CITAAT(SI, juli 2019, Why Can't LeBron James and the Lakers Land Stars in Free Agency? |
Open Floor Podcast):
"You look at this situation, if LeBron
James was as good of a recruiter as we kind of thought he was, if he
was the power broker that we've built him up to be at times over
these last couple of years in terms of having Rich Paul play every
single angle, being able to get Anthony Davis, leveraging a franchise
where Rob Pelinka's taking all of this potential risk to get to lay
the groundwork to get a Kawhi Leonard deal. He gets this done.
Whatever the pitch that needed to be made to Kawhi Leonard, he's the
one who would make it. The title is sitting there waiting for them to
go get if they're all together, right?
And bottom line, he wasn't able to make that connection. I wonder
if there's concerns from other parties about whether it's his age,
style of play, the amount of attention. I think you joked about the
Instagram stuff, about whether there would be a personality conflict
between him and Kawhi Leonard. There was multiple years there where
nobody wanted to challenge LeBron. His fellow players wouldn't even
say a negative word about him. Everybody was kind of on message for
years and years. Kawhi Leonard just sent a huge message here. He
said, 'No only do I not want to team up with LeBron, I want to steal
Los Angeles from LeBron and I think I can do it.' "
*
SHARTIE AART DEKKER
Waarom Lebron James(de Lakers) er Niet in Slagen Ster-Free-Agents aan te trekken - ofwel: Zien we hier het Einde van het Tijdperk van king James?
Ikzeg het maar weer eens; vaak is het speculeren, analyseren, kortom
het praten over Sport, nog leuker dan de Sport zelf. En dat geldt eens
te meer voor de NBA...
Is, was LeBron James de 'Beste Aller Tijden' (G.O.A.T.)?
Of
tenminste de 'Beste van Zijn Tijd'? Blijft een lastig te beantwoorden
vraag. Ik zeg dat hij de 'Beste Ooit' was, maar ben er ook weer niet zo
heel zeker van; omdat ik mensen als Bill Russell en
Oscar 'Big O' Robertson, en ongetwijfeld nog vele anderen alleen maar ken van de verhalen en wat Highlights...
Deze vraag is al jarenlang onderwerp van Debat en je kon (of kunt) mensen (erg) kwaad krijgen door alleen maar te betwijfelen of Michael Jordan misschien minder goed van dan King James...(en dat maakt het dus zo leuk!)
Maar goed, het einde van het Tijdperk waar King James duidelijk regeerde is wel nakende, daarover zou niet al teveel discussie meer over mogen zijn. Wat weer niet betekent dat hij dus geen NBA-Kampioenschap(-pen) meer zou kunnen winnen...maar dan moeten de Laker en hij wel vaart gaan maken met het bouwen van een Team dat dan zou moeten kunnen. En dat blijkt dus ook al niet meer zo genmakkelijk...
Lees - of luister - het hele onderstaande SI-CrossOver gesprek van hieronder. Ik ben er trouwens voor mezelf nog niet uit of ik deze nieuwe vorm net zo prettig vind als de Verhalen van SportsIllustrated die ik al 40, 45 jaar gewend was te lezen...
(
AD)
**
-
-
- Podcast
Why Can't LeBron James and the Lakers Land Stars
in Free Agency? | Open Floor Podcast
Quickly
LeBron James and the Lakers didn't land Kawhi Leonard this
summer. In fact, the Finals MVP decided to join the Clippers and
play for the other team in L.A. Why haven't the Lakers picked up big
fish in recent years?
For a second straight year, LeBron James and the Lakers missed
out on major free agents. Sure, they added Anthony Davis via trade,
but when the summer sweepstakes kicked off they missed
out on Kawhi Leonard, who instead joined the the Clippers with
Paul
George in tow. Why hasn't LeBron, who helped engineer Miami's
Big 3 and spark this era of player movement, been able to
successfully recruit? Andrew Sharp and The Washington Post's
Ben Golliver consider this question and the current Lakers roster on
the latest episode of the Open
Floor podcast.
(Listen
to the latest Open Floor podcast here. The following transcript
has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Golliver: So lets talk about them. We hinted at
it earlier, we don't often refer to him as a loser. LeBron James is
a big loser here, right?
Sharp: He is, and you know what? I don't feel
great about trending in that direction. I
tweeted earlier: "Kawhi Leonard and Paul George both wanted
to be in LA, but not with LeBron."
Golliver: Facts.
Sharp: I threw a little dot, dot, dot at the
end, which made it a little takier. But that now has 600 retweets,
2,000 likes. And I didn't want it to be that kind of viral take.
It's very similar to something Skip Bayless said, apparently. Not
proud of it at all, but facts are facts.
Golliver: It's true. Paul George didn't
even give them a meeting, he re-signed with Oklahoma City at a
time when really it did not make sense for him to re-sign. You look
at this situation, if LeBron James was as good of a recruiter as we
kind of thought he was, if he was the power broker that we've built
him up to be at times over these last couple of years in terms of
having Rich Paul play every single angle, being able to get Anthony
Davis, leveraging a franchise where Rob Pelinka's taking all of this
potential risk to get to lay the groundwork to get a Kawhi Leonard
deal. He gets this done. Whatever the pitch that needed to be made
to Kawhi Leonard, he's the one who would make it. The title is
sitting there waiting for them to go get if they're all together,
right?
And bottom line, he wasn't able to make that connection. I wonder
if there's concerns from other parties about whether it's his age,
style of play, the amount of attention. I think you joked about the
Instagram stuff, about whether there would be a personality conflict
between him and Kawhi Leonard. There was multiple years there where
nobody wanted to challenge LeBron. His fellow players wouldn't even
say a negative word about him. Everybody was kind of on message for
years and years. Kawhi Leonard just sent a huge message here. He
said, 'No only do I not want to team up with LeBron, I want to steal
Los Angeles from LeBron and I think I can do it.'
Sharp: Yeah, absolutely, and this goes back to
something I saw tweeted by a guy named David Zavac. He's a Cavs
writer, and he wrote earlier today, "The gap between what NBA
twitter thought of the Kyrie-LeBron stuff and what NBA players under
the age of 30 thought of the Kyrie-LeBron stuff continues to impact
the league and how we miss coverage of things impacting the league."
I actually think that is a very, very smart and perceptive point
when we think about LeBron.
Golliver: Are you 100 percent right now in this
moment sure the Lakers make the playoffs?
Sharp: I am sure.
Golliver: 100 percent sure?
Sharp: Yeah...
Golliver: I don't know, man.
Sharp: I think that they'll find a way, but I
need the free-agency news for the Lakers to just slow down right now
because it just gets darker with each new development. But do you
know what I mean? And do you know what David meant with that
LeBron-Kyrie point? Because I think that is true. I think a lot of
players around the league identified with Kyrie's frustrations with
LeBron and would worry about that with another potential partnership
with LeBron. And I think AD is kind of in his own category because
he's a Klutch guy and they're interests are kind of intermingled in
a way that is unique.
But I don't necessarily blame someone like Paul George or someone
like Kawhi Leonard for saying, "I don't know if I want to be
part of this situation where you're going to get all the credit,
there's going to be drama every month and it's just going to be a
lot of trouble and potentially more trouble than it's worth."
Golliver: A couple of weeks ago we were kind of
breaking down what the Lakers would look like if they got Kawhi
Leonard, and I think one of the stumbling blocks we pointed out was
the dynamic between LeBron and Kawhi on the court and off the court.
Who gets the ball in the fourth quarter? Who gets the most touches?
Who's going to sacrifice for whom? And I think at one point I asked
you, "Is LeBron really at the stage in his career where he's
ready to take a backseat? Where he's actually willing to admit that
he's going to transition into a different role?" And I think
that you just started laughing. And you kind of shot it down. There
was ways that we could talk ourselves into that, but if you're Kawhi
Leonard you need to know that for a fact if you're going to go play
with him, right? You need to be convinced that you're going to go be
the man.
Sharp: And it's hard because I think LeBron is
in the stage of his career where he recognized he should be passing
the torch and he wants to pass the torch and he's saying the right
things, but I understand anybody who looks at the last five years of
his career and says, "Ok, so you say one thing in July and then
by the time it's January or February it's a little bit of a
different story," and proceeds with a little more caution than
we would've seen when LeBron was like 27 years old and he was
unquestionably the best player on the planet.
And now the story is a little bit more complicated, and it's not
even a shot at LeBron calling him unlikeable or this or that. The
fact is LeBron's going to be 35 years old and he's almost 10 years
older than Kawhi Leonard. It's a completely different generation so
it'd actually be crazier if he were able to successfully recruit all
these guys who were literally in middle school when he was entering
the NBA and beginning to win MVPs every year.
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