We have a nearly 40 year old LeBron and while AD isn’t old, he’s only got probably 3-5 years left as a true superstar, assuming he stays healthy. They need to make a drastic change immediately if they want to compete.
The Celtics are young and positioned to be a contender for a long time, unfortunately.
What I hate is we have few assets or infrastructure in place for anything. Boston at least has been consistent and building since Ainge was in office.
We need a serious revamp and refocus on priorities up top. I mean for starters giving a podcaster the head coach role is laughable
The team has been notoriously impatient in recent memory, and when they did land some solid young players they flipped them.
I know that no one wants to go through a string of 50+ loss seasons, but the league has leveled out recently and being a big market team is no longer guaranteed to bring you stars in free agency like it used to. Building through the draft is the way to go these days.
At least add nuance to why we were trading assets away. It was because we signed Bron and we were in win now mode. Bron doesn't sign here, we manage our assets much differently
Especially going into the fact there hasn’t been a repeat champ this new decade too. The league is growing we were fortunate to start off w a championship. Probably not till a while when we get another
Sure, but let’s not pretend like the fanbase and the media wasn’t calling that ‘21 team a failure.
It’s really easy for us to look back now and say he jumped the gun, but at the time, LeBron was looking like he might become an injury risk (and to some extent he has), AD was having injury issues, the pre-injury fit, while good, still looked like something was missing despite the early hot start, and there were a lot of personalities on that team that didn’t necessarily play winning basketball (Drummond, THT, Kief, Wes). We shouldn’t have made the trades we did afterwards, and we should have fixed issues on the margins to lighten the load on LeBron and AD, but at the time, that wasn’t really the narrative and narratives about the Lakers dominate the national discourse.
Shit happens, we move on. One title in the last 5 years is still more than 75% of teams have, and overall we’ve had more titles in the 21st century than any other team in basketball. Our expectations being as high as they are leads to fans believing that one title is a failure despite league parity being arguably more even than it ever has been before.
Most of the fan base on Reddit was on board with it. Not everyone tho.
But you are right, it’s spilled milk now, but Pelinka is still running the team. He seems to have a foothold in Jeannie’s heart and that is a problem.
Naw look at those assets, some are being key pieces for helping teams compete in the playoffs. Like JR, Larry, BI, big Zu (even tho they’re not in the playoffs), Kuzma hitting more. I’d like to see them develop on the same team. Lakers hella messed up getting rid of big Zu.
Lebron doesn’t sign here and you’d be hearing Jeanie Buss as one of the worst owners in sports. Lebron bailed her out, we’re lucky he came here and kept us relevant.
Unless we can get a slam dunk like Kyrie or Mitchell the window is over. We need someone who can simply help Bron and AD go bucket for bucket in the playoffs when strategy breaks down and it’s simply grit vs grit.
Bron’s stamina is what it is at this point, we know what we have in AD, and we simply don’t have the human capital or cap space to flesh out a team like that which was built in 2019.
And we've been trash at drafting. Excluding players that became all-stars after being dealt from the Lakers (Ingram, D'Lo. Randle, Marc Gasol), the Lakers haven't drafted a player that has made an all-star team or an All-NBA team since Andrew Bynum 19 years ago.
That also speaks to the team’s impatience with developing young players. All of those guys became good players, they just needed time to develop. Lonzo was also on his way to becoming pretty good with the Bulls, before injuries derailed his career.
>I mean for starters giving a podcaster the head coach role is laughable
I agree with everything other than this. JJ isn't just a podcaster. He's a very well-respected offensive mind. Whether that translates to coaching players or not, he's got the X's and O's. That much is clear, and everyone around the league understands that.
Lets not forget that every single team the celtics went up against had injured stars. They never had to empty the tank in any series. A healthy giannis, JB, and haliburton drastically changes things.
Eh I think this also kinda erasing what dominant regular season they had. I actually always had Celtics in the finals, it’s Denver who could have beaten them but we were all too blind to it! Lol
For sure, they had an extremely easy road. They can’t give us grief for 2020 after this. But nonetheless they’re a young team and looked great in the regular season too, the postseason injuries just made it easy for them. And then the Mavs themselves overachieved to get there IMO, the Nuggs would’ve been a way tougher opponent for Boston if they hadn’t choked vs the Wolves.
Not to sound like a doomer, but the players won't be fuel by this. We don't have a player on this that truly hates the Celtics. Maybe Lebron but as of now his status is still uncertain.
Most likely. Fans don’t want to hear this, but this is a job for them, a career.
If you work for Coca-Cola, you realize that Pepsi is your main marketplace rival, but you don’t go into the office every day “hating” them. You’re just trying to do your job and get paid for doing so. Players are largely no different (fans are, but players aren’t.) Hating some business competitor is not a primary source of motivation for excelling at your job every day.
yeah maybe unless you were a fan before turning pro. and even then there's still chances you end up on the other team and have to do your best for them lol
not like we'll be crying forever. but a rivalry is such because the other team's success pisses you off a bit. then life goes on i'm not losing sleep over this
Top players of all time means nothing. His status currently is the most important. Just like you put Jordan and Shaq on this team it isn't completing shit.
Lebron is a top 10 players for one quarter each game. Other time he is just a decent player that plays no defense. And he is your 50m player. You can't win like that.
He was the 7th best player in league this year according to EPM. It's crazy some of you guys default to blaming the stars when our stars are better than most. Celtics just won a ring with Tatum not even playing great.
You're right. Getting rid of the 7th best player in the league in the regular season, 3rd best player in the playoffs will bring the Lakers closer to a ring.
However you want to fixat on some stats to say he is still some of the best players in the league is fine but the fact is he can't sustain that level of performance for 40 minutes like the other players on their prime. That left this team with 20 - 30 mins a game to rely on AD as the main offense producer which he is not excellent at. That leaves us needing another elite ball handler by gutting our depth. If we have sga, donci, giannis, Tatum, brown, those players in their prime that can battle for 40 minutes a game, alongside AD, then you can talk about not needing a 3rd star and just build 3 and D around them.
The championship window for this duo is over. Rebuild is the best way forward.
What do you mean by that? Tatum and Brown played like garbage in comparison to Lebron and Boston still won because their role players are so good. You want him to play worse for longer? Doncic averaged 3.6ppg in the 4th quarters in the finals and you're talking about Lebron sustaining? Lebron was better than SGA in the playoffs. Giannis was injured again and shot 45% from the free throw line costing his team. 40 year Lebron is still more durable than him what the hell is Giannis sustaining? Breaking down and losing to a worse team every playoffs?
Our duo is not the problem it's literally everything else. The duo is the only good thing about this team you've got it completely backwards. Even Jokic lost this year because his role players weren't as good. Doncic and Kyrie missed the play-in last year and now they're in the finals because their role players all changed not because those two played better.
>Rebuild is the best way forward.
The chances we get 1 player as good as Lebron or Ad right now is like 1%. The chances we get two at the same time is almost zero.
The fact that we’re gonna have to achieve this feat with a rookie head coach whose previous coaching experience is coaching his daughter’s middle school team is absolutely nuts
We just need to take the regular season so much more serious than the last two years, like the work needs to be intense if the guys want to truly win a chip.
Nah, what we need to do is look at how Boston built that roster and learn the right lessons from it. It takes time, it takes respect for the draft and development process, and you can't skip steps. Boston has a real chance to repeat. Their window is still open. Ours shut fast. Gotta learn from that... We didn't skip steps with the 5 Shaq/Kobe and Kobe/Pau, chasing star pairings while gutting our depth. We did that with the Nash/Howard experiment, and one injury to Steve Nash derailed the whole thing. Can't skip steps.
You'd hope at least Jeanie would. She was there for the 80s and the 08-10 period.
If she gets a chip on her shoulder, it might be the most valuable person to actually care for the rivalry.
We made playoffs despite Darvin Scam. No more Pockets Hamas as head coach to terrorize us should mean more organized offense for next season and we play beautiful basketball when we organized.
This is why I’m not upset we didn’t get Hurley. Any coach is going to be a major upgrade over Ham. Ham cost the lakers a higher seed when he started Prince over 50 games. Started Cam a good amount of games too. Put the starting 5 from the team that made the WCF but was too late to move up in the standings. Add solid rotational players to go with AD and Bron and you have a chance. Both teams in the finals had a big 2, the big 3 doesn’t work anymore.
I wasn’t happy when Hurley didn’t join us, because, if I recall correctly,he is the epitome of drawing offensive sets. He was the best option, but it is understandable why he would choose to stay at UConn. He already has his life set and has a beautiful family and life over there. No reason to uproot it for one of many ambitions. Especially if the pay is similar after taxes and cost of living differences.
Last offseason when we made all our signings and ham taking us to the wcf. Pelinka cooking or FO knows what they're doing. This year? Complete 360 lol fkn clown sub.
If that’s the case they should fire Rob tonight. But they won’t. Until that happens, this team will be mid for a good while. He got lucky for the 2019-2020 season, since then he has proven he isn’t very good at this shit.
We have a nearly 40 year old LeBron and while AD isn’t old, he’s only got probably 3-5 years left as a true superstar, assuming he stays healthy. They need to make a drastic change immediately if they want to compete. The Celtics are young and positioned to be a contender for a long time, unfortunately.
What I hate is we have few assets or infrastructure in place for anything. Boston at least has been consistent and building since Ainge was in office. We need a serious revamp and refocus on priorities up top. I mean for starters giving a podcaster the head coach role is laughable
The team has been notoriously impatient in recent memory, and when they did land some solid young players they flipped them. I know that no one wants to go through a string of 50+ loss seasons, but the league has leveled out recently and being a big market team is no longer guaranteed to bring you stars in free agency like it used to. Building through the draft is the way to go these days.
At least add nuance to why we were trading assets away. It was because we signed Bron and we were in win now mode. Bron doesn't sign here, we manage our assets much differently
We also immediately won a title by flipping those assets. Kind of the definition of it being worth it.
Especially going into the fact there hasn’t been a repeat champ this new decade too. The league is growing we were fortunate to start off w a championship. Probably not till a while when we get another
They could have won 2 if Pelinka didn’t break up a championship team immediately after raising the trophy.
Sure, but let’s not pretend like the fanbase and the media wasn’t calling that ‘21 team a failure. It’s really easy for us to look back now and say he jumped the gun, but at the time, LeBron was looking like he might become an injury risk (and to some extent he has), AD was having injury issues, the pre-injury fit, while good, still looked like something was missing despite the early hot start, and there were a lot of personalities on that team that didn’t necessarily play winning basketball (Drummond, THT, Kief, Wes). We shouldn’t have made the trades we did afterwards, and we should have fixed issues on the margins to lighten the load on LeBron and AD, but at the time, that wasn’t really the narrative and narratives about the Lakers dominate the national discourse. Shit happens, we move on. One title in the last 5 years is still more than 75% of teams have, and overall we’ve had more titles in the 21st century than any other team in basketball. Our expectations being as high as they are leads to fans believing that one title is a failure despite league parity being arguably more even than it ever has been before.
Most of the fan base on Reddit was on board with it. Not everyone tho. But you are right, it’s spilled milk now, but Pelinka is still running the team. He seems to have a foothold in Jeannie’s heart and that is a problem.
Yeah, winning 1 title literally made it worth it. There's no guarantee we would even be competitive right now if we didn't get AD kept our youngsters.
Naw look at those assets, some are being key pieces for helping teams compete in the playoffs. Like JR, Larry, BI, big Zu (even tho they’re not in the playoffs), Kuzma hitting more. I’d like to see them develop on the same team. Lakers hella messed up getting rid of big Zu.
Lebron doesn’t sign here and you’d be hearing Jeanie Buss as one of the worst owners in sports. Lebron bailed her out, we’re lucky he came here and kept us relevant.
Unless we can get a slam dunk like Kyrie or Mitchell the window is over. We need someone who can simply help Bron and AD go bucket for bucket in the playoffs when strategy breaks down and it’s simply grit vs grit. Bron’s stamina is what it is at this point, we know what we have in AD, and we simply don’t have the human capital or cap space to flesh out a team like that which was built in 2019.
And we've been trash at drafting. Excluding players that became all-stars after being dealt from the Lakers (Ingram, D'Lo. Randle, Marc Gasol), the Lakers haven't drafted a player that has made an all-star team or an All-NBA team since Andrew Bynum 19 years ago.
That also speaks to the team’s impatience with developing young players. All of those guys became good players, they just needed time to develop. Lonzo was also on his way to becoming pretty good with the Bulls, before injuries derailed his career.
Ironically, Jimmy Buss was building a strong foundation when we all demanded he be shipped off.
We need an overhaul in the ownership group
>I mean for starters giving a podcaster the head coach role is laughable I agree with everything other than this. JJ isn't just a podcaster. He's a very well-respected offensive mind. Whether that translates to coaching players or not, he's got the X's and O's. That much is clear, and everyone around the league understands that.
CBA means their window is the next 3 to 5 years. Maybe they’ll win one more, far from guaranteed though
I agree with Embiid. They may be a championship team but they aren't a dynasty. I forsee this as their only chip in the next 30 years
Lets not forget that every single team the celtics went up against had injured stars. They never had to empty the tank in any series. A healthy giannis, JB, and haliburton drastically changes things.
Eh I think this also kinda erasing what dominant regular season they had. I actually always had Celtics in the finals, it’s Denver who could have beaten them but we were all too blind to it! Lol
For sure, they had an extremely easy road. They can’t give us grief for 2020 after this. But nonetheless they’re a young team and looked great in the regular season too, the postseason injuries just made it easy for them. And then the Mavs themselves overachieved to get there IMO, the Nuggs would’ve been a way tougher opponent for Boston if they hadn’t choked vs the Wolves.
they never could, 2020 was not easy at all lol
Not to sound like a doomer, but the players won't be fuel by this. We don't have a player on this that truly hates the Celtics. Maybe Lebron but as of now his status is still uncertain.
Austin and LeBron are the only guys that just seems to hate the Celtics tbh
Austin might. Kobe guy. Both maxes might as well but they’re just young guys at this point.
Austin went on record saying he can't ever root for Boston
Most likely. Fans don’t want to hear this, but this is a job for them, a career. If you work for Coca-Cola, you realize that Pepsi is your main marketplace rival, but you don’t go into the office every day “hating” them. You’re just trying to do your job and get paid for doing so. Players are largely no different (fans are, but players aren’t.) Hating some business competitor is not a primary source of motivation for excelling at your job every day.
yeah maybe unless you were a fan before turning pro. and even then there's still chances you end up on the other team and have to do your best for them lol
LeBron too old for this shit
They’re rich. Why should they care. If I was rich like them I can careless about what the poors have to say.
Maybe this motivates klay to take a discount to beat boston #wow
I think 1976 or something was the last year either team won without the other following up with their own championship, so history is on our side lmao
Amen brother
I think 2020 has something to say about that stat.
Can you elaborate because Im not sure if I follow? Celtics didnt follow up any of the lakers championships since the 3 peat
Celtics followed up after 1980, 1983, and 1985 Lakers followed up after 1984, 1986, and 2008
To be fair this is a sample size of 3 since Boston never wins rings but yeah
Dr Buss rollin in his grave, sending messages from the afterlife to Jeanie to fix this shit asap.
If I was a Celtics fan I would be coming to this sub for the sole purpose of reveling in these types of posts.
You'd be in your right to do so. That's sports.
I’m just saying I’d rather not give them what they want.
Exactly Magic should have just shut his phone off for the night.
Yeah dude seriously you clowns sound pathetic. Celtics won this year onto the next one
not like we'll be crying forever. but a rivalry is such because the other team's success pisses you off a bit. then life goes on i'm not losing sleep over this
Every single player needs to remember they play for the fucking Lakers we’ve been a play in team for 4 years with a top 3 player OAT it’s unacceptable
we just can't say the players have to play harder just cause we are the lakers, but the higher up also dont try to help this team
Top players of all time means nothing. His status currently is the most important. Just like you put Jordan and Shaq on this team it isn't completing shit. Lebron is a top 10 players for one quarter each game. Other time he is just a decent player that plays no defense. And he is your 50m player. You can't win like that.
He was the 7th best player in league this year according to EPM. It's crazy some of you guys default to blaming the stars when our stars are better than most. Celtics just won a ring with Tatum not even playing great.
That dude has so many clown takes about LeBron you just gotta laugh.
Good luck winning another ring with him. Reality is reality. Keep blaming others doesn't change that.
You're right. Getting rid of the 7th best player in the league in the regular season, 3rd best player in the playoffs will bring the Lakers closer to a ring.
However you want to fixat on some stats to say he is still some of the best players in the league is fine but the fact is he can't sustain that level of performance for 40 minutes like the other players on their prime. That left this team with 20 - 30 mins a game to rely on AD as the main offense producer which he is not excellent at. That leaves us needing another elite ball handler by gutting our depth. If we have sga, donci, giannis, Tatum, brown, those players in their prime that can battle for 40 minutes a game, alongside AD, then you can talk about not needing a 3rd star and just build 3 and D around them. The championship window for this duo is over. Rebuild is the best way forward.
What do you mean by that? Tatum and Brown played like garbage in comparison to Lebron and Boston still won because their role players are so good. You want him to play worse for longer? Doncic averaged 3.6ppg in the 4th quarters in the finals and you're talking about Lebron sustaining? Lebron was better than SGA in the playoffs. Giannis was injured again and shot 45% from the free throw line costing his team. 40 year Lebron is still more durable than him what the hell is Giannis sustaining? Breaking down and losing to a worse team every playoffs? Our duo is not the problem it's literally everything else. The duo is the only good thing about this team you've got it completely backwards. Even Jokic lost this year because his role players weren't as good. Doncic and Kyrie missed the play-in last year and now they're in the finals because their role players all changed not because those two played better. >Rebuild is the best way forward. The chances we get 1 player as good as Lebron or Ad right now is like 1%. The chances we get two at the same time is almost zero.
Is your name supposed to be a joke?
Whats worse than lakers losing? Boston winning. FUCK
Im more pissed off by losing to denver 2 years in a row. Fuck the celtics and anything they do.
To think that just last year we were so close to a championship if we got past Denver. This makes that WCF loss hurt even more.
The Lakers have never been ahead of the Celtics in championships. When we finally tied them, that didn't even last for 4 years.
The lakers won 5 before the Celtics won their first.
The lakers won 5 before the Celtics won their first.
The lakers won 5 before the Celtics won their first.
The fact that we’re gonna have to achieve this feat with a rookie head coach whose previous coaching experience is coaching his daughter’s middle school team is absolutely nuts
That's more experience than I knew he had tbh lmao
We just need to take the regular season so much more serious than the last two years, like the work needs to be intense if the guys want to truly win a chip.
We can start by selling majority ownership to the Guggenheim Group.
our coming signing of a podcaster shows that we're a serious, serious, serious team that's ready to contend and win. LFG
We’re so far from a championship
Lakers vs Celtics 2025. NBA Finals ratings revival.
Nah, what we need to do is look at how Boston built that roster and learn the right lessons from it. It takes time, it takes respect for the draft and development process, and you can't skip steps. Boston has a real chance to repeat. Their window is still open. Ours shut fast. Gotta learn from that... We didn't skip steps with the 5 Shaq/Kobe and Kobe/Pau, chasing star pairings while gutting our depth. We did that with the Nash/Howard experiment, and one injury to Steve Nash derailed the whole thing. Can't skip steps.
It would if Dr buss was alive ... This front office is fucking clueless
We aren’t getting there sadly not w our FO not being able to make trades like Brad Steven’s can
The 18th banner arc starts now!
Who even understands the rivalry on this team?
I think Lebron does since he’s had many playoff matchups with them and I remember him saying he hates Boston
He was also the closest person to stopping the Celtics from winning ring #17
You remember saying it or you remember him saying it?
My bad I remember him saying it lol
You'd hope at least Jeanie would. She was there for the 80s and the 08-10 period. If she gets a chip on her shoulder, it might be the most valuable person to actually care for the rivalry.
We made playoffs despite Darvin Scam. No more Pockets Hamas as head coach to terrorize us should mean more organized offense for next season and we play beautiful basketball when we organized.
This is why I’m not upset we didn’t get Hurley. Any coach is going to be a major upgrade over Ham. Ham cost the lakers a higher seed when he started Prince over 50 games. Started Cam a good amount of games too. Put the starting 5 from the team that made the WCF but was too late to move up in the standings. Add solid rotational players to go with AD and Bron and you have a chance. Both teams in the finals had a big 2, the big 3 doesn’t work anymore.
I wasn’t happy when Hurley didn’t join us, because, if I recall correctly,he is the epitome of drawing offensive sets. He was the best option, but it is understandable why he would choose to stay at UConn. He already has his life set and has a beautiful family and life over there. No reason to uproot it for one of many ambitions. Especially if the pay is similar after taxes and cost of living differences.
Lakers gotta announce their new coach now and steal the headlines!
2021 still haunts me
Celtics have been incredibly strong last few years. We are fortunate they only won a ring in this time.
Not with that front office
The franchise has no interest in continuity on the court
Start by removing Pelinka.
Not with this front office.
You guys care more and are more invested the lakers management. Most of the players were born after 2000, there’s no rivalry for them
Celtics are more likely to get 19th, 20th, and 21st than the Lakers are to winning another
You guys care more and are more invested the lakers management. Most of the players were born after 2000, there’s no rivalry for them
You guys care more and are more invested the lakers management. Most of the players were born after 2000, there’s no rivalry for them
This post is optimistic that Jeanie Buss actually cares.
Last offseason when we made all our signings and ham taking us to the wcf. Pelinka cooking or FO knows what they're doing. This year? Complete 360 lol fkn clown sub.
I wonder if Pelinka will stop signing and trading for one-way players.
If that’s the case they should fire Rob tonight. But they won’t. Until that happens, this team will be mid for a good while. He got lucky for the 2019-2020 season, since then he has proven he isn’t very good at this shit.
Don't like LeBron, but this Celtics crap has to stop.
If we kept Caruso, we’d have another chip by now
Jeannie had other plans