Lakers News: Meeting With Jordan Was Underwhelming
We’re starting to see an unfortunate trend, aren’t we?
Lakers get cap space. Lakers somehow find their way into and even to the top of free agents’ destination list. Lakers get an important meeting. Lakers think said meeting goes well…
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Then this, via Brad Turner of the L.A. Times:
Lakers were "somewhat underwhelming" in presentation with DeAndre Jordan, sources. DJ felt Lakers had been on "whirlwind" last 24 hours.
— Brad Turner (@BA_Turner) July 2, 2015
(Note: There have been reports to the contrary, but we’ll operate with the understand Turner’s sources are the most reliable.)
Look, if you’re meeting with someone who could immediately change the fortunes of your franchise, maybe whelm him. Whelm the living heck out of him. You know what you don’t want to do? Make him feel as if he’s the last in a line of speed dates.
“Hi, LaMarc-…. Crap. Hi, Gre-…. Well this isn’t off to a great start.”
The funny thing here (if you have a sick sense of humor) is that Jordan easily made the most sense of any of the guys they met with today. Now, whether you think the Lakers should prioritize meetings based on need to likeliness of acquisition, that’s one thing. But can you think of any excuse for the Buss siblings not to attend? Did they have something else to do?
Was this another Mark-Cuban-taping-Shark-Tank situation, or what? I mean come the heck on.
All day, Lakers fans and bloggers alike had to fight off people ready to throw dirt on the Lakers’ mystique, which is fine. We’re pretty much used to cheap shot artists from all over social media. But when we hear that the Lakers were somewhat unprepared for a meeting of this magnitude, it’s hard not to feel like you’re defending the drunk uncle reminiscing of his high school glory days.
The issue seems to come down a simple, yet deeply-rooted issue: I’m not sure the Lakers quite know how to fix the basketball side of things. It should come down to a few questions:
1) How is this Kobe Bryant situation going to end? Is he going to retire and, if not, do you plan on bringing him back with any significant chunk of your cap space next season?
2) What type of organization might you be once he’s gone? Will you ever embrace the analytics-based ideologies that teams seem to be enjoying quite a bit of success with?
3) If you don’t know the answers to those questions, why are we even meeting?
And that brings us full circle here. Why did the Lakers meet with Greg Monroe is there was no likely scenario that ended with them even offering him a deal? Why did the Busses and Kobe attend Aldridge’s meeting, but not Jordan’s? Why does this offseason feel so much like last year, where they struck out on major names and fans were left to hope there is some contingency plan?
So many questions, and so few answers. We were able to digest the bad news up until this latest blow. Now, though, it might be time to wonder if the Lakers can actually answer each of the aforementioned dilemmas, and if so, are they capable and/or willing to handle them accordingly.