re: 2022-23 Lakers Thread

Yes, I honestly think that the pick could end up around #8 again. We know that LeBron, Davis, and Westbrook will all be a year older and less athletic. We know that they will not stay healthy. We know that ring-chasers are not going to flock to play with them, so the rest of their roster likely won't be as good as last season's. It remains to be seen if Malik Monk is serious when he says that he'll consider returning to the Lakers for $6 million when he could get considerably more elsewhere -- maybe there's a role for him in Space Jam 3 or something.

But, aside from Kendrick Nunn being healthy, there's no reason to think that anything will be better for the Lakers this season. LeBron is 37 years old, and Father Time is undefeated -- it's time to expect a significant decline in his play.

But the people saying that we should expect a top-5 pick are just wrong. The teams finishing with bottom-5 records are almost always teams that tanked to some degree, and there's no reason for the Lakers to tank. So, unless they hit in the lottery for us, a reasonable expectation is to end up with a pick in the same range as #8 again.

Ifeel like the pels at worst will be in the same tier Denver and Utah were this year at about 50 wins. That is roughly the 22nd pick.

If Lakers are at around 40 wins that puts them either late lottery or if they somehow make the playoffs mid teens.

That's a 7 to possibly 10 pick jump.

Expect top 5? No. But it is a distinct possibility if last year’s lower tier teams decidedly improve, like Houston and Detroit, while fewer teams are tanking.


Only team actively getting worse at the second are the Spurs.

Them being better than last year means shipping out Westbrick for talent, either supporting cast along the lines of Hield or another “star” whose value has tanked.

Top 5 is a possibility with them running it back and having limited new talent come in due to lack of cap space and a lack of ring chasers willing to sign on minimums.

How many games AD plays is really not a big deal.
Yeah he helps them win, but that's only if Lebron is playing.
If Lebron doesn't play, then they are a bottom 5 team in the league b/c AD isn't good enough to get them more than a 30 win season with this supporting cast.

They were 8-18 without Lebron this year. That's winning at a 25 total win rate for an 82 game season.
They were only 25-31 with him.
They were 14-10 with Lebron and NO AD.

AD and Lebron only played 22 games together this past year, and they were .500 in them.


This team is all Lebron. If he isn't playing, they likely aren't winning.

At some Lebron has to just age himself out of the game.

He really didn't play Defense at all last year, and you have to wonder if that's going to get worse.

No, 538 uses RAPTOR to show WAR, which is based on minutes played, but the total RAPTOR score is based simply on box-score and on/off from the actual minutes played.

LeBron's on/off box-score numbers last season were fairly similar to the year before, but his on/off numbers took a big hit last season, which is why his total RAPTOR score went down.

No shite, but...

quote:

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Adrian Wojnarowski
@wojespn
· 11m
ESPN Sources: Los Angeles Lakers star Russell Westbrook is planning to exercise his $47.1 million option to return to the franchise for the 2022-2023 season.

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insert drool gif

If you prefer, you can also look at the impact metric from B-Ball Index (which is actually named LEBRON, for Luck-adjusted player Estimate using a Box prior Regularized ON-off). This is an estimate of a player's impact per 100 possessions, which is also what RAPTOR is.

Both RAPTOR and LEBRON attempt to estimate a player's total impact per 100 possessions, compared to a league-average player.

LINK

The LEBRON database doesn't quite show as dramatic a decline as RAPTOR, but there's still a significant decline in this past season:

2019-20: +5.50
2020-21: +5.31
2021-22: +3.37