Transcription
Alright man, peace. You know, brothers, it's becoming abundantly clear to me that this offseason is gonna be pivotal, not only for Mr. Rob PƔlinka but also for Kobe Bryant. Because, as I've stated for a while now, it's very clear to me that Kobe Bryant has his eyes on eventually purchasing or attempting to purchase the LA Lakers franchise. And in order for him to do that, he needs Rob PƔlinka to be a success as the general manager. So, there are a lot of people who have a lot at stake in Rob Polenta's performance as GM for that team, not just Jeanie Buss, but also Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Rich Paul, Anthony Davis, etc.
So, now that they've been able to allocate Mr. Anthony Davis to be the the second player in the LeBron James triumvirate, it's the third time that LeBron James is trying to create a triumvirate that he hopes will result in a championship. The true test for Rob will be whether or not he can sign that top-notch third player, or whether or not he's going to try to piece together a team of some of the appropriate pieces that he knows LeBron James will need to utilize the LeBron James system, which is the only system that LeBron James can play well.
They recently stopped Jeanie Buss in an attempt to glean what is going on within her mind, what is her mindset right now at this point, as the Lakers headed to the pivotal 2019-2020 season. While she was on the red carpet at the NBA Awards, and Jeanie Buss showing a certain level of prudence, decided that she was going to play a very close to the vest. She knows that there's talk that, in reality, it's the wife of Kurt Rambis, Linda Rambis, was running the team. She knows that she did not want her friend to be viewed as the face of the organization. I did a video a while back saying, "Will girl power destroy the LA Lakers?" What Jeanie Buss is intelligent enough to realize that if she and Linda Rambis are going to call the shots, it has to be from behind the curtain. Because if they make any decisions that are incorrect, it's going to hurt their cause as trying to foster the notion that women can actually be shot callers in a professional sports league like the NBA. So, she has to push all the energy, all the chips, towards Rob PƔlinka, so that if he fails, she can blame him. He can be the fall guy. But Kobe sees Rob PƔlinka to succeed. Everybody needs him to succeed right now. Because there's no doubt in my mind that Kobe is gonna try to buy the LA Lakers in 12 to 15 years, if he can. So, this is gonna be the first step towards that. And believe me, if the Lakers start to succeed, Kobe will try to associate himself more with the franchise. Kobe's also operating behind the curtains.
So, anyway, they're gonna talk about it. No one to try. Minibus Dallas Tatiana. I told you guys already, Buss is not her last name. Buss, it's a middle name. Her real last name is D'Antoni. Frank Vogel is a great new head coach. Really? Okay, that's pretty good. Jeanie Buss, it sounds like you wrote all that down on a sheet of loose-leaf and read it over a piddly to yourself so that you can recite it in case someone asks you about what you think about what's happening with your team. And I understand that you don't really know anything about basketball, but you do want to project yourself as someone who could be a capable owner. And let me say this, Jeanie Buss is pretty much the only owner in the NBA who's expected to know about basketball and to make the correct decisions. Now, is that fair or unfair? A little bit of both. Because she is the one who decided that she was going to cast her brother aside and claim that he was incompetent. So, naturally, people are going to assume that you view yourself as competent when it comes to basketball affairs. But we also know that she's a woman, so people are expecting her to not know what the hell she's doing, and probably for good reasons. So, there's a little bit of both. They're tugging at the fate of the Lakers, as well as her own ego.
But just to get back to the point, Frank Vogel is not some superstar head coach. Well, who knows? Maybe he just never had the transcendent talent that he's needed to show he's a coach. He could be either way. He's not going to get any credit coaching LeBron James, so he could forget about that. The best day he'll get out of this tenure is hopefully for him, he'll be coaching past this season, which, if I'd be a betting man, will not be the case. It might be a betting man sometime by next season, Jason Kidd will take over as the head coach of the LA Lakers. I agree with Dave McMenamin. I think that his real talk. I think that Jeanie Buss has no choice but to be confident in Rob PƔlinka, because I believe that she's confident in Kobe Bryant. And I'm pretty sure that Kobe Bryant is speaking to her at least two or three times a week to assuage whatever sense of insecurity or lack of certainty that she might have. So, I do believe that she believes that Rob PƔlinka will get the job done. Because the fact of the matter is, what other option does she have? You could say that he's shown me some things and he's done some good things in terms of getting out of some of the bad contracts that the previous regime had signed, while Deng and Timofey Mozgov. So, let me say this in quote-unquote defense of Rob Polenka, he's only been involved with the organization for a little bit over a year. So, there's only so much greatness that he's going to be able to display when it comes to his ability to to plan ahead and things of that nature. You do have to give a new general manager time to to remove a lot of the old toxicity of the previous regime and try to bring in, you know, hopefully something that will reinvigorate the franchise.
We do know that Jim Buss made a lot of decisions that have hampered the LA Lakers. Magic Johnson came in, and he did what he normally does, which is believe that a smile and a lot of empty rhetoric will cover up for the fact that he's incompetent. Okay, Magic dances, Magic doesn't. If he's not playing point for the LA Lakers, he's shown throughout his life that he's relatively incompetent. And no disrespect to the brother, I know that he is a multi-multi-millionaire. He styles himself or fashions himself as some type of great businessman. Well, Magic is a great mascot. That's what he is. And there's no disrespect to him at all. But just to get back to the point, Rob PƔlinka, he needs more time to at least be able to display how competent he is. But this is a very, very important moment in Rob PƔlinka's future or potential future as the Lakers GM. This offseason heading into next year, what does he decide to do? You sign a Kyrie Irving or a Kawhi Leonard, or you try to just build up the current team that you have with some important free agents? What do you decide to do? Okay, give me a championship. Give me a core that I know for sure can get it done. There's another that yet. So, I think it's misplaced confidence. Yeah, I think the jury's still out on him. I think right now, you know, the one, what the Lakers have done in the past, waning there about waning and getting to the top, he has to prove himself. And right now, he's still trying to put some pieces together. I feel like the fans are gonna get frustrated before he is able to pull a team on the floor.
Well, I'll say this, if the fans get frustrated, who exactly are we supposed to blame? Because after this Anthony Davis trade, LeBron cannot claim that he does not have hope anymore. So, who exactly will the fans be frustrated with if the team does not perform up to snuff? LeBron is still considered, at the very lowest, still a top-five player in the NBA. Anthony Davis is considered by many people a currently top-five player in the NBA. So, if you have two top-five players on your team and you're not winning 55-plus games, I mean, look at the Houston Rockets. What they did a couple of years ago, they had two top-15, top-20 players in the league and they won 60-plus games just a couple of years ago with Chris Paul and James Harden. James Harden is a player who would be considered anywhere from a top-five to top-ten player by most people's account. So, according to the, the understanding of most people, Chris Paul, just years ago, will probably have been considered a top-20 player, maybe even top-15, depending on how much you still value his skillset. Right now, the Lakers have two players on their team that one could debate are both top-five in the league. So, this is going to be a referendum on LeBron James, just as much as, if not more than, Rob PƔlinka. The rest of the rosters, but separates front office's, right? So, we will see.
Well, that's basically it on that. We'll see how things go with Jeanie Buss, D'Antoni, Rob PƔlinka, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, so on and so forth. I do believe that the Lakers will once again be the most interesting conversational piece in the NBA. I also will predict that they'll probably win somewhere in the vicinity of 52 to maybe even 58 games next season. That's just an an outside estimation right now. And if they're able to sign a Kawhi Leonard, who the hell knows what they're going to do? They're gonna have to go over the cap to to sign supplementary pieces to help a squad like that that has three top-10 players in the NBA. So, there's still a lot to watch when it comes to them. So, peace.