at an all time low (he even said as much in the media) and I absolutely believe his uninspired play was one of the primary reasons for the team’s slippage. Maybe it was because of the crappy off-season where Brunson was allowed to walk without so much as a competitive offer… Maybe it was because he is already completely over Cuban hanging around like a useless jock sniffer… I don’t know. Just saying, that was not his best.