Hoops Tonight - LeBron's demands to Lakers front office, AD set for larger role, Durant to Celtics?

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week so far. I wanted to take some time here to touch on the three rumors that came out on the NBA trade front in the last twenty four hours that involved Lebron James and the Lakers. We're gonna talk a lot of Lakers here at the beginning, as well as something from Ian Bagley, who specifically mentioned that Kevin Durant has a new preferred trade destination that I wanted

to get into a little bit. But we're gonna start with Chris Haynes and his article Forgot Who's Sports, which touched on a meeting between Lebron James, Clutch Sports, and the Lakers front office. And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna kind of go through some quotes that I thought were interesting, and I'll give you guys my

two cents on those quotes. So first, Haynes said, quote James sources said drilled home the importance of consistent competitiveness and cohesion, noting that last season's team didn't give themselves a chance on many nights. Thought this was very interesting for a couple of different reasons. First of all, the Lakers had a boatload of issues. We've gone into detail

on this before. But you don't get to miss the playoffs in a league that allows twenty of the thirty teams to make the playoffs when you have Lebron James and Anthony Davis on your roster unless a whole lot of things go wrong. Now, I've said that the biggest thing is the Russ's trade, not Russ, but the Russ's trade in all of the ramifications that followed that, But

there are a bunch of other issues. Frank Vogel had a bad season coached away from the team strengths, they obviously had a bunch of issues with injuries, there was kind of a bad mix, and just with the players in the locker room, they had kind of a weird energy. There were a bunch of reasons. I could go on and on and on, but again, it takes all of those things happening for the team to go to perform

as poorly as they did in that season. But I did think this was interesting at a couple of different levels, because it was a significant problem this year that the Lakers could not bring consistent effort and honestly made my job very difficult because I'm here trying to talk about the basketball right, trying to talk about xs and ohs, trying to talk about skill sets, trying to talk about strategy and what may or may not be working for

the Lakers. But on most nights. They just weren't trying hard. And I don't give a damn how good your scheme is. I don't care how good your personnel is or bad your personnel is. If you go out there and you mail it in, you're gonna get your butt kicked, especially in the NBA, especially with how talented the league is now. All you gotta do is look at the guys who did not make my top twenty five list and how good they are, and you'll see how insanely talented the

league is now. You can't get away with not playing hard. So it's good that the Lakers and Lebron have identified that that was a major issue for them last year and that needs to be a point of focus us in priority as we as they established this coming season. However, I look, Lebron James is my favorite player. You guys know that, but this is another opportunity where we have to be honest about what happened. Lebron James did not

bring consistent effort last year. It was it was a large I thought it was one of the things that was the driving force behind that culture that existed in the locker room in Lebron James was their most consistent effort guy, at least among the stars. Obviously you've got guys like Alex Cruser who are working their bought off every every single night, Kyle Kuzmas, so on and so forth. But Lebron James set a great example with his night tonight effort for two full seasons there. That was gone

this year. And I don't know if it was over confidence in the roster. I don't know if it was him counting on Russ to kind of bring that energy. I'm not sure what it was, but his effort wasn't good enough, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. I frequently have people to me, Lebron is not a good defensive player anymore. Yes he is. He's absolutely he's a great defensive player. He just doesn't care a lot enough to do it anymore, at least not in this

past season. And it was weird. You'd see him have a night like there's a night without Anthony Davis. I believe it was in Indiana against the Pacers where he decides he wants to play defense and he kind of plays back line, you know, quarterback for the entire game and locks down and gets a bunch of Key stops against Indiana and gets a win, and you're like, man, that dude is still so good defensively, and then he'd mail it in on the next night that that that's

just the reality of what happened that year. So I'm happy that Lebron is identified that problem. I'm glad the Lakers are aware of it and they want to deal with it. But there's blood on your hands to their Lebron, do you have an issue with trying hard night and night out. Don't blame you. You've played more NBA basketball games, I'm pretty sure than just about anybody in NBA history. So I get it. But let's call it what it is. You were part of the reason why you had bad

effort issues. Another quote from Hayes in the piece um the focus for the future Hall of Famers competing every night in order to give themselves a chance to complete compete for a championship. Furthermore, the first year head coach said one wrinkle he will implement and stick with is having the offense run through Anthony Davis and James concurred. Sources set the team has been encouraged with Davis's offseason progression and believe he'll be an optimum shape to avoid

serious injuries and carry a heavier load. Two interesting things there. First of all, the Anthony Davis coming into camp in shape thing. I get a lot of criticism from Lakers apologists who are hard on me for how hard I've been on Anthony Davis because they claim, hey, he just got hurt. I don't have to go into too much detail on this because all you have to do is watch our video. I think it was in the sixteen video because he's in I believe I had him eighteen

if I remember correctly. But I I do believe that Anthony Davis has had some bad injury luck. I just also believe that he showed up into up out of shape and did it again this year, and so those things played a direct role in the in some of the injuries that he experienced. If you're Achilles has a wear and tear, tendon, tendonosis, or whatever it was that he had, that might be associated to the fact that you stepped into an eight two game NBA season out

of shape. Obviously he has he always is getting like tailbone bruises and sprain wrists and things like that. That a lot of that has to do with the way that he flops all over the floor all the time falling down. There are things under Anthony Davis's control that led to some of his injuries, but then there are

also some bad luck things. So I do believe that it's interesting that we now have more reporting that acknowledges that the Lakers are pleased that Anthony Davis appears to finally be having a good offseason and taking care of his body. Hopefully, like I said in the list, that makes makes it so that he's poised to have a dominant season where he cracks back into the top ten players in the league. That's good. The second thing in that quote that was interesting is the idea of running

the offense or Anthony Davis. Now, this has been talking point on and off over the the entire Anthony Davis Lakers era. You Lakers fans probably remember a season opening game in twenty nine, his first game as a Laker, where against the Los Angeles Clippers, they just threw the ball in the post Anthony Davis almost every time down the floor to the point where it was kind of like bogging down their offense. And just this whole idea of like, who is the offense running through. To me,

it's just not actually a real basketball thing. Like I always talk about how you have these roles that have to be filled on a basketball court, and I actually think Lebron James and Anthony Davis compliment each other so well that the offense is always running through both of them. You guys might have heard me talk about in the last episode, uh, the Jason Tatum or the player rankings episode where we talked about Jason Tatum. I talked about the difference between being the spear or the tip of

the spear. It's a really really simple way to break that down. Is a score a person who job it is to score finished plays. And a facilitator like a game manager, a a point forward, point guard, whatever you want to call it. The guy who is more in charge for more possessions, but it's less offensively aggressive as opposed to the guy that's kind of a gunner. Okay, I think that both roles are very important on a basketball team. You know, you guys have heard me talk.

I like to relate things back to my own personal experience when it comes to basketball, and I know it's not NBA experience, but there are some parallels like here, when I'm running my men's league here in town, I'm a score. So I looked for a player that would compliment me really well as a playmaker, and I found one who played in college, a good big guard who loves to get people in their spots and help facilitate and run an offense. We complement each other really well.

The offense is running through both of us. It's not his team or my team. We fulfill completely different roles and we both do them together to help our team win. That's the way I look at the Lebron James and Anthony Davis partnership. Anthony Davis is not a great ball handler from the perimeter, initially eating offense. Anthony Davis is not a great passer, so asking him to run the team not a good idea. Lebron James at this phase in your twenty is not the type of dominant score

that Anthony Davis is. In all likelihood we'll see Lebron of course average thirty last year because he's an alien. But the point is is Lebron James is the handle of the spear and Anthony Davis is the tip of the spear. It's a mutual part it's a mutually beneficial partnership.

The semantics of who's running the team or what are we doing with our offense, to me, that doesn't really mean anything, Like to me, Lebron James should have the basketball in his hands and he should make a concerted effort to get Anthony Davis in spots where he can score the basketball easily. All of the other semantics surrounding

that are meaningless to me. There was more Russ posturing in this article, talking about how they want him to make more corner threes or to be able to make corner three is more effective as a corner three point. He literally made fort of his corner threes last year. I don't know what to tell you now. He only made twenty three over the whole season because he wasn't in the position often enough because he was on the

ball so much. But that just to me is like not understanding the reality of how the Russ experiment works. Like he's not standing in the corner enough to get enough of those shots for him to be effective there, And the reality is this is all just posturing. Everything I've heard, including more reporting in recent days, is the Lakers will never say so for the sake of trade posturing, but they won't rust out of there. He's not going

to be on the team next year. They need It's it's almost funny to read things like that because it's just it's just so obviously fake. And then the last quote from the Chris Haines piece as for roster tinkering. Quote quote. As for roster tinkering, Polinka explained, patients will be a key in any potential moves the team makes.

Sources set in a collaborative effort, all parties. All parties appear to be aligned on a common vision of seeing how the roster plays out before any drastic moves are sought. End quote. Now this is I really hope that's just posturing, because if you want to see what this roster can do before you make major moves, you're insane. My friend Joe van Buja tweeted out like a potential closing lineup for the Lakers, and it was like Austin Reeves, Troy

Brown Jr. Juantaskano Anderson, Lebron James, and Anthony Davis. I don't need to see any basketball to know that's not good enough. Neither does Lebron James neither should rob Polinka. So I I sure as hell hope that that's not. That was in a serious conversation that was taking place in that room. Because they need drastic moves. They need drastic moves now or this team is going to be a play in team. I was looking at Vegas odds

to win the Western Conference. Did you know that the Memphis Grizzlies are picked as this to pick to be right now, picked to be the seventh seed, the seventh seed there this or I should say, the seventh most likely team to win the Western Conference. If memph Is is the seventh seat, and they are, they are monumentally more talented than the Lakers right now, then guess what. You're a playing team. If you're the Lakers, you need drastic moves. No, you don't need to see how this

plays out. You need drastic moves. So um, the reason why I put Jovan Buha on here, he there was a report from him that was floating around that was being misquoted of him talking about how the Lakers are ready to give up the second first round draft pick

for Kyrie. He wanted me to clarify that that that's not actually the case, uh, what he what he said which is being misquoted, is that as they get closer to training camp, they will feel more urgency to include that second first round pick, meaning they are still actively trying to get this done with one first round pick, but if push comes to shove, they will include that second round pick. That should be encouraging for Lakers fans and that should never have been a point of of

contention within the Lakers front office at all. And then lastly, Ian Bagley reported that Katie prefers Boston, which I thought was really interesting because the initial report was that he preferred Phoenix or Miami. Right, Phoenix is now off the table because the Deandreton thing. Miami always, in my opinion, has been off the table because I just never thought

they had the requisite assets. So to me, it always came down to Boston or Toronto, and Toronto wants to hold on to Scotty Barnes, so to me, Boston was obviously in first place based on the Jalen Brown at the proposed Jalen Brown package. But I do think it's interesting that Katie has now essentially leaked or somebody in Katie's camp has made it clear that he prefers Boston. I don't blame him. That would be an awesome place

for hooped. You've got a general manager who knows his ship and cares and cares about his players, and Brad Stevens. You gotta coach in email Udoka, who's one of my favorite young coaches in the league, a coach that Katie has a relationship with from his time playing with the the U S national team. And a great roster of players that gives him more than he needs to win an NBA championship. And a bunch of guys that love the game of basketball, where basketball will be first and

drama will not be an issue. He's not gonna have to worry about the kinds of things that he worried about with Kyrie. There. The only thing that I thought was really strange in that that report was like he wants to play with Marcus Smart. I don't know why that, of all the players would be the guy that he'd be itching to play with. Apparently Brooklyn wants Marcus Smart and that deal. I don't know how that would all shake out, but I hope that for Katie that wouldn't

be a sticking point. I continue to think that Boston is an excellent destination for Katie. I think it's a great package for Brooklyn to get back in return, and I think just all in all, we're trending in that direction because I do not believe Toronto will put Scottie Barnes on the table. The volume