This, it’s like comparing Westbrook on the lakers for 40+ million and on the nuggets for vet minimum.

The contract is irrelevant. He’s their starting center. When you lose, you dont get to say “yes we lost but Ayton is paid only 8m, so that officially counts as a win”

I agree. I’m just pointing out how the discourse around him has shifted, and it’s not because he’s being paid less. Even at 8 mil, there are concerns with relying on Ayton as your starting center. They’re just not being highlighted because the Lakers have a huge beat and national media circlejerk behind them. I still think the signing is a net positive for the Lakers just because of how shitty their center rotation was.

We aren’t paying him 30mil tho

Imposing is a bad word for Ayton.

He does bascially everything you could want a finesse C to do, with the exception of not having a three-point shot and dropping more passes than he should. But he’s not imposing at all. All of the weaknesses in his game (that aren’t mental) are to do with lack of physicality.

No one is saying it’s a bad pickup for the value. People are rightfully pointing out that he doesn’t address their glaring defensive issues that are only even more magnified after losing their best perimeter defender.

That’s what I’m saying though. Before he signed with the Lakers, Ayton discourse used to be monopolized by bad effort concerns, wasted potential, playing 2k at 4 am, all that stuff. Now that he’s on the Lakers, that has changed. Now what he does well is being reported, and the concerns ignored. They’re not lying or wrong, they’re just spinning the news 

You dont have to wait for Jokic lol First loss of the season will give you that

Lol everybody gets bodied by Jokic

But the Lakers are chasing championships

They are trying to be a contender, convince luka to re-sign and hopefully send lbj off with a smile on their face..

The team isn’t loaded enough to convincingly have an edge over the nuggets, rockets and okc . That’s skipping Minnesota etc. The top of the west is a bloodbath

But luka with lbj and some reasonable threats can throw a scare at most teams.

The lakers are not all in on the championship this year. Rebuilding around luka might get them chances later

I get hating espn and to a lesser degree the big online media companies for covering the same squads but I watched/Listened to a little bit of ESPN last week and it was hardly positive. There was a lot of “fighting to make play in takes”. Frankly they get as many views from Laker haters as they do Laker fans. I think Woike here is making a pretty pragmatic statement about how DFS has likely been a bit overrated and how for better or worse Ayton was just more important to us at the moment.

He called DFS their best POA defender. Did you read it? The Lakers bring out the haters big time. Hahaha 

I don’t disagree. But it’s a weird scenario and it’s the Lakers, so this amount/type of coverage should not be surprising.

That’s what I’m saying. There’s a good faith argument they got a little bit better coming off a good season but you’d swear they shit their pants.

We’ll see if there’s any fire behind all this LeBron smoke but honestly they really just had a glaring need at center and addressed it pretty damn well. They didn’t have that much they needed to do - and they’re still in this weird interim period before they get some money and can really start building around Luka properly

it wasnt amazing but it did fill the very obvious roster hole we had so thats a big part of it. now, it opens another roster hole but it seems the organization is banking on the rookie to play well and vandy to be healthy enough to play defense for us

It’s not it’s just smart asses. Yes it stings but you got fucking MILES TURNER from Doing it. You aren’t getting a better player to add to this roster it was a really smart move by bucks to keep the team ticking. If they hit on a back court pick this team with Giannis going crazy will be up there in the east

Its not about waiving Dame, the 22m dead cap is the issue over the next 5 years. Hell, Lakers had to waive and stretch Luol Deng’s contract for a few years and it was about 5m and they still had a tiny bit of problem navigating it. Bucks would be in a much much difficult position to handle 22m of dead cap. I get it though, it’s a desperation move to keep Giannis

Yeah, I thought this was a good move by Milwaukee. People acting like keeping Dame’s dead money this whole season and then working him back into a system that never really worked out in the first place for another season. Like, if Dame had been great and clearly meshed with Giannis super well, I guess I’d get it, but the fit never came about after 2 seasons.

Now, the Bucks get an actual playable guy, get to replace Brook Lopez and like you said, it’s not like the Bucks situation was going to be any different 2-3 seasons from now.

It’s only a bad idea if you’re trading Giannis now because you might as well get off the money next off-season anyway. Otherwise, the idea is that your team made a move to somehow tread water. If it ends up with trading him next year, the stretched salary doesn’t matter.

Our FO has been cooked for a while, not shocked they passed it up.

The move was far more than mediocre. Are we going to actually pretend that the Lakers swapping DFS for LaRavia and Ayton isn’t a good move ? Or is somehow bad to get Ayton for the money most teams pay to bench warmers that average 5 mins and 2 points ? Meanwhile, the bucks are going to try and do what, run a team with Turner as the #2 player ?

It’s because you guys are essentially paying $50 million for Turner (factoring in the Dame stretch).

I like the move that the Bucks made. As an organization, they have constantly shown a willingness to become better with Giannis.

I disagree. Offseason is a perfect time to cover potential ramifications of off season moves, and the Pels draft day trade could have much bigger impact on their franchise than Ayton will on the Lakers.

Ideally JJ convinces him to really focus on his defense, since he’s going to be spoon fed so easily on offense. There are all those clips of JJ singing Ayton’s praises years ago that I think he’ll relish the challenge to finally get the most out of such a talented player. Could end up explosive, but I’m an optimist.

why don’t people mention Luka? Dude is extremely emotional, angry, and whiney on the court. Dallas never had no effort guys ( besides him on defense ) that I can remember, but I can see Luka exploding on Ayton if Ayton slacks off.

Two words: Luol. Deng.

I dont think we will win the Chips just because of Ayton, I mean you are a legitimate idiot if you think Ayton can fix the problems Lakers had, let alone be the reason or pieces that they needed to win a championship.

Winning a chip is more than just one player it’s also luck and injury history. Any of the contenders could lose a key player and it opens up the race for everyone.

Ayton CAN however on paper can fix a decent number of Lakers problems directly and indirectly.

1. He is a 7ft big - Lakers literally were playing a 40yr old Lebron as their center for a whole game. Simply having on the floor provides rebounding and rim protection. No I’m not saying he is gonna block like Wemby but just by him standing under the rim means Randle,McDaniels can’t just attack the rim without worries.

2. Luka defense - Again I think Ayton can help here a ton. Luka doesn’t need to clamp anyone but if he can funnel his man into Ayton as opposed to Rui or DFS? You can have Lebron play the Draymond role on defense

3. Depth/Solid Wings - Not sure how any one player would fix that. Any team could use more depth and wings but Ayton fixes two glaring problems in Laker’s construction.

Arguably more frustrating than just not playing well all the time lol

its a good move but im tired of seeing the propaganda 

Hayes to Ayton is like the equivalent of Ayton to Shaq, Hayes was so fcking shit that they had to play without a C

We went from Jaxon Hayes on a vet min and 2 two-way guys to Ayton, like no shit we’re happy lol

No one is expecting Ayton to be Shaq out there. Just the nature of him existing is better than fresh off blood clots Koloko or Trey Jemison.

Not just his last two teams - the SUNS and the BLAZERS

Two of the worst decision making teams in the league.  Ayton has a hard time staying motivated in games where he feels like an offensive non-option.

I can easily see him as a ²⁰⁄₁₀ player this year.  He may be a ‘system’ center, have every weakness you cited, in a career year. Multiple things can be true at the same time

Luka fried Gobert in the playoffs the season before and went to the finals. This was before he gained all that weight.

Saying fried a player is a low bar when the player you mention is a killer on offense

When Ayton was matched against Luka he still did better than anyone else they put on him.

People don’t actually watch the games lol

They just remember DFS from that one time a few years ago and just seeing “DFS” and “3&D” in the same sentence, and still continue to think he’s an elite defender. It’s like what happened with Robert Covington once he started following off a bit.

DFS is great, but he’s slowed down a lot and he can’t guard 3s much anymore, he has had to slide down to 4s and 5s. He does a lot of small things and his metrics are great but I’m not crying over losing him and replacing him with Ayton and Laravia.

Both can be true though, the Lakers has gotten better this season, but losing DFS hurts their already poor depth.